Endangered wolves on display at Minnesota Zoo hopes to breed wolves

Three of North America's most endangered wolves went on exhibit at the Minnesota Zoo on Thursday. Zookeepers hope the captive-bred female Mexican gray wolves will breed with the zoo's four male wolves already on exhibit on the Northern Trail.

Mexican gray wolves were wiped out in the United States by the middle of the 20th century, but the subspecies found a sliver of hope in the late 1970s after a trapper working for the government captured five wolves in Mexico.

The zoo has been part of a two-nation effort to breed those captive wolves and return their descendants to the wild; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked the Apple Valley zoo to help in 1994.

One of the zoo's former wolves was released into the Blue Mountain Range in Arizona earlier this year.

With only about 60 Mexican gray wolves left in the wild, international wolf experts rate recovery of this species as the highest priority of gray wolf recovery programs worldwide

St. Paul Pioneer Press