Mexican Wolves Coming Back to Arizona : Environment: Under a wildlife recovery plan, two to three pairs would be released into the Blue Range desert area. Biologists hope they will breed in holding pens while adapting to the rugged wilderness.

In an isolated corner of the Phoenix Zoo, a white- and black-haired Mexican wolf nears the fence where curator Joe Christman stands. The animal paces back and forth but doesn’t run away.

“She wouldn’t make it in the wild,” Christman said of 9-year-old Rosa. “She has no fear of people whatsoever. She’s just too casual around them.”

Rosa and her 4-year-old companion, Chico, who in January were moved into a new 16,000-square-foot holding pen, are among 88 captive wolves in the United States and Mexico. Although they may not be chosen for reintroduction into the Arizona desert, state and federal wildlife managers have high hopes for others like them.

The state Game and Fish Department wants to bring back the animal that roamed Arizona in the mid-1930s but was eventually killed off to make way for cattle and livestock ranching.

Under the agency’s wolf recovery plan, two to three pairs of the wolves would be released into the Blue Range area bordering east-central Arizona and New Mexico, said Dan Groebner, Mexican wolf biologist for the Game and Fish department.

Biologists hope the pairs will breed while they are adapting to the rugged wilderness area in holding pens and eventually fill the 7,000-square-foot area with 100 free-ranging wolves by the year 2004, Groebner said.

Proponents of the reintroduction plan are waiting for an environmental impact statement, which precedes a final decision by the U.S. Department of the Interior. A nod from the federal agency means wolves could be roaming the Blue Range by 1997.

Arizona wildlife officials are watching a similar move in the northern Rockies, where gray wolves have been released into the wild, fitted with transmitters for air and ground tracking.

“We’re holding our breaths for that,” said Groebner. “We hoping to learn from their mistakes and we’ll be looking at how they behave, survive and where they go.”

A total of 29 wolves captured in Canada were transported in January to central Idaho and nearby Yellowstone National Park as part of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service effort to build up a population of 200 wolves.

The reintroduction of these predators to the lands they once roamed has been hailed by various environmental and wildlife groups, but has left ranchers concerned over the safety of their livestock.

“We already know we have a large population of mountain lions out there,” said Barbara Marks, a cattle rancher near the Blue Range area. “Throwing another predator in our midst is not a very smart thing to do.”

The Arizona Cattle Growers Assn. accepted the reintroduction plan in 1991 but does not wholeheartedly embrace it, said C. B. (Doc) Lane, the group’s director of natural resources and grower affairs.

“We have spent millions of dollars trying to stop evolutionary processes and trying to reintroduce them to save the warm and fuzzy species,” said Lane, who is also a rancher. “I’d rather see that money go somewhere else. I’m not sure we have our priorities straight.”

Ranchers concerned about the plan are also worried that more federal regulations will follow the wolf-management program.

“We have an industry trying to survive with layer after layer of federal regulations and now we are going to compound that by putting a predator into the equation,” said Tim Walters, a Safford radio anchor and author of “Surviving the Second Civil War: The Land Rights Battle and How to Win It.”

At least one animal rights group believes reintroduction of the Mexican wolves will create the same conflicts that led to the eradication of the species in Arizona 60 years ago.

“They will be persecuted, slaughtered, and tortured to death exactly as they always were,” said Jane Schwerin, president of People for Animals in the Prevention of Cruelty and Neglect Inc., a Tucson-based coalition with about 200 members.

Keeping the wolves out of the wilds would be the best thing for the species because “at least they are beyond the power of men to hurt and kill them again,” Schwerin said.

But Bobbie Holaday, executive director for Preserve Arizona’s Wolves, said she thinks people are changing their minds about wolves.

“It’s a sign that we can accept an animal like the wolf that is a predator and realize it is not all that bad,” said Holaday, who regularly gives talks at schools and community groups about the Mexican wolf.