Why opening the gate isn't freedom, why "the wild" isn't a place, and why the most useful thing many would-be allies can do is listen
By Mētztli, Black Moon Wild Canid Sanctuary
If you run an animal sanctuary, you know the comment by heart. You've posted photo of a wolf, or a wolfdog, or a fox, curled up in the sun, or meeting a group of schoolkids. Within an hour someone (usually Karen or Becky) shows up to tell us, with total confidence:
"They should be living in the wild." "He belongs outside, running free."
Sometimes it's a sincere question. More often it's a verdict, delivered by someone who has never met the animal, doesn't know their history, has never read a release protocol, and has never had to carry a 40-pound bag of food through the mud at 6 a.m.
I'm writing this so I have something to link to the next time it happens. If you've been sent here, I'm not trying to humiliate you. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, assuming you care about animals. So do I. And I'm going to hold you accountable to the nuance and power dynamics behind your assertions. That's exactly why I want to walk through what "put them back in the wild" actually means, and why, for many animals, it would be a death sentence dressed up as white-saviorism and compassion.
Furthermore, lady-I run a sanctuary. I am a first-responder who's dedicated their life and resources to providing services to the community to save innocent lives, protect species, and try to make the world a better place. 24/7/365 Maybe think twice about who you're keyboard-warrior-ing at, before making unhelpful, frustrating remarks. Just donate, instead.
Part One: The Biology and the Law
"Wild animal" and "releasable animal" are not the same thing
A species' ancestry does not tell you whether a particular individual can survive on its own. Wildlife agencies don't release animals based on what species they are. They evaluate the individual: physical health, behavior, habituation to people, imprinting, the season, suitable habitat, and whether the animal can actually fend for itself.
California's wildlife rehabilitation guidance specifically lists the "elimination of mal-imprinted and habituated rehabilitation animals" among its standards (California Department of Fish and Wildlife). In other words, the professionals already recognize that some wild animals cannot go back.
And-some of the animals you're seeing on the internet, particularly from rescues and sanctuaries, are NOT WILD ANIMALS. They're descended from wild animals, not too different from your pet Labradoodle.
Releasing a human-dependent animal isn't freedom. It can be abandonment.
An animal raised around people may not recognize appropriate prey, territory, rivals, roads, livestock, traps, or humans as dangers. That's why ethical rehabilitation works hard to prevent dependence on people in the first place. North Carolina's wildlife agency notes that licensed rehabilitators are trained "to prevent permanent dependence on humans while maximizing an orphaned or injured animal's chance of survival upon release" (NC Wildlife Resources Commission).
When that window has closed, and an animal has spent their whole life around people, opening a gate doesn't restore some lost wildness. It drops an unprepared animal into a colonized world that will very likely kill them, or get them killed for wandering up to the wrong porch.
While Black Moon hopes to one day serve as a wildlife rehabilitation facility, we are NOT a rehab facility for wildlife-yet. We are a sanctuary for rescued wolfdogs and other wild canids. And we have an educational ambassador program, where wolves like Reign provide advocacy for his species and coexistence.
Even real wolf reintroduction programs don't just open a gate
This is the point I most want people to sit with.
For example: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service picks captive Mexican wolves for release based on "their genetic makeup, reproductive performance, behavior, physical suitability, and their overall response to the adaptation process." Those wolves are held in specialized pre-release facilities where human contact is minimized "in order to promote avoidance behavior" (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). The red wolf recovery program uses the same kinds of genetic, reproductive, behavioral, and physical criteria (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service).
And here's the part that matters most for sanctuary animals: the Service has stated plainly that captive wolves that show "a lack of normal fear of humans" are not released into the wild. Wolves headed for release are fed only once or twice a week, with no contact when staff drop off food, and they're watched from blinds through telescopes to keep human exposure down (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service).
If a federally managed recovery program, with scientists, acreage, radio collars, and decades of experience, won't release a wolf who isn't afraid of people, then "just let your wolf go" is not a serious conservation plan.
