Thursday, June 29, 2006

You’ll be blown away by the big, not-so-bad wolf

By Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho - Thousands of vacationers in the West will likely see a wolf in the wild for the first time this summer, often from the road but sometimes while camping or hiking. The federal government and state agencies that manage wolves have rules on what is legal in these encounters, and experts who study wolf behavior offer advice on how to handle what is likely to be an unforgettable experience.

“Wolves don’t turn and run away immediately like we’re used to with other animals,” said Carolyn Sime, gray wolf program coordinator with the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department. Wolves nearly always blink first, experts say, but yelling will drive off a wolf, as will pepper spray.

About 1,000 wolves in 140 packs live in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, steadily increasing since being reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in 1995 and 1996.

“Even though they’re fairly rare in nature, wolves are relatively visible compared to a lot of animals,” said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “There are never many of them because these are big, large carnivores. But they seem abundant because they travel the same areas people do.” Bangs said one study found that more than 100,000 people see a wolf in Yellowstone National Park each year. For comparison, few people ever see one of the 31,000 cougars that inhabit the western United States.

“Because meadows are attractive to campers, you’re likely to run into wolf activity,” said Steve Nadeau, statewide large carnivore coordinator with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. “Particularly if the meadow has game nearby - elk and deer.”

Wolf experts say centuries of mythology - think “Little Red Riding Hood” - taints present-day wolf-human meetings, and that wolves tend to avoid humans. “If you’re walking on a dark trail at midnight and you turn a corner and come across a pack of 20 wolves, enjoy them,” said Bangs. “Because they’ll be gone in a few seconds.”

In fact, wolf attacks on humans are extremely rare. But wolves might not run off so quickly if a hiker has a dog along. Northern Rockies gray wolves have killed at least 83 dogs since 1987, and last year killed 30 of their own number in territorial disputes. “Wolves consider dogs as strange wolves,” said Bangs. “A dog may think that a wolf barking or howling is a dog that wants to play. Trust me, that is not the case.”

Another instance where wolves might act aggressively is near a den or a kill site. “If you come into an area where you see a kill, particularly if it’s kind of fresh, back out of there and go someplace else,” said Sime.

Meeting wolves can have legal ramifications. Under the Endangered Species Act, wolves in Minnesota are listed as threatened, and wolves in Michigan, Wisconsin, northern Idaho and northwest Montana are endangered. Wolf populations that resulted from reintroductions are listed as “experimental, nonessential.” They include wolves south of Interstate 90 in Idaho, Montana outside the northwest corner, Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico.

“Our regulations allow anyone at any time to scare a wolf away,” said Bangs. “Just run at it and yell at it and it will run off. That’s legal to do. Just don’t hurt it.” Though it’s legal to kill a wolf in self-defense, “expect an investigation, because that is almost nonexistent,” Bangs said. “The physical evidence better back up your story.” The penalty for illegally killing a listed wolf can range up to $100,000 and a year in jail.

If delisted, wolves would be treated as big-game animals, possibly with hunting seasons, something Bangs said some federal and state wolf managers favor. Hunting would not be allowed in Yellowstone National Park, where most wolf sightings occur. But sightings are becoming more common elsewhere.

“Of all the things you have to worry about in life, wolves are probably on the bottom of the list,” Bangs said. “People who don’t know any better are nervous about wolves, but most people are like, ‘Wow, was that cool or what?’ ”

  • Boston Herald
  • Sunday, June 25, 2006

    More wolves helped stall growth of elk herd in northern Wisconsin

    ROBERT IMRIE -- Associated Press

    WAUSAU, Wis. - Growth of the new elk herd that was started in northern Wisconsin about a decade ago has stalled, in part because wolves are killing more calves and young bulls, and car crashes are killing cows, a state wildlife biologist says. The latest count after the birth of at least 25 calves this spring puts the herd at 120 elk - the same as two years ago, said Laine Stowell of the state Department of Natural Resources The new trend follows years of steady growth - from 15 percent to 25 percent - that had already generated rules for a limited hunt of bulls amid predictions the herd would swell to 500 of the majestic animals by 2007 or 2008.

    "Things are not on track for that to happen," Stowell said. "We are observing higher levels of mortality in the herd."

    The verdict is still out on whether the reintroduction of the elk in the Clam Lake area can succeed at levels once envisioned, he said. Because of the new challenges, efforts have started to bring in more elk.

    "I think some folks prematurely said it was a success. But it is not a success until the herd is a self-sustaining population and I submit that we are probably not yet at that stage," Stowell said. "Whether we are successful in expanding this herd or it just stalls out at a lower threshold than we have hoped, only time will tell."

    Eric Koens, a director of the Wisconsin Cattlemen's Association and a critic of the number of wolves in northern Wisconsin, said talk of bringing in more elk is ridiculous. "All they are doing is bringing in additional feasts for the wolves," the Rusk County cattleman said. "There is no predator that will decimate that herd like wolves." The DNR is now a victim of too many wolves, just like some farmers who have lost livestock and pets, Koens said. "Now it is backfiring in their own back yard, in their own project. I am not surprised."

    In 1995, 25 elk from Michigan were released in Chequamegon National Forest near Clam Lake to determine if the animals - bigger than deer - could become established again without damaging private land or causing problems for other wildlife.

    Wisconsin's last native elk was shot in 1866, researchers said.

    Tom Toman, director of conservation for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation in Missoula, Mont., said 26 states have wild elk herds totaling about 1 million animals. There were fewer than 100,000 elk in the U.S. in 1900. Today, some states have too many, Toman said. Colorado's 300,000 are some 70,000 more than goal, he said.

    In Wisconsin, the higher mortality of elk calves caused by wolves and bears has some people concerned, but the Elk Foundation remains convinced the herd can thrive, Toman said. "The habitat is there. We just need to give the elk a chance," he said.

