I'm Veronica Mohesky and today I'm here with Jody Sowell, president of the Missouri Historical Society, and he's going to introduce us to one of his furry friends.

If St.

Louis could introduce itself, it would say I am a place that saved a species.

The Mexican gray wolf was endangered in the late 1970s and researchers went out into the wild to get the remaining wolves and bring them into breeding centers, including the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka.

Anna was born of two of those original wolves.

She was born on Earth Day 2001, and she would go on to give birth to 41 pups.

There now exists nearly 300 Mexican gray wolves in the wild.

Many of those can trace their lineage back to Anna and back to the St.

Louis region.

That's really cool.

Thanks, Jody.

Let's take a look at the story.

When Anna the wolf was born on Earth Day in 2001, her species was on the brink of extinction.

There were no known wild Mexican wolves.

Their range had once encompassed much of the American Southwest and parts of Mexico.

Hattie Felton is the director of curatorial affairs at the Missouri Historical Society.

She says the population declined for a variety of reasons.

There was habitat loss due to growing population in the region.

There was a real risk to the wolves because of farmers who would often shoot them because of the wolves encroaching on livestock.

And by the late 1970s, early 1980s, the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service actually went into the native range of the Mexican wolf and attempted to find every known wolf that they could, and they found seven.

Those seven wolves were brought to the Endangered Wolf Center in St.

Louis.

And with them, they attempted to start a breeding program with the hopes that they could begin to reintroduce the species back into the wild and hopefully repopulate and save them from extinction.

The Endangered Wolf Center opened in 1971 and is dedicated to the protection and preservation of wild canids, which include wolves, foxes, and wild dogs.

Anna was raised here at Endangered Wolf Center.

When she was born, her mom was a nervous mom, and her two litter maids passed away.

They made the drastic decision to pull Anna and human rear her.

- Tracy Rein is a conservation assistant and registrar at the Endangered Wolf Center.

She helped care for Anna the wolf.

- Once she was weaned, she was introduced to an older male who had had many, many pups and had raised pups, and he took to her right away and taught her how to be a wolf.

- While there aren't many photos of Anna, the Endangered Wolf Center has well-documented their care of Mexican wolves, including some of Anna's descendants, shown here.

- Anna was a very special wolf.

She was the only surviving offspring of her genetically valuable father, and she went on to have a total of 41 pups in four litters.

Each of Anna's litters were incredibly large.

Most wolves will give birth to about four to six puppies at a time.

She gave birth to eight puppies in her first litter, and that was a huge litter, and all of her succeeding litters were larger.

Her largest litter was 12 pups.

- So watching her raise her fourth litter, it was really interesting to watch her.

She moved, after they got to be about a week old, she moved half of the litter to the other side of the den box, and then she would nurse one half, and a little bit later go nurse the other half.

And in that way, she managed to nurse and clean all of the pups and take care of them, and that probably helped with her success.

It just showed how smart she was and how strong her instincts were to take care of those pups.

She hadn't had a chance to help raise like a succeeding litter when she was younger and had no experience with pups.

And she gave birth to those first eight and aced it.

She took care of them like she'd been doing it for ages.

Anna the wolf died just one day short of her 14th birthday in 2015.

So thanks to Anna and thanks to the important work that the Endangered Wolf Center does today, there are now more than 250 Mexican wolves roaming the Southwest and their population is only continuing to grow.

Two of Anna's descendants still live at the Endangered Wolf Center and Anna's genes can be found in many wild Mexican wolves today.

And though Anna was famous during her life, she received national and even international recognition after her death.

Thanks to the photo arc with National Geographic and photographer Joel Sartori, he was able to come out and take her photo and she has been on the Empire State Building, her photo's been on the Vatican and on a U.S.

Postal Stamp.

So she's out there through his work, she's still educating people about wolves.

Anna will be on display at the Missouri History Museum's Collected Exhibit through 2026.

Tracy Rein says Anna's story means there's hope for other endangered species.

"As long as we work hard and work with the animals, we can recover species that are in danger."