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Asha, a Mexican gray wolf who has captured the hearts of New Mexico residents, has lost the mate who fathered her first litter of pups last year.

A from the Mexican Wolf Recovery Program states that M1966, otherwise known as Arcadia, was discovered dead in March after mating with Asha last year in captivity. The report didn't indicate the location or cause of Arcadia's death.

In February, the interagency wolf management team released two captive-born pups, fp3063 and fp3064, into their pack, designated as Quartz by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Asha mated with Arcadia last year and gave birth to five pups at the Sevilleta Mexican Wolf Management Facility near Socorro, where Asha was transported after she was captured near Coyote in 2023.

鈥淧lans are in place to release the full pack onto private land in New Mexico this summer,鈥� the agency said in a statement on social media at the time.

The Quartz pack was eventually released at Ted Turner's Ladder Ranch, one of four major landholdings the CNN founder, who died this spring, purchased in New Mexico.

In recent years, Fish and Wildlife has embraced a wolf reintroduction strategy that emphasizes releasing bonded adult wolves with their pups back into the wild, arguing that pack releases increase the animals' odds of survival and genetic diversity.

Results have been mixed, however, with 30 out of 110 fostered pups surviving their first year since the program began in 2014, according to reporting last year.

Asha, who was eventually named by New Mexico middle school students, was born in the wild in Arizona in 2021. She garnered public attention when she roamed into northern New Mexico in 2023, crossing Interstate 40, the upper bound of the Mexican wolf experimental population area.

The Mexican Wolf Interagency Field Team continues to face scrutiny, notably by livestock owners fearful of depredation, as the team works to track, recapture and relocate these endangered lobos in the Southwest.

Roughly half of the 314 wolf deaths recorded by Fish and Wildlife between 1998 and 2024 were attributed to poaching, while about 15% were caused by vehicle collisions. Six wolf deaths were recorded in Arizona and 11 in New Mexico between January and March, according to the report.

Fish and Wildlife is offering rewards of up to $50,000 for information leading to the conviction of individuals responsible for shooting and killing Mexican wolves. Game and fish divisions in New Mexico and Arizona offer bounties of $1,000 each.

Habitat loss, hunting and government eradication programs led to the in the U.S. by the mid-20th century, leading to wolf reintroduction programs starting in the late 1980s, according to the National Park Service.

John Miller is the sa国际传媒官网网页入口鈥檚 northern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at jmiller@abqjournal.com.