    Wildlife experts have documented the killing of 76 elk in Wisconsin since 1995, including three that were accidentally shot by deer hunters last fall and four that fell through ice on frozen lakes and drowned, Stowell said. Between 1995 and 2003, about 30 percent of the calves born in the spring didn't survive, Stowell said. The mortality rate has jumped to 50 percent the last two years and the number of young bulls being killed before they reach 2 1/2 years old is also higher, he said.

    "Some of it is related to the expansion and development of the wolf population," Stowell said. "Wolves took over the No. 1 spot from vehicle collisions this past March. Right now, wolves account for about 25 percent of those deaths. Ten years ago, the wolf population was probably less than half of what it is now."

    A late winter survey, based on tracking and monitoring of radio-collared wolves, estimates 465 to 503 wolves in 115 packs that populate mainly the northern and central forest regions of Wisconsin - up about 7 percent from a year before, the DNR said. Critics of the wolf contend those figures are too conservative. The state's goal is to have 350 wolves on lands it controls outside of Indian reservations.

    When the elk were reintroduced, the revival of the wolf - after being wiped out in Wisconsin by the late 1950s after decades of bounty hunting - was well under way as wolves migrated from Minnesota. "Wolves did have a head start on the elk in terms of their colonizing of northern Wisconsin," Stowell said.

    While wolves are an issue, it's the vehicle collisions with elk that are impacting the reproductiveness of the herd the most, Stowell said. Of the 14 elk killed in crashes, eight were adult cows, he said.

    The state recently got a grant from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to install a $50,000 warning system on elk crossing signs on a six-mile stretch of state Highway 77. It would alert motorists when an elk with a radio collar approached the road. The radio collar, which has been attached to up to 70 elk, would trigger the warning, Stowell said. It is a system developed in Washington State.

    Other changes being talked about to help spur growth in the herd include moving elk to other suitable habitat in the state. "With our knowledge of where wolf packs are, maybe those placements can be made in areas that are going to give the elk a head start on the wolves rather than vice versa," he said.

    Kevin Wallenfang, a program director for Great Lakes region for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, said the foundation is investing another $136,000 in Wisconsin's elk restoration project this year. "I have every confidence that the herd is going to continue to grow," he said. "The goal is to eventually have 1,400 animals running around that area."

  • Duluth News Tribune
  • Friday, June 23, 2006

    Wildlife rehabilitator treating hybrid wolves

    ERICA RODRIGUEZ - Herald Staff Writer

    MANATEE - Justin Matthews crept through a large cage and carefully sat on a blanket next to the hybrid wolf Wednesday afternoon. Two more hybrid wolves paced back and forth in the sand, occasionally glancing over at Matthews and swaying their gray tails.

    "If one of them bites you, they're all going to jump on you," Matthews said, gently reaching over to pet the panting creature beside him. "I spent the night with them in the cage last night, and that's how I got her to warm up to me."

    But Matthews, a 43-year-old wildlife rehabilitator and founder of a nonprofit effort called Matthews Wildlife Rescue, said he is not afraid of the wild trio found roaming the grounds of Myakka River State Park this past weekend.

    "If I was scared, I wouldn't come in here because they would bite me," said Matthews, adding that he has experience with similar animals, like coyotes.

    Hybrid wolves are the offspring of domestic dogs and wild wolves.

    Matthews said humans breed the creatures and sell them as pets. He also said most people who buy them eventually come to realize that hybrid wolves don't domesticate well and ditch the animals somewhere in the wilderness - a behavior also common among exotic snake owners.

    "They basically have every trait that a wild wolf would have. . . . They've got that wild blood in them," Matthews said of the hybrid wolves, but "they would interfere with our native wildlife, and they're potentially dangerous. . . . In my opinion, it should be illegal to breed these animals."

    So, the hybrid wolves aren't fit to be pets and don't belong in the wild.

    But temporarily living in a large, shady cage on Mixon Fruit Farms property, the three hybrid wolves - currently recovering from various infections and malnutrition - may soon serve as educators.

    Matthews and the owners of Mixon Fruit Farms, located at 2712 26th Ave. E., have teamed up to create a wildlife educational facility on about one-half acre of the company's grounds. The facility would house various injured animals rescued from the wild and a habitat for native birds.

    Dean Mixon, owner of Mixon Fruit Farms, said plans for the habitat include a three-part pond area and various fish.

    "People showed quite a bit of interest in it," Mixon said of a bird demonstration that Matthews performed at the company's Orange Blossom Festival earlier this year. "A lot of people have never seen those animals."

    Matthews and Mixon said the educational facility will be part of the regular tours of Mixon Fruit Farms property, which is a popular destination for school field trips. Mixon also said he hopes to see the project completed by October.

    In the meantime, Matthews said, the hybrid wolves will live in a cage adjacent to that of a 3-year-old red-tail hawk disabled by a run-in with a power line. There, he said, the hybrid wolves will be treated and fed.

    Matthews described the first time he fed the hybrid wolves a meal of raw chicken with his hands.

    "That was sort of scary, because they were really hungry and sort of wolfing it down," Matthews said. "They can crush up a chicken bone like a dog can eat a biscuit."

    How to help

    Matthews Wildlife Rescue, a local nonprofit effort for the rehabilitation of injured and impaired wild animals, is accepting donations to fund veterinary, food and maintenance costs of caring for its animals. For more information, call Justin Matthews at 447-5369.

  • Bradenton Herald
  • Wolf found in South Dakota

    STURGIS, S.D. South Dakota wildlife officials report a wolf carcass has been found in an interstate highway ditch near the Black Hills National Cemetery.

    An official of South Dakota's Game, Fish and Parks Department says the animal may have come from a group of wolves that were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park.

    The last time a wolf was found in South Dakota was five years ago.

    About one-thousand wolves in 140 packs live in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming -- steadily increasing since being reintroduced in Yellowstone and central Idaho in 1995 and 1996.

