In this photo take April 29, 2015, a red wolf named Don prowls his enclosure at the Endangered Wolf Center near Eureka, Mo., southwest of St. Louis. The center striving to help repopulate the nation's numbers of endangered Mexican gray wolves and red wolves, is welcoming its latest puppy season without the site's Mexican gray matriarch Anna, who was one day shy of her 14th birthday when she died April 21, 2015. Anna birthed 41 pups in just four litters over a five-year stretch to 2008 _ an astounding feat, considering such broods are typically about four to seven. (AP Photo/Jim Suhr) (The Associated Press)
EUREKA, Mo. – A Missouri conservation center heralded for helping repopulate endangered wolves is tending to its latest puppy season.
But this year's spring ritual has a bittersweet vibe. That's because the furry matriarch of the Endangered Wolf Center near St. Louis is gone, and staffers consider the loss noteworthy.
Anna, a Mexican gray wolf, died last month of day shy of turning 14. Her 41 puppies over four litters came to symbolize the center's quest to save North America's rarest subspecies of gray wolf.
The Mexican gray once numbered in the thousands in the Southwest before being nearly wiped out by the 1970s. The center's executive director says the 110 now said to be in the wild all have genetic ties to her nonprofit.
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