Rare wolf pup, 4 swift foxes are born at the Endangered Wolf Center

The Endangered Wolf Center is proud to announce the recent births of a rare Mexican gray wolf pup and four swift fox kits.

Madre, an 11-year-old genetically valuable Mexican gray wolf, gave birth to a female (f1300) on May 20.

Peggy, a 5-year-old swift fox, gave birth May 8 to two males and two females.

 “Both Madre and Peggy are extremely good mothers and have experience successfully raising litters in the past,” said Virginia Busch, Executive Director of the Endangered Wolf Center. “All five of our new additions are doing well, in great health and the parents are doing an excellent job caring for and protecting the little ones.

“It is great to watch the fathers of both species helping raise the new babies,” Busch said. “They often stand sentry next to the den, protecting, ever-watchful; as well as help feed, discipline, play with and teach the pups.” 

The father of the Mexican gray wolf pup is Perkins, an 8-year-old, who was named by actress and comedian Betty White after her friend Marlin Perkins, founder of the Center.  Betty White is a friend and generous supporter of the Center.

The father of the four kits is known as M370, which is his “studbook” number. A studbook is the record biologists keep of each animal in a captive population.

There are now seven swift foxes and 21 Mexican gray wolves at the Center. 

Mexican gray wolves are critically endangered and only about 75 are known to exist in the wild in New Mexico and Arizona.  The birth of this tiny pup is vital to the survival of this species.  

Swift foxes are one of the smallest canids in the world, weighing only 4 to 6 pounds. This species is a true success story for conservation. Because of recovery efforts between the government and organizations like the Endangered Wolf Center, swift foxes are no longer considered endangered in the United States. Once reduced to only 10 percent of their historic range, they have been brought back to about 40 percent of their original habitat, which stretched over the Great Plains from central Alberta to west central Texas.  But they are not out of the woods yet, and are still considered endangered in Canada.

Last year, over Mother’s Day weekend in 2012, Peggy gave birth to three kits. Those were the first swift fox births in managed care in several years and the first at the Endangered Wolf Center since 2000.  It was also the first litter ever born in managed care to a family that includes a mother, father and aunt. This family structure has not been seen before in a zoological setting.

In late January, one of the female’s swift foxes born last year, named Kimi, traveled from the Endangered Wolf Center to the Cochrane Ecological Institute in Alberta, Canada, to help with recovery efforts there.