  • KXLF-TV
  • Wednesday, June 21, 2006

    Refuge red wolf howling safaris begin

    Every summer the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Red Wolf Recovery Program and the Red Wolf Coalition jointly sponsor weekly howling safaris. The 2006 summer safari schedule began in mid-June and runs through the first week in September. Pre-registration is required. Times vary as times for sunset vary, so participants should verify the starting time when they register. The highlight of the evening is listening to the characteristic "howl" of one or more red wolves as they communicate with each other and the "howlers" in the group. The 2005 safaris hosted over 1,000 people.

    Registered participants meet on Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge at Creef Cut Wildlife Trail, located at the intersection of Milltail Road and Highway 64. A short presentation provides an overview of the Red Wolf Recovery Program and the role of the Red Wolf Coalition, a friends organization dedicated to the preservation of red wolves. There are hands-on experiences, and the program is highly recommended for all age groups. While it's rare to see a wolf, participants are almost certain to hear them howl. Visitors will have the opportunity to try howling and listen for a response. Red wolves howled at every weekly safari during 2005.

    Prior to the presentation, the Red Wolf Coalition will have items available for sale, including T-shirts, hats, bumper stickers and journals. These sales support red wolf education and outreach and will also go toward building a red wolf visitor center near Columbia.

    The red wolf is one of the most endangered animals in the world, and its story of recovery is a remarkable one. According to Bud Fazio, Red Wolf Recovery Program team Leader, "The Service is heartened to see its restoration efforts successfully pull red wolves back from the brink of extinction. Forty years ago, only a handful of red wolves were found in the wild. Today, nearly 100 wild red wolves roam freely across five eastern North Carolina counties. There is a saying, 'Endangered means there's still time.' We have shown there is enough time to restore red wolves to a level more likely to ensure their long-term survival."

    For a 2006 schedule or to register for a safari, please contact the Red Wolf Coalition at 796-5600 or visit its web site at http://www.redwolves.com.

  • Outer Banks Sentinel
  • Tuesday, June 20, 2006

    Dispelling the myth of the big, bad wolf

    Beenham-based wolf trust welcomes its four newest members

    A host of celebrities have been queuing up to get a cuddle with West Berkshire’s newest residents. And newburytoday went along too. Four wolf puppies have been adopted by the UK Wolf Conservation Trust (UKWCT) in Beenham. The three female cubs, named Mai, Mika and Mosi, are dark-phase wolves, native to North America, and came from Dartmoor Wildlife Park.

    After their tough start in life – they were abandoned by their elderly wolf mother and their den was flooded in heavy rain – the pups were very small when they arrived at the Wolf Trust. But with a team of volunteers providing round-the-clock care, including hand feeding the wolves every four hours, they are now progressing well. This is certainly one nightshift where there is no shortage of willing helpers.

    The sisters were joined shortly afterwards by a male from the Anglian Wolf Society. The larger and slightly older pup has been named Torak after the lead character in children’s favourite the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness books.

    The author of the books - Wolf Brother, Spirit Walker and Soul Eater - Michelle Paver, has recently become the patron of the UK Wolf Trust. Michelle says she first went to the trust when she began writing her books, about a boy who befriends a wolf pup. She added: “Wolves have been a passion of mine for a long time and to spend time with the wolves at the centre is very special for me.”

    The volunteers who have the ‘tough’ job of caring for the lovable pups say they are already exhibiting typical wolf behaviour, with tiny Mai assuming the alpha role and letting everyone know it, including Torak. Tsa Palmer, director of the centre, said: “Already the cubs are growing up fast. Each one has their own little personality, and it’s lovely to see them playing and trying to establish their place in the pack.”

    And Michelle is not the only celebrity to head to Beenham to see the pups. Professional darts player and England captain, Martin ‘Wolfie’ Adams has also paid a visit. Martin first got involved in 2002 and has his own adoptive wolf, Duma. “During the 2002 World Darts Championships I was invited to the UKWCT and actually filmed with the wolves for television. Not only was it an exciting experience, but I found I had an affinity with the wolves – especially Duma, who I have actually had the privilege of walking with. The UKWCT do a fantastic job and I was delighted to go back to welcome these new cubs into the family”.

    The UKWCT, which was established by the late Roger Palmer in 1995, is home to 11 wolves, in three packs. When the cubs are old enough they will form a new pack with sisters Duma and Dakota.

    The seven adult wolves at the centre visit schools, colleges and country shows to try and dispel the myth of the ‘big, bad wolf’. The trust also raises funds to help support wild wolf projects across Europe.

    The wolves have become TV stars as well, appearing on Monarch of the Glen, the Paul O’Grady Show and an upcoming BBC documentary.

    To find out more about the trust you can phone 01189 713330 or log onto www.UKwolf.org

  • Newberry Weekly News
  • Mexican wolf pack blamed for cattle killings

    THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A female endangered Mexican gray wolf will be permanently removed from the wild in southwestern New Mexico because she has been involved in the killing of at least five cows, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday.

    The male and female that make up the Nantac Pack were placed in the wild April 25. The male was killed Sunday by the wolf recovery team under a permanent removal order, and efforts to either trap or kill the female continued Monday.

    The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began releasing wolves into the wild on the Arizona-New Mexico border in 1998 to re-establish the species in part of its historic range. The agency estimates 32 to 46 endangered Mexican wolves live in the wild in Arizona and New Mexico.

    The agency said the animals are designated as a "nonessential, experimental population." That gives the recovery team greater flexibility to manage the wolves under the Endangered Species Act and allows permanent removal - by capturing or killing a wolf - after three confirmed livestock deaths.

    Conservation groups sent a letter to the U.S. Interior Department on Monday, asking Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to issue an emergency moratorium on predator control directed against the endangered wolves until the goals of the reintroduction program are reached.

