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Jim deVos, wolf recovery coordinator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department, confirmed on Friday that a roughly 3-week-old pup was found “barely responsive� during the operation and was euthanized in its den in the mountains east of Douglas.

“It’s not uncommon, but it’s unfortunate,� deVos said.

A mated pair of adults and their two remaining pups were successfully caught and taken to New Mexico, where they are now being fed and cared for at a wolf management facility at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge south of Albuquerque.

DeVos initially said the four wolves were in good shape, but he later learned that the adult female and the two pups were actually underweight and in “relatively poor condition� at the time of their capture. He said the wildlife veterinarians who were at the scene told him that the pups “likely would not have survived to den emergence.�

Though all indications are that the pup killed on Tuesday was already in bad shape before the attempt to capture it, deVos said he couldn’t rule out “handling stress� as a contributing factor in its death.

He said the Game and Fish Department team spent roughly five hours trying to get the pup out of the den before the decision was made to euthanize the animal using what he called a “jab stick,� basically a pole with a syringe at the end of it. The animal’s body could not be recovered from the den, which extended several feet into a rock outcropping from an opening only about 12 inches wide.

DeVos said the decision to remove the family of wolves from the wild was made because of poor habitat conditions, a lack of natural prey and a recent string of attacks on cattle in the area.

One wolf advocate who previously blasted the decision to capture the animals said she was dismayed to hear about the pup’s death.

“I hope the other two make it,� said Greta Anderson, the Tucson-based deputy director for the conservation group Western Watersheds Project. “Natural pup survival is only 50% for the first year, but it’s still unfortunate that the habitat conditions might have contributed to the mortality. It’s hard to say for sure, but it’s concerning.�

For that reason, Anderson said, she was surprised and disappointed to learn that the pup wasn’t collected after it was killed. A detailed examination of the carcass could have answered a lot of questions, she said. “Everything else is speculation without a necropsy.�

Tuesday’s capture came a little over a year after wildlife managers released the mated adult wolves with tracking collars on Coronado National Forest land in the Peloncillo Mountains, at the southeastern corner of Arizona.

DeVos said they were the only known Mexican wolves in Cochise County and comprised the entirety of the Mañada del Arroyo pack, one of about 60 distinct groups that now roam across eastern Arizona and western New Mexico.

Last year’s release in the Peloncillos was met with alarm and anger among some ranchers in Cochise County, who later blamed the pack for killing about a dozen cows in the area. Federal investigators ultimately determined that wolves were responsible for five of those livestock depredations, the most recent of which occurred about two weeks ago, deVos said.

A federal grant program, established in 2009, allows ranchers to seek reimbursement for cows, sheep, goats, pigs, horses and working dogs that are injured or killed by Mexican wolves.

Wildlife officials also occasionally order the “lethal removal� of wolves involved in attacks on livestock. During the execution of one such order in the White Mountains in April, a government hunter mistakenly killed a collared female wolf that might have been pregnant, instead of the uncollared male targeted for removal.

The Mañada del Arroyo pack was set free in the Peloncillo Range for a reason: One of the wolves had lived there before.

The pack’s wild-born female, nicknamed Llave by wolf advocates, was first caught and collared in eastern Arizona in 2018, then captured again three years later and paired with a mate for release in northern Mexico.

That pair spent the next year moving back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border, including time in the Peloncillos, until the male turned up dead in southwestern New Mexico. Llave was eventually recaptured in the range and paired with a new mate in captivity before being returned to that area one last time on April 29, 2024.

Anderson said it is her understanding that the female was pregnant when she was released last year, but she did not produce a successful litter.

“When this pack first came across the border in 2022, it was a conservation success story,� she said. “It showed connectivity between the U.S. and Mexico populations and offered hope of recovery in the historic habitat of the species.�

The decision to remove the wolves has erased that progress, Anderson said. “This action represents political capitulation to the organized anti-wolf factions rather than any rational approach to species’ recovery.�

Wildlife officials first began reintroducing captive-bred Mexican wolves to the wild in the two states in 1998, 22 years after the subspecies of the gray wolf was added to the federal endangered species list. The wild population of Mexican wolves in Arizona and New Mexico has since grown to more than 285, with another 350 animals held in captivity at facilities throughout the U.S. and Mexico.

The recovery effort is directed by the Mexican Wolf Interagency Field Team, which includes the and four other federal agencies, along with Arizona Game and Fish, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, the White Mountain Apache Tribe and the Saving Animals From Extinction program.

The team has yet to decide what to do with the Mañada del Arroyo pack, but deVos said the goal is to eventually return the wolves to the wild, though he doesn’t expect that to happen until this fall at the earliest.

For now, he said, the animals will be kept in captivity and under veterinary care, as their health hopefully improves.