Study finds Indian wolf sliding towards extinction

PESHAWAR (APP) - A first-ever scientific assessment of Indian Wolf (Canis lupus pallipes) by IUCN classified the Indian wolf as vulnerable, estimating around 2,877 to 3,310 individuals across India and Pakistan.

“In the scientific study, conservationists and IUCN Red List warn that without immediate and coordinated action the Indian wolf in Pakistan faces an accelerating slide towards local extinction,” shares Dr Ghulam Sarwar, an environmental scientist, who contributed to biodiversity conservation in Pakistan and GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries.

For the first time, the species has been evaluated independently from other wolf subspecies due to its genetic distinctiveness and adaptation to India’s semi-arid habitats.

Notably, only 12.4% of its range lies within protected areas, underscoring the need for enhanced protection outside sanctuaries and national parks, Sarwar told APP.

“Across Pakistan’s dry plains, scrublands and mountain fringes, a lean, tawny hunter once threaded the margins between wild and human worlds, the Indian grey wolf.

Today that same animal exists mostly as fragments, isolated packs here, a few lone survivors there, a remnant of an ancient distinct lineage whose numbers and habitats are shrinking fast,” reads the study finding.

The Indian wolf is designated as a protected species in all provinces, including Balochistan, Punjab, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as well as federally under the Pakistan Wildlife Act, Dr. Sarwar added.

But a desperate scientific alarm comes from national and international assessments that our own estimate of population size remains uncertain, the trend is clear: fragmented populations, low abundance and ongoing declines place the species at elevated conservation concern at a national scale.

Canid specialists and IUCN have completed the first-ever assess the Indian wolf’s status regionally and placed Canis lupus pallipes in the recent version of IUCN Red List (October 10, 2025) as Vulnerable.

This scientific assessment estimated number of wolves in Pakistan are alarmingly low, and the population range was found to be 269–290 mature individuals (mean 280 mature individuals) with 42 breeding pairs.

According to study, the scientific knowledge about this wolf remains surprisingly sparse.

Recent genomic work, one of the few modern studies focused on Pakistan’s populations, shows that wolves in Sindh and southern Punjab belong to an evolutionarily distinct lineage that carries high conservation value; those populations are small, genetically fragile and spatially isolated.

These studies argues explicitly that Pakistan’s wolf populations deserve urgent attention because they represent unique evolutionary heritage.

Whereas on the ground, distribution is patchy and discontinued.

In Punjab there are records from the Salt Range and parts of southern Punjab scattered sightings and small subpopulations persist in pockets of scrub and marginal rangeland.

Sindh, once a more continuous range for wolves, still holds a few remnant groups, often confined to degraded shrub lands where wild prey has diminished.

Balochistan retains wolves in remote desert and semi-arid zones.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northern fringes, wolves appear intermittently and often in conflict with pastoral communities, while the high mountains farther north tend to be dominated by other canid lineages.