    The groups said the population has declined from 55 in 2003 to 35 at the end of 2005.

    "The Mexican wolf is the engine of evolution for southwestern ecosystems, contributing to the strength and vigor of elk, the alertness of deer, the agility and sense of balance of bighorn sheep and the speed and keen eyesight of pronghorn antelope," the groups said in their letter.

    "In sum, reintroduction of the Mexican wolf is part of this generation's commitment to generations yet to come that we will leave them some landscapes teeming with life," the letter said.

    Officials with the Fish and Wildlife Service did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment on the groups' request.

    In early June, a wolf that officials said was involved in at least three livestock killings was shot and killed in the Gila National Forest.

    In May, Fish and Wildlife officials said the alpha male of a pack that had been killing cattle on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona had been shot to death, and that eight other wolves captured from that pack had died - including six pups killed by a surrogate parent wolf.

  • Arizona Daily Star
  • New Interior Secretary Requested to Halt Mexican Wolf Predator Control

    New Interior Secretary Requested to Halt
    Mexican Wolf Predator Control,
    while Federal Gunners Wipe Out Nantac Pack

    Conservation and animal protection groups called on newly appointed Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne to issue an emergency moratorium on predator control directed against Mexican gray wolves, until this population of the reintroduced endangered species stabilizes and reaches its demographic objective.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, within the Department of the Interior, has issued an order to kill the recently released Nantac Pack, which consists of two survivors of past predator control actions who were released into the Gila National Forest in New Mexico in late April 2006. In early May, this pair scavenged on a bull that had perished from disease, and the wolves later killed three cows. The male wolf has already been killed, and the female will likely be shot from the air very soon.

    “We’re saddened at his unnecessary death,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the 22 signatories of the letter to Kempthorne. “Only an immediate moratorium issued by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne can save the Nantac female.”

    Robinson added: “If the Fish and Wildlife Service had followed scientists’ recommendations to keep wolves from scavenging on carcasses of cows and horses that they did not kill, the Nantac Pack would still be roaming the hills of the Gila together today.”

    Mexican wolves were reintroduced in 1998 to the Gila and Apache National Forests in, respectively, southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona, with the goal of reaching at least 100 animals by the end of this year. It is believed there are presently fewer than 40 wolves in the wild plus an unknown number of pups born this year, and the population is declining.

    The federal predator control program wiped out wolves originally and since their reintroduction has significantly contributed to the reduction of the census population of Mexican wolves in the wild from 55 at the end of 2003, to 44 at the end of 2004, to 35 at the end of 2005 – a 20% decrease in each year.

    Within the last month, federal agents killed eleven wolves, including six pups from one pack. A seventh pup was orphaned and has likely died of starvation as a result of losing its parents.

  • Center for Biological Diversity
  • Sunday, June 18, 2006

    English Zoo celebrates birth of wolf cubs

    JULIETTE MAXAM

    AFTER a barren 20 years, the patter of 20 pairs of little paws can be heard in the wolf enclosure at Colchester Zoo. Tallulah and Wilfy, a pair of timber wolves, are the proud parents of five cute little cubs, which are the first to be born for 20 years at Colchester Zoo.

    Zookeepers think the baby wolves were born on either May 13 or May 14, but they did not venture out of their den until June 3. So far, keepers have not been able to get close enough to the cubs to find out what their sexes and so they have not yet been given names.

    Colchester Zoo got their female wolf, Tallulah, a few months ago. After challenging the order of the existing males, Nelson and Wilfy, she hit it off with Wilfy and became pregnant. Now Wilfy is the top male of the enlarged pack, but zoo staff are expecting Nelson to help out with looking after the cubs, just as he would in the wild.

    In the wild a few of the adults stay at the den and babysit the cubs, while the rest of the pack go out hunting. When they get back, the babysitters beg for food, along with the cubs, and the hunters regurgitate some meat for them. Colchester Zoo's new cubs are now regularly venturing out into the enclosure, particularly at feeding time, when they can be seen suckling and having their first chew on meat.

    Both cubs and parents are still rather cautious, so viewing of the wolves is restricted at the moment. Visitors can catch sight of them at feeding time, at about 2.30pm every day.

    The zoo is going to keep the cubs, but if one of them is ostracised they will send it to another zoo either in the UK or in Europe. Tallulah will be put on hormonal contraceptives to prevent her becoming pregnant again for the time being.

    Anthony Tropeano, zoo curator, said: “The birth of the wolf cubs is fantastic news and we are delighted to have wolf cubs here for the first time in 20 years.”

  • EADT-24
  • Friday, June 16, 2006

    Red Wolf Sanctuary seeks final OK for Ohio Co. (Indiana) site

    By Chandra L. Mattingly , Staff Reporter

    Work at the Red Wolf Sanctuary’s future site along Arnold’s Creek in Ohio County is on hold as Paul Strasser seeks final approval for a special exception for the 452-acre property, he said. Strasser, who operates and manages the non-profit sanctuary with his wife Dr. Jane Strasser, was granted a preliminary approval for a special exception to use the site as a wildlife sanctuary by the Ohio County Board of Zoning Appeals in October 2004.

    His request for final approval will come before the BZA during its 7:30 p.m. meeting Thursday, June 22, in the conference room at the Ohio County Courthouse. The request was discussed by BZA members at a recent meeting as well, said Ohio County Building and Zoning Inspector Alonzo Bowling.

    “They asked for a set of plans. ... They want to see the whole layout,” said Bowling.

    Plans for the site, located off Ind. 262 by Arnold’s Creek, include large enclosures for the sanctuary’s animals, currently housed at its original site near Dillsboro. The sanctuary’s move is needed because it has outgrown the 22 acres there, said Strasser.

