The Wolf & the Golden Eggs
- Emily Evans
- Oct 7
- 4 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
By Pamela Maciel Cabañas, Sanctuary Director & SAFE Mexican Wolf Secretary
Published in Wolf Tracks vol. 42, no. II
When the flight from St. Louis landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on the evening of January 30, little did the passengers know that with them traveled a pair of incredible female scientists with a vast array of sophisticated equipment, determined to harvest and preserve the sexual cells of one of the most endangered canids in the world.
Female Mexican wolf 1422, known by Wolf Haven staff as Vida, was born in the sanctuary in 2015 as part of the captive breeding efforts of the Mexican Wolf Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE) program. After surviving a parvovirus infection as a pup that killed all of her siblings, Vida would go on to become the leader of her own pack – producing two healthy litters when she was two and five years of age, respectively. As a dedicated mother, she raised a total of 13 pups and saw her family group grow larger, then smaller, as each of her offspring was eventually moved out for breeding or social dynamic reasons. Now in her 10th year of life, Vida had been selected to be spayed, setting her on the path toward a peaceful life of retirement in the sanctuary.
The Mexican Wolf Recovery Program has a variety of tools to support their conservation efforts, one of which is the cryopreservation of reproductive organ tissues and gametes. Ovarian and testicular slices, as well as egg and sperm cells, are frozen and banked for later use in reproduction. Once a wolf has been selected for spay or neuter, the housing institution, reproductive specialists, and veterinarian team will coordinate to ensure the safeguarding of this highly valuable genetic material. In most cases, the planning is a well-proven set of steps that includes scheduling a clinic appointment for the surgery; hiring a professional carrier to transport the container with the biologi cal cargo to the airport for a flight to the banking institution; booking the air shipment; designing, preparing, and conducting the wolf’s handling; and processing the organs when they arrive at their final destination. The SAFE program and Wolf Haven have previously collaborated in numerous successful cryopreservation events, but Vida’s case was about to break the mold.
Wolves typically avoid human contact as much as they can, and when handled or restrained, they have the capacity to hunker and regulate their physiology once they are safely contained. However, Vida is not a common Mexican wolf.
Because of the viral disease and respective treatment she endured when she was only a few months old, Vida developed an extraordinarily heightened sensitivity to unfamiliar stimuli around her, which expresses in chronic stress and greatly limits our handling options of her. Unsafe to attempt a capture in the dark and unable to keep Vida in a crate overnight, the only viable option of capturing her was right before her appointment time at the clinic. This wouldn’t have been an issue... except the only direct flight that could transport delicate biological tissues AND arrive early enough in St. Louis for the reproductive team to process them didn't allow us time to fit in a morning capture and surgery. Things weren’t looking easy, but when it comes to preserving the highly valuable genes of a critically endangered species, brains are put together, budgets and staff schedules are stretched, and we make the impossible, possible... we brought the lab to Vida.
On the early morning of January 31, Wolf Haven staff and volunteers met at the crack of dawn to kick off a complex and hopeful day. An hour and a half later, we were on our way to Evergreen Veterinary Hospital where our attending veterinarian, Dr. Ripka, and her incredible team were ready to receive Vida.
As Vida was undergoing her spay surgery, SAFE reproductive specialists Karen Bauman and Leilani Castleman were fine tuning an entire lab setup in one of the neighboring exam rooms. Thanks to their impressive expertise, Karen and Leilani were able to process Vida’s ovaries in just a few hours – slicing them for cryopreservation and harvesting a record number of 102 oocytes (eggs) to be banked for future use in conservation.
After weeks of preparation, the innovative plan had proven successful. Karen, Leilani, and all their lab equipment were on their way home and our animal care team could get some rest. And what’s most important: that night, Vida was back in her lushly vegetated enclosure relaxing with her companion, M1430 (Aspen). Her gametes are now safely preserved in the cryobank at the Saint Louis Zoo, providing valuable opportunities for her unique genes to be represented in future populations of her amazing species.
To learn more about Wolf Haven's Mexican wolf and American Red Wolf conservation efforts, please visit wolfhaven.org/conservation/SAFE. Updates from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on the wild Mexican wolf population can be found at fws.gov/program/conserving-mexican-wolf.
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