How California Wolf Center is Helping Wolves
Learn how our conservation programs are protecting and increasing wild wolf populations.
AZA SAFE: Saving Animals From Extinction
California Wolf Center has played a leading role in Mexican gray wolf recovery for decades through both conservation breeding and on-the-ground coexistence efforts. In 1997, the organization joined the Mexican Wolf Species Survival Plan, now the AZA SAFE Mexican Wolf program. The program started with only seven unrelated wolves and today includes roughly 60 participating institutions across the United States and Mexico, and nearly 700 of these critically endangered wolves.
During our 30 years of participation in the program, California Wolf Center has played a part in critical breeding, housing wolves removed from the wild, wild releases during the first-ever Mexican wolf releases in 1998, pup fostering efforts, reproduction research and collections, public education, and more!
California Wolf Center has housed over 100 Mexican gray wolves, including 85 critically endangered pups born at our facility.
Mexican Wolf Fund
Founded by California Wolf Center in 2006, the Mexican Wolf Fund was created to advance human-wolf coexistence by supporting ranchers, landowners, agencies, and communities across the Southwest with proactive tools that reduce wolf-livestock conflict while maintaining sustainable ranching practices. These efforts include range riders, fencing, fladry, diversionary feeding, hay support, outreach, field assistance, and volunteer programs, and have grown to support every wild Mexican gray wolf pack in the United States. The Mexican Wolf Fund works cooperatively with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and state agencies, helping administer recovery planning, funding conflict-prevention projects, securing grants, and providing field expertise for monitoring, trapping, tracking, captures, and public engagement.
Because Mexican wolves were once extinct in the wild, the continued success of these collaborative recovery efforts remains vital to increasing genetic diversity, expanding wild populations, and ensuring a sustainable future for wolves and the people who share the landscape with them.
California Wolf Recovery
In 2016, California Wolf Center developed a program called Working Circle. This program was a way to partner with the ranchers in Northern California to create and test strategies to reduce conflict between wolves and livestock. In 2021, Working Circle became their own nonprofit entity and continues to expand the scale of their successful approach to other areas.
By working with ranchers and producers, agencies, and other conservation groups, we can reduce wolf-livestock conflict and support progressive livestock management. Through these efforts, wolves returning to the wild will have a safer environment to call home.
By donating to this fund, you are helping the California Wolf Center in our continued efforts to support wolves in Northern California.
You Can Help!
Wild wolf recovery is not something we can accomplish alone, and California Wolf Center is completely funded by people like you. There are lots of ways you can help… spread the word and help educate about the importance of wolves and creating a healthy ecosystem, donate to the California Wolf Center so your funds help to continue efforts with wolf recovery, or become a volunteer to help care for and educate about these incredibly important animals.
Donate today as either a one-time gift or on an ongoing monthly basis to make a difference for wild wolves. You can also join our pack by becoming a California Wolf Center member and receive exclusive members-only perks!
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