Genetics matter, and wolfdogs are the clearest example
Conservation programs exist in part to protect the genetic integrity of wild populations. A wolfdog isn't interchangeable with a wild wolf just because they look wolfish or carry wolf ancestry. Similar to how a husky isn't interchangeable with a wolfdog just because they look wolfish.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has said it "is committed to keeping the introduced population of Mexican wolves genetically pure." When Mexican wolves bred with domestic dogs in the wild, the hybrid offspring were identified, captured, and humanely euthanized under the rules governing the reintroduced population (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service).
That is what "the wild" looks like for a wolfdog. Releasing one isn't returning them home. It risks the animal's life and it threatens the very wolf populations people say they want to protect.
"The wild" is not a location
Where exactly would you release them? Responsible release requires native range, suitable habitat, food and water, the right season, consideration of existing populations, and no unacceptable risk to the animal or to people.
Utah's rehabilitation rules, for example, require that an animal be released "in the same geographical area where it was obtained or into suitable habitat to sustain it," and prohibit release where the species doesn't naturally occur or where there's an immediate threat to the animal, humans, or domestic animals (Utah Division of Wildlife Resources). "Somewhere with trees" doesn't meet that standard.
Via colonization, capitalism, and urban sprawl, wolves especially suffer from habitat loss. Demanding we return them to "the wild" while you benefit from living on land that you likely don't belong to, but belongs to wolves and wildlife instead, is ironic, reckless and irresponsible.
Release can harm wild populations too
A captive animal released into the wrong place can introduce disease, compete with native animals, hybridize with wild populations, or disrupt carefully managed recovery efforts. North Carolina, for instance, doesn't authorize rehabilitation and release of most rabies-vector species in counties where the federal oral rabies vaccination program is operating (NC Wildlife Resources Commission). Disease control and release criteria aren't anti-wildnerness red tape. They're conservation.
Sometimes releasing the animal is simply illegal
Possessing, rehabilitating, and releasing wildlife are regulated by species and by jurisdiction. In North Carolina, it is "unlawful for a license holder to sell, transfer, or release the wild animal or wild bird held under their license," except by surrendering it to the state wildlife agency or transferring it to another licensed holder (NC Wildlife Resources Commission). Coyotes are among the species that cannot legally be rehabilitated in the state at all (NC Wildlife Resources Commission).
So when you tell a sanctuary to "let them go," you may be telling professionals to break the laws that govern the animals in their care.
Sanctuary and rehabilitation are different jobs
This distinction gets lost online constantly.
Wildlife rehabilitation is temporary care whose goal is release, whenever release is biologically, behaviorally, and legally appropriate. Which is part of our long-term goals, to add wildlife rehabilitation and licensure to our work at the sanctuary. But-we are first and foremost a sanctuary. Lifetime sanctuary exists precisely because release isn't appropriate for every animal. Treating sanctuary as a failed version of rehab misunderstands both. Sanctuary exists because wolfdogs and other "wild type" canids have nowhere else to go. They've been displaced from their homes and families, and/or irresponsibly bred, shelters cannot legally adopt them out, so when they're surrendered or confiscated, we are their last hope. We provide a forever home for animals that would otherwise be euthanized just for existing in a world that's not setup for them.
Part Two: Whose Idea of "Wild"?
"Nature means a place without people" is not a neutral idea
This is where the conversation gets bigger than any one animal.
Western conservation has a documented history of imagining real "wilderness" as colonized land emptied of human beings. The United Nations describes how, after Yellowstone was designated in 1872 and Yosemite followed in 1890, "the US government violently expelled Native Americans living in or dependent on the resources in the areas." It goes on: "Millions of indigenous persons have been dispossessed and displaced due to the exclusionary approach of protected-area management built on the premise that human activities are incompatible with conservation. This approach is often referred to as 'fortress' conservation" (United Nations).
The "pristine wilderness" so many people picture was made to look empty by removing the people who lived there and sustainably coexisted with nature (and wolves) for centuries before colonization.
