Mo Ganji: Mexican Wolf | Mexikanischer Wolf | Canis lupus baileyi | No. 132/250 from work group 8/99

Mexican Wolf | Mexikanischer Wolf | Canis lupus baileyi

Mo Ganji’s single line engages the Mexican wolf — a medium-sized canid adapted to forests, grasslands and mountainous landscapes — by allowing its inner coherence to surface without emphasis on ferocity, hierarchy or myth. The continuous line holds a distilled core of presence, enough to suggest a being while remaining open to meanings beyond the category of “wolf.” In this exposure of the essential, form appears before fear or symbolism claims authority.

Canis lupus baileyi is listed as Critically Endangered (CR) on the IUCN Red List. Once ranging widely across the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, the subspecies was nearly eradicated by the mid-20th century through systematic persecution. Today, its survival depends largely on reintroduction and management programs, with small wild populations present in parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico.

The principal threats include historical and ongoing human conflict, habitat fragmentation, illegal killing, and the risks associated with very small population size, such as reduced genetic diversity. Although captive breeding and reintroduction efforts have prevented extinction, the species’ long-term persistence remains fragile and closely tied to tolerance within human-dominated landscapes.

Ganji’s single line opens a space in which the wolf can be encountered beyond menace or emblem. It invites attention to a presence shaped by cooperation, territory and continuity, quietly reminding us that the stories humans project onto predators often obscure a deeper truth. That our own identities and futures are inseparable from the ecological relationships we choose either to sever or to sustain.