YUKON REPORTER
News from the Last Frontier
Aurora Wolf and Wildlife Center Extends a Warm Welcome to New Resident from South of the Border
by reporter Ben Grayson
The Aurora Wolf and Wildlife Center welcomed a new member to its growing wolf pack yesterday. The sanctuary’s most recent acquisition comes all the way from central Mexico and is a Canis lupus baileyi, more commonly known as a Mexican gray wolf. Mexican gray wolves are a critically endangered subspecies of the more common gray wolf, indigenous to the Southwest United States.
The new wolf, which the sanctuary staff has named Caleb in honor of its youngest employee, who was recently awarded a full scholarship to the University of Alaska, where he plans to study wildlife management, is expected to draw crowds from as far away as Denali and the remote northern city of Barrow. He is the sole Mexican gray wolf living in captivity in the state of Alaska, and one of only an estimated fifty of his species left in the world.
Said Aurora Wolf and Wildlife Center’s founder and president, Piper Quinn, “It is an honor to provide sanctuary to a magnificent and treasured animal such as our newest boy, Caleb. Our ability to care for critically endangered species like the Mexican gray wolf is due to our recent accreditation from the National Nature Conservatory. I’m happy to announce that we’ve also been approved as one of only five facilities in the country to initiate a breeding program designed to save endangered species. So Caleb will be getting a girlfriend in the near future, and if all goes well, our wildlife center should see our first litter of pups by the end of the year.”
Perfect timing. Piper and her husband, Ethan Hale, the sanctuary’s operations manager, are expecting their first child on Christmas Day. Our sources say it’s a girl!
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