    The resident wildlife include black bears, wolves, foxes, bobcats, owls, hawks, buzzards, and other species native to this area. Many of the animals were relinquished by former owners who attempted to keep them as pets in inadequate facilities, and would have been killed had he not accepted them, said Strasser.

    Enclosures at the new site will have settings as natural as possible and be surrounded by two sets of fencing, one of which will be electrical. A third, 10-foot high perimeter fence will border the entire 100-acre area used for animals, he said. The remaining 352 acres will be enhanced to encourage its use by resident and migratory wildlife, allowing visitors optimum wildlife viewing opportunities, said Strasser. That includes restoring prairies and improving wetlands and woodlands.
    Both walking and horseback-riding trails also are planned, he said.

    In December 2005, the sanctuary received a $1 million donation toward the $3.5 million proposal for the site’s development, noted Strasser. Plans include an educational center, a drive-thru commissary with walk-in refrigerator and freezer for depositing roadkill and other dead animals the sanctuary accepts to use as food for its animal residents, and a raptor center with indoor and outdoor enclosures for owls, hawks and other birds of prey. Strasser has rehabilitated a number of raptors over the 29 years the sanctuary has existed, including bald eagles, but several injured birds which cannot be released remain residents at the sanctuary.

    He hopes to provide viewing and sketching opportunities for artists and photographers, as well as for tourists and local visitors, he said. “When you have actually live animals, people will come to see them,” he said. Tourists drawn by the wildlife sanctuary to Rising Sun and Ohio County are likely to shop and dine in the area as well, said Strasser.

  • Dearborn County Register
  • Mexican wolves face a rocky road to recovery

    by Allison Gerfin - High Country News

    Mexican gray wolves have nearly disappeared from the Southwest — again. This spring, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service inadvertently killed most of the members of a pack of 12 wolves in eastern Arizona.

    In April, the White Mountain Apache Tribe asked the agency to remove the Hon Dah pack from reservation lands after the wolves killed at least seven cattle during the past year. The 10 wolves’ deaths are a wrenching example of almost everything that has gone wrong with the troubled recovery program.

    When the Wildlife Service set out to capture the Hon Dah pack, it first trapped a yearling male, according to Victoria Fox, an agency spokeswoman. That wolf died in captivity. Then the Service captured the alpha female in May; she sustained a foot injury and died overnight in captivity. Around the same time, a wolf-recovery team member shot and killed the alpha male after trapping efforts failed. Six of the alpha pair’s four-week-old pups were placed with a pair of foster wolves; the foster male killed them all. One pup could not be caught and is presumed dead.

    Only two members of the original pack remain: a yearling male, now in captivity in a New Mexico facility, and another yearling that’s still free and may have left the area since the pack has been destroyed.

    The pack had been "good ambassadors" for the program before the recent spate of cattle killings, says John Morgart, recovery coordinator with the Service. Morgart says that although the wolves’ deaths are a setback, there is still a secure breeding population in captivity (HCN, 7/25/05: Wolf man John).

    The bigger question is not why so many wolves are dying when biologists handle them, but why biologists have to handle the wolves so much in the first place, says Curt Mack, a biologist in Idaho with the Nez Perce Tribe’s wolf program. "All that hands-on activity is very stressful for wild animals," he says (HCN, 10/17/05: Handling grizzlies: How much is enough?).

    The Mexican wolves’ territory — 4.39 million acres of the Blue Range straddling Arizona and New Mexico — is mostly covered by grazing allotments that are used year-round. According to David Parsons, who headed the Mexican wolf program from 1990-’99, recovery rules have become skewed to favor ranching, making it more likely biologists will have to trap, handle and relocate wolves as they come into conflict with livestock.

    If the program could utilize more of the Southwest’s high-quality wolf habitat — areas with fewer roads, plenty of prey and less livestock — the Mexican gray wolf could establish a sustainable breeding population, Mack says. Wolf reintroduction has been much more successful in the Northern Rockies, where wolves can roam 11 million acres of public land, most of which is not grazed year-round. Morgart says the Fish and Wildlife Service plans to release or relocate five Mexican wolves this month. The agency is expected to recommend changes to the program by July

  • High Country News
  • Forest Service plans to ease limits on killing predators in western US

    By Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

    ASHLAND, ORE.

    The dispute between dominant species over shared habitat in the West is escalating. On one side are humans expanding their space. On the other are animal inhabitants: coyotes, foxes, and especially the more threatening ones roaming the territory - cougars, wolves, and bears. The US Forest Service is proposing to relax restrictions on killing such animals in designated wilderness as well as in natural areas set aside for research. This could allow such actions as shooting them from the air and using poison bait.

    The changes are just meant "to refine and clarify agency roles and procedures," says Forest Service spokeswoman Heidi Valetkevitch. Published in the Federal Register last week, the proposal emphasizes continued protections for endangered species, and it states that such measures "shall be directed at the offending animal" while not jeopardizing the "viability of predator populations."

    The "offending animal" is the one perceived as a threat to people and livestock. But conservationists worry that the new proposal could open the door to targeting recently recovered wolf populations while artificially boosting elk and deer herds in order to appease hunters as well as the state agencies and businesses that rely on hunting for revenues.

    "The general concern is that it would so greatly expand all the circumstances under which they could do predator control that, frankly, it's kind of antithetical to our idea of what constitutes wilderness," says Nina Fascione, head of field conservation programs for the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife.

    Hunted to near-extinction by the mid-20th century, wolves have made a strong comeback in recent years. This is due to protections under the federal Endangered Species Act as well as the introduction of Canadian wolves to Idaho and Wyoming. Though they still range over less than 5 percent of their original territory in the contiguous 48 states, there now are more than 1,000 wolves in the Northern Rockies region. In Idaho alone, the offspring of 35 Canadian wolves now number more than 500.

    Their main prey are wild ungulates - deer and elk. But they have attacked domestic animals as well. Exact figures aren't known, but Defenders of Wildlife oversees a compensation fund that pays ranchers and others who lose animals to wolves. Through 2005, payments were made to the owners of 2,073 animals, including 588 cows and 1,422 sheep.