Indigenous stewardship breaks the fantasy of a human-free wild
Indigenous peoples have lived with, shaped, harvested from, and cared for ecosystems for millennia. Global conservation institutions are finally catching up. IUCN policy now calls for "recognition of Indigenous communities as rights holders and governing partners rather than just affected parties or beneficiaries," and for "mainstreaming Indigenous participation and leadership" in conservation (IUCN).
"Humans over here, nature over there" is not a universal environmental truth. It's one culture's history, and a violent one. It's colonization. It's anthropocentric.
So "animals belong away from humans" can echo colonial conservation
Not because captivity is automatically ethical. It absolutely is not. But because ethical conservation can't be reduced to distance from people. The real questions are about welfare, autonomy, habitat, ecological integrity, relationship, responsibility, genetics, cultural context, and what's actually possible for this particular individual.
When outsiders lecture Indigenous conservationists
There's a long pattern of Western institutions overriding Indigenous ecological knowledge while occupying Indigenous land in the name of protecting "nature." IUCN has named "resistance to letting Indigenous peoples take control of their Country" as a barrier to progress, and says conservation policy and management "must not violate rights of Indigenous people" (IUCN).
That history is present when someone walks into an Indigenous-led sanctuary's comment section and assumes their personal intuition outranks the people actually doing the work.
A word about whiteness, and about white women specifically
Being white doesn't make anyone's concern for animals invalid. The problem isn't "a white person had an opinion." The problem is a familiar move: treating a Western idea of nature as universal, assuming authority without expertise, and correcting Indigenous people about land, animals, and conservation without recognizing the colonial history behind those assumptions.
I want to be careful here, because this is about behavior, not identity. "White women shouldn't comment on wildlife" would be indefensible and counterproductive. But when someone uses presumed moral innocence ("I just care about the animal") to talk over Indigenous expertise, dismiss boundaries, assume ill-will, or cast an Indigenous caretaker as cruel, ignorant, or exploitative without understanding the situation, race and gender don't vanish from that interaction. Caring about animals doesn't exempt any of us from examining how authority, paternalism, and colonial narratives show up in our advocacy.
Wildness is not a purity test
A wolf doesn't stop being a wolf because their individual history makes protected care necessary. And respecting their wildness doesn't require pretending they have survival skills, genetics, fear responses, or a viable territory that they don't have.
Decolonizing conservation means letting go of anthropocentrism and the idea that "wild" automatically means untouched by humans. It means asking which relationships are reciprocal, responsible, ecologically sound, and respectful of the animal, and recognizing that Indigenous peoples were practicing those relationships harmoniously long before Western conservation invented the fantasy of empty wilderness.
Part Three: Which Wild?
The extraordinary irony
There is something profoundly backwards about a non-Indigenous person approaching an Indigenous caretaker and telling me that my animal relative, my son, Reign, "belongs in the wild."
Which wild?
The wild that settler colonialism displaced Indigenous peoples from while declaring those lands "untouched wilderness"? The wild of federal parks that Trump continues to seek to remove protections, extract from and destroy? The same wild that continues to attempt to remove Endangered Species Act protections from, including wolves?
The wild whose forests are logged, mountains mined, rivers dammed and polluted, habitats cut apart by roads, oil pipelines and development, and predators killed when they "get in the way" of livestock, recreation, border lines or property?
The wild Indigenous peoples were forcibly separated from after a millennia of sustainable coexistence, and then told we were incapable of stewarding? Miss me with that bullshit.
The wild that wolves themselves were systematically wiped out of? Bounties, poison, trapping, and government predator-control programs eliminated gray wolves from most of the lower 48 states by the early-to-mid 20th century, leaving only a few hundred in northern Minnesota and on Isle Royale (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; National Park Service).
That is an astonishing contradiction.
You cannot participate unquestioningly in a society built on the dispossession of Indigenous lands, benefit from systems that keep extracting from those lands, and then arrive in an Indigenous person's comment section to explain where our animal relatives properly "belong," as though your idea of wilderness is somehow more authentic than our relationship with the living world.
That isn't conservation.
And it certainly isn't decolonization.
