Hours-old rare wolf cubs get a foster family

Rare wolves born in Westchester, flown to Indiana

A pair of Mexican gray wolf cubs, weighing a combined total of 2.7 pounds, born May 8 at the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem. The cubs were flown on Thursday to a facility in Indiana, where they will be fed by bottle and then raised by a pair of lupine foster parents. / Maggie Howell

SOUTH SALEM — Less than a day after they were born, they were airborne.

A pair of Mexican gray wolf cubs, weighing a combined total of 2.7 pounds, born Wednesday at the Wolf Conservation Center in northern Westchester County, were flown Thursday to a facility in Indiana, where they will be fed by bottle and then raised by a pair of lupine foster parents .

“It’s tough,” said Maggie Howell, the center’s executive director. “It’s Mother’s Day, so the timing’s a little off.”

Tough, but probably for the best, she said.

olf Conserva-tion Center curator Rebecca Bose bottle feeds one of two Mexican gray wolf cubs born May 8 at the center in South Salem. The cubs will be raised in Indiana. Maggie Howell

Mexican wolves are considered a critically endangered species, with just 400 left in the world, according to the center’s website. As of the beginning of this year, 75 were living in the wild. They are, Howell said, among the rarest mammals in North America.

The center has 14 Mexican wolves, including the cubs’ parents, know by their numbers F749 and M804. Genetically, the two are a good match, an important consideration in the effort to re-establish a viable population of the species.

But F749 has had terrible luck as a mother. Of 19 cubs, only two survived, Howell said. Last year, she delivered a litter of eight. All of them died.

And so it was decided that the cubs, both of them male, would have a better chance of survival if reared by a pair of wolves with a track record of successful parenting.

Eighteen hours after their birth, the cubs were removed from their den, checked out by a vet in Pound Ridge and then carried aboard an Indiana-bound plane.

“It takes a village,” Howell said.

At Mesker Park Zoo in Evansville, they will be fed by hand and looked after by caretakers for several weeks before being turned over to their new parents. With some luck, the brothers will grow into healthy adults weighing between 75 and 85 pounds.

“Because of having been hand-raised, they won’t be candidates for release,” Howell said. “but their offspring might.”

And that, she said, makes their bittersweet departure easier to take.