    But that has not satisfied opponents of growing wolf populations. The "Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition" is pushing a voter initiative that would mandate the removal of more than 500 wolves in the state's backcountry "by whatever means necessary."

    Earlier this year, the US Interior Department and the state of Idaho signed a "memorandum of agreement" transferring most of the responsibility for managing wolves there from the US Fish and Wildlife Service (which oversees federal endangered species protection) to state wildlife officials. As one of its first actions, the state proposed killing as many as 51 wolves in north-central Idaho in order to increase the elk herds favored by hunters.

    Another concern among conservationists is that ranching interests will prevail in discussions about regulating the number of wolves, cougars, bears, and other predators whose territory increasingly overlaps with that of people. "The new rule permits collaborative groups to set the agenda of predator control in wilderness," says Erik Ryberg, staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Ariz. "These groups will probably be populated by livestock interests in rural areas."

    That would be just fine with Ron Gillett of Stanley, Idaho, head of the antiwolf coalition. In fact, he says, the Forest Service proposal will make no difference because of the state's rugged terrain and topography. What's more, says Mr. Gillett, Canadian wolves are considerably bigger than wolves that were native to Idaho, making them more of a threat to livestock and wildlife. "There's only one way to manage Canadian wolves in Idaho," he says. "Get rid of them."

    In other parts of the West, cougar populations are growing as well. In Oregon, a ballot measure in 1994 outlawed the use of radio-collared dogs to track and tree cougars, which were then shot by hunters. Since then, the state's cougar population has grown from about 3,000 to more than 5,000. The big cats have been spotted in residential areas, including near schools.

    Through April of this year, there have been 37 cougar sightings here in Jackson County. Several dogs, cats, and goats have been killed, and horses have been injured. Last week, county commissioners approved a $30,000 budget to hire a federal trapper for the next six months.

    In the small town of Ashland, Ore., black bears not only have begun raiding garbage cans in a downtown park but one wandered into somebody's kitchen when the door had been left open for the dog. Garbage cans have been removed from the park, and officials say they hope the summer berry season will convince the bears to stay out of town. If not, and if there is a confrontation with people, they may have to be euthanized.

  • Christian Science Monitor
  • Thursday, June 15, 2006

    Attacking the wolves- Idahoan Wants Offing Wolves on the Ballot

    By Jennifer Gelband - New West

    Stanley resident Ron Gillett has grandkids, and he doesn’t want them eaten by wolves. One option is to not send the kids to his house through the woods wearing red cloaks. Another option is to pledge to rid Idaho of all wolves. He’s going with the latter option.

    Gillett is the president of the Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition. He spearheaded an attempt to place the wolf-elimination issue on the November 2006 ballot. Not only did he not succeed at getting it on the ballot, he failed with distinction, which can only mean that Idahoans must kinda have a thing for wolves.

    To get the measure on the ballot, Gillette needed 47,881 signatures from registered Idaho voters. He fell short with only 40,000 signatures. In an interesting spin, it turns out only about 13,500 signatures were from registered voters, which can only mean that 26,500 sheep and elk dressed up as Idahoans and signed the initiative.

    Gillett, completely undeterred, is trying again with the 2008 election in his sights.

    Aside from the issue of safety to humans, Gillette’s also concerned about hunters in Stanley. He claims that wolves are thinning herds and people aren’t going to the area as often. Interestingly, Gillette is the owner of the Triangle C Ranch lodge in Stanley. "I only had four out-of-state hunters stay in (the Triangle C) last season," he told the Idaho Mountain Express. "I usually have between sixty and eighty hunters."

    Idaho Fish and Game manages state wolf packs, and must maintain a minimum of fifteen packs. Wolves are protected federally, however, by the Endangered Species Act. F&G officials have asked for permission from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reduce wolf numbers in certain regions of the state. Their reason, according to biologists, is that wolf predation is a significant contributor to waning elk numbers may be preventing elk population recovery.

    However, an Idaho Fish and Game rep told the Idaho Mountain Express that wolves are responsible for only about one percent of livestock depredations every year.

  • New West
  • Cattle-killing Mexican wolf shot; 3 more to be released

    A Mexican wolf that was involved in at least three livestock killings in the past year was shot and killed May 28 by a member of the wolf recovery team. A permanent removal order for the lone male wolf was issued May 24 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after the wolf was confirmed to have killed a cow in southeastern Catron County, New Mexico.

    In the past two weeks, nine Mexican wolves have died during removal efforts resulting from livestock depredations. The Fish and Wildlife Service reported on May 24 that seven wolves — an adult female and six very young pups — removed from the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona died after they were trapped and moved to holding pens. The alpha male wolf of that pack was shot and killed.

    Wolves in the recovery program are designated as a "non-essential experimental population," which allows the recovery team greater flexibility to manage the wolves under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. The designation permits permanent removal of a wolf, either by capture or lethal means, following three confirmed livestock deaths.

    The rules of the wolf restoration program prevent direct releases of wolves into New Mexico that have not been previously captured for management purposes.

    The recovery team also announced that three Mexican wolves — an adult male and two female yearlings — will be released in early June in the Gila Wilderness. The male wolf was captured and removed from the wild in 2005 after it was involved in a livestock death. The females were removed from the wild in 2005 as a result of cattle depredations by the adults within the pack.

    The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates there are 32 to 46 endangered Mexican wolves living in the wild in Arizona and New Mexico since the reintroduction program began in 1998. To view the wolf distribution map, which contains the most recent three months of wolf locations taken from aerial surveys, please visit the Arizona Game & Fish Web site, www.azgfd.gov/wolf and scroll to the "distribution" link on the "Mexican Wolf Conservation and Management" page.

