Once common throughout parts of the Southwestern U.S. and Mexico, the Mexican wolf was all but eliminated from the wild by the 1970s due to conflicts with livestock. In 1976, the Mexican wolf was listed as endangered and a binational captive breeding program was initiated soon after to save this unique gray wolf from extinction. In 1998, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service released the first captive Mexican wolves into the Mexican Wolf Experimental Population Area in Arizona and New Mexico. Absent from the landscape for over 30 years, the resounding howl of the endangered Mexican wolf could once again be heard in the mountains of the Southwest.