Relatives, not scenery
For many Indigenous peoples, animals have never simply been scenery occupying some pristine landscape separate from humanity. They are our equals, relatives, teachers, nations, and beings with whom humans have responsibilities and reciprocal relationships.
We don't visit nature, we aren't tourists, we ARE nature, we EMBODY the sacred wild.
That doesn't mean every Indigenous culture understands animals the same way. We are not a monolith. Nor does Indigenous identity automatically make every wildlife practice ethical.
It means the Western assumption that humans belong here and wildlife belongs over there is not a culturally neutral law of nature. That belief is not without its politics.
It has a history.
And that history matters.
Reign is not a prop
Reign is not something I removed from some imaginary untouched wilderness.
He is a living being with his own history, needs, relationships, and responsibilities surrounding his care.
He is also an educational ambassador. Through him, people can learn about wolves, predator ecology, coexistence, conservation, and the responsibilities humans have toward the species we share land with.
So yes, there is considerable irony in somebody typing "That wolf belongs in the wild" from a phone full of minerals extracted by genocide human labor, inside a developed landscape that was once wildlife habitat, on Indigenous land transformed by centuries of colonization and resource extraction, while lecturing an Indigenous sanctuary keeper and land protector about respecting nature.
That irony is not lost on me. It makes the part of my blood that is born from generations of bloodshed, boil.
It reminds me that I am my Ancestor's wildest dreams, and that my calling to this work is not only sacred, but needed now more than ever.
Please care. Then listen.
The problem isn't that someone cares about Reign.
Please care about him.
Care about wolves. Care about wild lands. Care about habitat connectivity. Care about Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous-led conservation. Care about #LANDBACK. Care about the ecosystems wolves need if we genuinely want wolves to remain wolves for generations to come.
But caring about an animal doesn't give anyone automatic authority over the people responsible for that animal's welfare.
And allyship doesn't begin by talking over or down to us.
Sometimes it begins with enough humility to recognize:
Maybe I don't know this animal's story.
Maybe I don't understand why he is here.
Maybe the people doing this work know something I don't.
Be curious, ask questions, stay teachable. Then listen. Learn. And if you genuinely want to help wildlife, help us protect the land and relationships that make wildness possible in the first place.
Because telling an Indigenous person to send their animal relative back into a "wild" that colonial systems have spent generations stealing from both of us?
That is, quite literally, a wild AF take.
Part Four: Ambassadors, Impact, and Intent
Let's talk about educational ambassador animals
Some animals in sanctuary care aren't simply residents. They're educational ambassadors.
Reign has a specific role: helping people understand the species and ecosystems we're asking them to protect. A responsibly managed ambassador can spend years introducing people to wolf biology and behavior, correcting misinformation, teaching coexistence, debunking fear-based narratives about predators, raising awareness about habitat loss and predator persecution, and generating the public support and resources that make conservation and sanctuary work possible.
A selectively-bred, captive-born, human-socialized animal has no responsible path to release. That doesn't mean their life can't contribute to the future of their species.
Reign doesn't need to be abandoned somewhere in the Arctic to prove he's a wolf.
He can teach people why wolves matter. He can make an animal most people only know through mythology, fairytales, fear, movies, or political rhetoric tangible and real. He can help children and adults learn about predator ecology, coexistence, ethical stewardship, and the consequences of human decisions. He can inspire people to protect animals they may never see in the wild. And the education and advocacy built around his story can reach far beyond the boundaries of his species-appropriate, custom-built "enclosure".
The questions that actually matter
The ethical question isn't "Is this animal outside a fence?" It's:
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Is this individual's welfare protected?
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Are their behavioral and social needs met?
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Is their care appropriate?
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Is human interaction handled responsibly?
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Is their presence contributing meaningfully to education, advocacy, or conservation?
Those are real questions. "Wolf = wild = open the gate" isn't conservation science. It's a slogan.
At Black Moon Wild Canid Sanctuary, we define sanctuary as a safe and sacred space where an animal can live out their natural life with dignity—where their physical, emotional, social, and behavioral needs are met, and where they are given the space, choice, and opportunity to express their natural behaviors to the fullest extent possible within protected care.