  • Farmington Daily Times
  • Idaho Fish and Game: Avoiding dog and wolf conflicts

    As summer rolls around, more people will head into the mountains with the family dog trailing along, but with the growing wolf population in the backcountry, they may be heading into trouble. Most trouble with wolves can be avoided, however, by taking a few precautions and by understanding a little bit about wolves.

    Wolves are by nature extremely territorial, and have developed ritualistic behaviors such as scent-marking and howling to mark their territories and indicate their strength to neighboring packs. Wolves also guard their territory and recent kills from other canids, including coyotes and domestic dogs.

    Because humans and their pets don't typically understand or recognize this complex system of wolves' sound, sign, and smell, they may place their pets in harm's way without realizing it.

    Wolves still are protected under the Endangered Species Act and, though it is legal on private land, it is illegal to shoot a wolf attacking pet dogs or hunting hounds on public land. But there are things dog owners can do to reduce the chance of conflicts. While it's impossible to completely eliminate wolf-dog conflicts in wolf habitat, precautions when walking dogs or hunting with hounds include:

    Keep the dog on a leash if possible-dogs running loose, away from people may attract wolves.

    If the dog runs loose, bring a leash to restrain the dog if wolves or wolf sign are encountered.

    Learn to recognize wolf sign. Knowing the signs associated with dens, rendezvous sites and kills will help avoid them.

    If you live near wolves, kennel dogs or bring them in at night. Don't leave food out that may attract wolves, bears or other unwanted guests.

    Make noise or put a bell on the dog collar to alert wolves that humans are associated with the dog; wolves are more likely to avoid contact with a dog when they are aware of humans nearby.

    Hound hunting in wolf habitat is inherently risky; trailing dogs run loose away from the people who would ordinarily deter wolves. But hound hunters can take several steps used successfully by mountain lion ecology researchers in Yellowstone National Park. Researchers used hounds in more than 150 lion captures over more than eight winters in an area with high densities of wolves. They did not have any conflicts with wolves. They recommend:

    Survey an area for wolf sign before releasing dogs; don't turn hounds loose if fresh wolf sign is found or wolves are heard howling nearby.

    Release hounds only on fresh sign-shorter chases result in less time dogs are away from the safety of people.

    Yell or make noise when releasing hounds and going to the tree to announce your presence to wolves that may be in the area.

    Get to the tree as quickly as possible-barking, unattended dogs may attract wolves.

    Leash dogs at the tree to prevent them from pursuing other cats.

    Some suggest using bells or beeper collars to emit a non-natural sound that indicates the hounds are not wild canids.

    Don't release dogs at baits or kill sites recently visited by wolves. When looking for bear or lion sign at a bait site or carcass, make sure to also look for wolf tracks.

    Bird hunters working in timbered wolf habitat for forest grouse should keep dogs within view, put a bell or beeping collar on wider ranging dogs, talk loudly to the dog or other hunters, use whistles, and otherwise control the dog so it stays close to the hunter; put the dog on a leash if wolves or fresh sign are seen.
    Because wolves tend to travel the same trails that people do, wolf sign can often be found if wolves are nearby. The following distinguish wolf sign from other animal sign:

    Scat: Wolf droppings, or scat, are generally 1 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter with tapered ends. Coyote scat typically is less than 1 inch in diameter. Wolf scat usually contains elk and deer hair, as well as shards of bones. Wolf "meat scats," typically deposited after a fresh kill, are loose and tar-like.

    Travel and tracks: Wolf tracks are generally larger than dog tracks, usually 3 1/2 to 4 inches wide by 4 to 5 inches long and with distinct claw marks. Wolves usually travel in a more "business like" straight line, while dogs meander back and forth. The distance between one set of wolf tracks and the next is usually greater than 26 inches and often more than 30. Wolves typically have narrow chests, and their tracks appear almost in a straight line. A pack of wolves traveling together in snow often walk directly in each others tracks so that there appears to be only one animal.

    Report wolf conflicts immediately to local Fish and Game offices or to USDA Wildlife Services toll-free at 866-487-3297.

  • Idaho Fish and Game
  • Wyoming wolf report- old packs decline, new packs increase

    The latest report on Wyoming wolves is on Ralph Maughan's outstanding web site. Some existing packs are breaking up, while others gain size and territory. Also a note about 253M, the 3 legged wolf:

  • Ralph Maughan's Wildlife Reports
  • Wednesday, June 14, 2006

    Dead wolf found in Grand Teton National Park

    By The Associated Press

    GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK -- A dead female wolf found along U.S. 26/89/191 Monday afternoon might have been struck by a vehicle, according to the National Park Service.

    The carcass was to be examined at a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service forensics lab in Oregon to determine the cause of death and which pack the wolf belonged to, the agency said Tuesday.

    The sub-adult wolf was found about 2 1/2 miles south of Moran Junction after a park visitor reported seeing the dead animal about 2:30 p.m. Monday.

    The condition of the carcass led park biologists to estimate the wolf died two days earlier.

  • Billings Gazette
  • Expert determines Illinois animal is Coy-dog

    By Stacey Creasy - Editor

    MONMOUTH - The animal that was struck by a vehicle turned out to be a Coy-dog instead of a wolf. Dick Bowman of Monmouth spotted an animal Saturday that looked like the Gray Wolf on the north side of US 74, about one-half mile east of the rest area, a few miles past Knoxville. Bowman said the animal is 66 inches long. He estimated it to weigh more than 90 pounds.

    The dog was taken to a lab in Galesburg where wildlife biologist with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources Kevin Oller examined it. "It is not a Gray Wolf, it's a Coy-dog," Oller stated. "A wolf is taller, with longer legs. They also have larger feet."

    Oller said he can understand why there was some confusion. The coloration of the dog was similar to that of a wolf. Oller still considers the animal to be a rare find. "Coy-dogs are not common," he added. "I've been here 16 years and this appears to be the first Coy-dog we've had since I've been here."

