Mexican gray wolves kill 2 feral horses in first such documented cases
The first modern documented cases of Mexican gray wolves in the U.S. killing and eating feral horses has been published by researchers from New Mexico State University.
The research team, using global positioning system collar data, monitored 36 Mexican wolves from 24 packs between 2019 and 2023. Prey remains were examined — studying tooth marks, feeding patterns, and the absence of other plausible causes of death — and two cases of Mexican wolves killing and consuming free-roaming horses (Equus caballus) in New Mexico and Arizona were discovered. The data was published earlier this year in the Journal of Wildlife Management.
“Feral horses may provide a novel food source for wolves, particularly in regions where native prey populations are more limited,” the researchers wrote. “We hope that these findings can help highlight the gap in knowledge that exists when considering wolf ecology, restructured food webs, and the potential role feral horses could play as wolf populations increase in the American West.”
In the late 1990s, the Mexican gray wolf was returned to the wild through the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area spanning eastern Arizona and western New Mexico. Although wolf predation on feral and native wild horses has been reported for many parts of Europe, Asia, and Canada, predation of feral horses by wolves has not previously been reported in the United States since the reintroduction of this wolf species.
» Read our three-part series on wolf reintroductions here.
Numerous cattle ranchers have reported changing their management strategies based on populations of Mexican gray wolves and other wolf species, so while cattle depredations are becoming increasingly common, the impact on feral horse populations was more unexpected.
“The Mexican wolf was not supposed to do this. It was not supposed to be doing much of anything,” one social media post said.
Across the West, wolves are no longer a hypothetical part of the landscape. For animals in recovery and reintroduction zones, wolves have become a daily reality — especially for ranchers who are already dealing with drought, rising input costs, shrinking margins, and labor shortages.
And this is likely to add to frustrations that stakeholders already have about how wolf reintroductions were handled in the American Southwest.
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