Impact matters more than intent
I believe most of these comments start from genuine concern. But meaning well doesn't automatically make something helpful, or inherently benign, either.
When someone with little knowledge of wildlife management tells a rescue, sanctuary, or Indigenous-led conservation organization that an animal should be "returned to the wild," the conscious intention may be compassion. The subconscious intention, "invisible" power dynamic and therefore it's impact can be something else entirely. It can:
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spread misinformation about rehabilitation and release;
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teach others that responsible lifetime sanctuary is inherently unethical;
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undermine public trust in organizations doing difficult, expensive, hands-on care;
- take up space and center "whiteness" and "white saviorism", taking the mic away from Indigenous stewardship and voices
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erase the circumstances that made an animal non-releasable in the first place;
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reinforce colonial ideas that real "nature" must exist apart from people;
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and, when aimed at Indigenous caretakers, replay a very old dynamic: outsiders assuming their idea of nature gives them more authority than the people actually in relationship with the land and the animals.
Intent doesn't erase impact.
Sometimes allyship means being quiet
If you come across Indigenous conservationists, wildlife professionals, rescuers, or sanctuary workers talking about animals whose histories you don't know, you don't have to weigh in right away. I encourage you to instead interrogate where that urge comes from.
You can ask. You can listen. You can learn why an animal isn't releasable, what ethical sanctuary actually involves, and what Indigenous approaches to relationship, reciprocity, and stewardship can teach, instead of assuming the Western binary of "free wilderness = good, human care = bad" applies everywhere.
Then you can put that concern somewhere useful:
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Support habitat protection. Support LANDBACK.
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Support Indigenous-led conservation, rescue and sanctuary.
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Learn to coexist with native predators where you live.
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Fight wildlife trafficking and irresponsible exotic-animal and wolfdog breeding.
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Support legitimate rescue and sanctuary organizations.
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Advocate against the killing of predators and keystone species.
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Volunteer. Donate. Share accurate educational resources.
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Listen to the people doing the work.
Conservation isn't a comment-section aesthetic
It's work. Grueling, often thankless, expensive work that comes with an added stigma of "beggary".
It's feeding animals and scooping poop when nobody's watching. Building habitats instead of resting. Cleaning enclosures regardless of the weather. Paying vet bills you cannot afford. Studying behavior. Protecting ecosystems. Educating communities. Dealing with trolls and bullies, and jealous mean girls. Navigating colonial regulations. Rescuing animals in crisis because people and/or systems have failed them. Teaching coexistence in an illiterate country founded on bloodshed, genocide and ecocide. Preserving sacred knowledge. Caring for land. And showing up again tomorrow, even when occupational hazards like, debilitating stress, grief or depression have breached the biochemical interventions of your psych meds.
There's absolutely room to scrutinize rescues, sanctuaries, ambassador programs, zoos, exotic pet trade animal trafficking, and captive wildlife facilities. Accountability matters. Welfare, accreditation, husbandry, transparency, and ethical education practices matter. But criticism should start with evidence and curiosity, not the assumption that being near humans automatically equals harm. ...that originates from your people, not mine.
And especially for non-Indigenous people entering Indigenous-led conservation spaces: you don't have to be the loudest person in the room to care the most. Sometimes the most useful thing an aspiring ally can do is stop talking long enough to hear the people whose knowledge, labor, and relationships with the land were pushed aside.
Then ask:
"How can I support the work?"
That question will do infinitely more for wildlife than telling a sanctuary to open a gate and set them "free".
Impact over intent. Every time.
If you want to support the animals at Black Moon Wild Canid Sanctuary, including Reign, visit our link page here.
About the Author
Mētztli Xandra Wolf is a Black and Indigenous conservationist, educator, and founder of Black Moon Wild Canid Sanctuary, a 501(c)3 nonprofit sanctuary in Eden, North Carolina providing lifetime care to rescued wolfdogs and other wild canids.
Their work centers restoring right relationship, reciprocity, and responsibility toward the more-than-human world, alongside public education about wild canids, predator coexistence, ethical sanctuary care, and Indigenous approaches to land and animal stewardship.
