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But soon that stretch of remote desert land could be walled off.

Last December, U.S. Customs and Border Control announced its plans to seal off New Mexico’s bootheel with 30-foot-tall steel bollards spaced just a few inches apart. The proposed wall will span 49 miles. That’s not all. CBC is doubling up, with plans for 60 miles of "secondary border” wall.

Moving from the Black Range Mountains, the three-year-old wolf nicknamed Cedar veered south toward the “bootheel” of New Mexico, according to Darren Vaughan, communications director for the state’s game and fish department.

“Cedar could be the last lobo to truly roam freely if Trump completes his destructive border wall,” said Michael Robinson, a senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a press release.

Since the 1970s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has worked with wildlife agencies in Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico to establish wild populations of the wolves, which nearly went extinct in 1976.

Demographically, the wolves are recovering well, Robinson said.

But genetically, not so much.

Because all Mexican wolves today are descendants of seven who were corralled for a captive breeding program in the 70s that saved them from the brink, they are working with a limited amount of genetic material. Successful cross-border populations are key to their recovery plan.

From Texas to California, wildlife biologists and conservationists have advocated against the construction of an impermeable border wall, saying that it’s unnecessary — border encounters are at historic lows — and that it will bisect critical wildlife corridors across the Southwest. For endangered Mexican wolves like Cedar, the wall could disrupt their recovery by preventing their natural dispersal as they roam around looking for mates.

”The wall would make a permanent separation between two populations,” Robinson said. "The isolation of populations does tremendous damage.”

Wolf recovery efforts continue

In 1976, the wolves were officially designated as endangered under the new Endangered Species Act, and recovery efforts began. In 1998, they were reintroduced in the United States. Since then, their numbers have risen. State and federal wildlife agencies counted 319 endangered Mexican gray wolves across Arizona and New Mexico this past year. Up from 286 the previous year, it marks a decade of stable recovery.

But in Mexico, there are only about 38, according to Jim deVos, the Mexican wolf coordinator at the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

Mexico once accounted for about 90% of the wolves’ historic range, but since the 1970s few wolves have lived there.

In 2011, officials began releasing wolves south of the border in Chihuahua and Sonora. Those efforts weren’t entirely successful, but just this April, in a cross-border collaboration, wildlife agencies transferred two family packs to the Mexican state of Durango.

The border wall, being built across stretches of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, could prevent those populations from mixing, unless wildlife officials step in to move wolves around.

Barring that, the separate populations could inbreed, Robinson said, which would be detrimental to the species as a whole.

“ They're losing genetic diversity on a year by year basis,” Robinson said, referencing data from federal and state wildlife agencies.  ”In terms of isolated populations, they’d have fewer wolves to select from as potential mates.”

Wolf genetics are more of an issue than numbers

Arizona and New Mexico use a cross-fostering program to help increase genetic diversity in the population. Captive born pups are placed in dens with wild wolf mothers.

At 319, the wolves are just under one of the minimum thresholds for wildlife agencies to consider downlisting them under the ESA. The species would need to maintain or exceed 320 in the United States for the next four years. But the genes from captive wolves would also need to be successfully integrated into the population.

Otherwise, they would need populations of 150 in both America and Mexico for four years and to incorporate the captive wolves’ genetic material.

“The numbers are not the issue now,” deVos said of the U.S. population during an interview with The Republic in April. “It’s the genetics.”

Wolves aren’t the only animal whose survival is at stake in the construction of the border wall, Robinson said.

Jaguars, the elusive felines that sometimes stalk across the border could feel the effects, too.

In Arizona’s San Rafael Valley, where jaguars are sometimes seen via trail cam stalking across the border, the Department of Homeland Security is also installing a 27-mile-long border wall. In December, a jaguar nicknamed Cinco was spotted near the border. Both Arizona and New Mexico are part of jaguars’ historic range.

“All animals, except the smallest that can fit through the bollards, will suffer from the separation," Robinson said.