wolves in the wild

For a few months now, I've had wolves on the brain. Here's the beginning of one of the stories I've been working on:

By all rights, he should have been executed; it was his fourth killing within a year.

But in June, federal officials gave a male wolf a rare reprieve.

In Catron County’s Canyon del Buey—outside the town of Aragon—Alpha Male 1114, a Mexican gray wolf, had killed and eaten a calf. His mate, Alpha Female 903, was likely involved as well.

Under the Mexican gray wolf reintroduction project’s current rules—which include a three-strikes-you’re-out rule for cattle-killing lobos—such a transgression is punishable by death.

You can read the rest of the story over at the Santa Fe Reporter's website.

By the way, there is a mistake in the story that is 100 percent my fault: Wolves were extirpated by the middle of the 20th century, not the nineteenth.