Mētztli is also the founder of Black Moon Ritualcraft, whose guiding ethos—Rituals that Rescue—helps sustain the sanctuary and the animals who call it home.
Learn more and support the pack at our link page.
Sources & Further Reading
This essay reflects my perspective as an Indigenous sanctuary founder, rescuer, matriarch and caretaker, informed by our direct work with wolves, wolfdogs, wild canids, and educational ambassador animals. For readers who want to explore the conservation science, wildlife regulations, and history discussed above, I recommend starting here:
1. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service — Conserving the Mexican Wolf: What We Do
Information on how captive Mexican wolves are evaluated and prepared for potential release, including genetic, behavioral, reproductive, and physical criteria and the importance of minimizing human contact before release.
https://www.fws.gov/program/conserving-mexican-wolf/what-we-do
2. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service — Mexican Wolf Reintroduction, Human Habituation & Hybridization
Additional information on release protocols, maintaining wolves' avoidance of humans, why captive wolves lacking normal fear of humans are not released, and management of wolf-dog hybridization within the Mexican wolf recovery program.
https://www.fws.gov/story/2008-07/thousands-contribute-comments-and-recommendations-mexican-wolf-reintroduction
3. North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission — Injured and Orphaned Wildlife
Information on licensed wildlife rehabilitation and the importance of preventing permanent dependence on humans so animals retain the behaviors necessary for successful release.
https://www.ncwildlife.gov/connect/have-wildlife-problem/injured-and-orphaned-wildlife
4. North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission — Wildlife Captivity License for Holding
North Carolina regulations governing wildlife held in captivity, including restrictions surrounding possession, transfer, and release.
https://www.ncwildlife.gov/hunt/license-types-and-fees/other-licenses-permits/wildlife-captivity-license-holding
5. United Nations — Conservation and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Background on the displacement of Indigenous peoples through exclusionary protected-area management, including the history of Yellowstone and Yosemite, and the conservation model commonly described as “fortress conservation.”
https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/news/2018/12/egm-conservation-and-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples-23-25-january-2019-nairobi-kenya/
6. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) — Indigenous Peoples in Nature Conservation
Discussion of Indigenous peoples as rights holders and governing partners in conservation, Indigenous leadership, traditional knowledge systems, and the movement away from conservation models that separate people from nature.
https://iucn.org/resources/resolutions-brief/indigenous-peoples-nature-conservation
7. Association of Zoos & Aquariums — Ambassador Animal Resources
Research-informed guidance on the role of ambassador animals in conservation education, with emphasis on both educational outcomes and animal wellbeing.
https://www.aza.org/ambassador-animal-resources
8. National Park Service — History of Wolf Management in Yellowstone
Historical background on predator-control campaigns, the killing and eradication of wolves from Yellowstone, and the eventual restoration of wolves to the ecosystem.
https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/historyculture/wolf-management.htm
A Note on Indigenous Perspectives
There is no single “Indigenous perspective” on wildlife, captivity, conservation, or human relationships with other animals. Indigenous nations, communities, and knowledge systems are distinct, and I do not speak for all Indigenous peoples.
I speak from my own lived experience, cultural framework, responsibilities to the animals in my care, and work as the Indigenous founder of Black Moon Wild Canid Sanctuary.
The argument here is not that Indigenous people are inherently correct about every animal-welfare question, nor that non-Indigenous people should never question a sanctuary. We are to be respected and honored as first-line authorities on the land and it's inhabitants.
Conservation has a documented colonial history; Indigenous peoples have too often been displaced, spoken over, dictated to and excluded from decisions concerning the lands and living beings with whom our communities have maintained relationships; and meaningful decolonization requires that history—and Indigenous leadership—not be treated as incidental.
Accountability is welcome. Evidence-based questions are welcome. Curiosity is welcome.
What I am asking people to leave behind is the assumption that an outsider's idea of what looks “natural” automatically constitutes greater knowledge of what is ethical, safe, or ecologically responsible.
Sources accessed October 2026.