    Since the 1960s there have only been three Coy-dogs at the lab in Galesburg. Coy-dogs are a mix between coyotes and dogs. The breeding between the two are rare, according to Oller.

    In recent years there has only been one confirmed Gray Wolf in central Illinois. It was found in Putnam County. "That was a wolf from the Michigan Peninsula that got the wanderlust," said biologist Ken Russell said. "It was a wolf that had been tagged with a monitoring device and wound up in central Illinois."

    Oller said coyotes are common in the region. Oller believes the coyotes migrated here from the western states. The main diet for coyotes is rodents. "They like to eat animals like mice and rabbits," Oller explained.

    At one time Gray Wolves did call Illinois home, along with bison, elk and the prairie chicken. Oller said civilization forced the animals to move elsewhere.

  • Monmounth Review Atlas
  • Grand Portage Band to track and study Minnesota wolves, deer, moose

    A $250,000 grant will help pay for biologists to study predator habits in relation to deer and moose.

    BY STEVE KUCHERA - NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

    How many wolves prowl Northeastern Minnesota, where they live and their interactions with prey species are things the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa hope to discover. The band recently received a $249,750 federal grant to help conduct a three-year effort tracking radio-collared wolves.

    "The primary goal is to estimate the number of wolves on reservation and ceded territory lands" where band members are allowed to hunt, fish and gather, said Seth Moore, fish and wildlife biologist with the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa. "We want to relate that information to moose and deer populations in the same area."

    The Grand Portage tribal council has emphasized that it's important to restore moose populations on the reservation. The reservation is home to an estimated 80 to 100 moose. The reservation moose harvest by band members decreased to four adults in 2004-05, down from a historical average of 15.

    The study may help determine how large a role wolves and deer -- which carry a parasite fatal to moose -- play in limiting moose numbers. "We are expecting a lot of information to come out of this," said John Leonard, U.S. Fish and Wildlife tribal liaison for this region. "It is going to contribute to the status of wolves and give us information on how the packs interact and where we are going with the predator-prey relationship."

    The Fish and Wildlife Service approved the federal grant for the project. The study is timely. Earlier this year, the federal government set in motion a plan to hand management of gray wolves in the Great Lakes states back to state and tribal resource agencies. Minnesota has more than 3,000 wolves, while Michigan and Wisconsin have about 450 each.

    "We have been talking about doing a study of this type for a long time," said Angela Aarhus, a biologist with the 1854 Treaty Authority. "We want to get some more site-specific, more current information. Our ultimate goal is to manage the wolf better."

    The 1854 Treaty Authority works with the state to set game regulations covering band members off the reservation but on the territory Ojibwe ceded to the U.S. in an 1854 treaty. The authority will work on the wolf project with Grand Portage and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

    The partners plan to live-trap and radio collar 16 wolves from eight packs -- two that use the Grand Portage Reservation and six elsewhere in the 1854 area. The area covers about 5 million acres in Northeastern Minnesota. Once the wolves are radio-collared, biologists will determine their positions at least once a week for 18 months. That will demonstrate each pack's territory. In addition, biologists will fly over each pack at least once a week during two winters, when snow-covered ground will allow biologists to count the number of wolves in each pack.

    In addition to counting wolves, biologists on the project also will try to determine the population of deer and moose in the area. Knowing the population densities of the species will allow the tribe to better manage the species to achieve a sustainable moose harvest.

    This is not the first Grand Portage fish and wildlife project the Fish and Wildlife Service has paid for. The band's biology department is working on coaster brook trout, lake sturgeon, wild rice and lynx projects partly paid for by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

    "The tribes carry a specific element to their investigations, and that is a cultural-traditional element," Leonard said. "A lot of the animals the tribes look at are animals that represent tribal clans or have important parts to play in the traditional cultural and spiritual values of the tribes."

  • Duluth News Tribune
  • Latest Yellowstone wolf pup reports

    A new report on the pup count at Yellowstone, plus other interesting wolf tales at Ralph Maughan's website:

  • Ralph Maughan's Wildlife Reports
  • Sunday, June 11, 2006

    Early aerial wolf hunt foe dies at age 83

    By CRAIG MEDRED - Anchorage Daily News

    The man who did more than anyone to end the war on predators in Alaska died May 19 at his home near Juneau. Former Commissioner of Fish and Game Jim Brooks slipped away with little notice, but then Alaskans can be quick to forget their history.

    "The news didn't get out at all," said old friend Jim Rearden, former outdoors editor of Alaska Magazine. Rearden figures the 83-year-old, who finally succumbed to cancer, would have wanted it that way. Never one to seek the limelight, the mild-mannered Brooks still found himself in it often during five decades of involvement with Alaska conservation issues.

    "He was very, very influential," noted Rearden, who first met Brooks in Fairbanks in 1949. Rearden was then organizing a Department of Wildlife Management at the University of Alaska. Brooks, though several years older, become one of the first students in the new department.

    By then the high-school dropout from Erie, Penn., had already lived the kind of colorful life that only seems possible in Alaska: Ketchikan dishwasher, Southeast Alaska commercial salmon troller, Alaska Railroad gandy dancer, Willow gold miner, Nenana grease monkey, Kantishna dog musher and trapper, and finally -- like friend and former Alaska Gov. Jay Hammond -- a pilot.

    Hammond, who preceded Brooks in death, flew fighters. Brooks flew B-24 Liberator bombers over Italy in World War II. At the war's end, he flew one back to the United States and almost immediately headed north again for Alaska to pursue a life that in many ways paralleled Hammond's.

    Brooks married Bertha Schaeffer, a woman from a prominent Kotzebue family. He flew Bush planes for an air taxi in the Dillingham area. He spent as much time as he could hunting and fishing, which fueled his curiosity about Alaska marine mammals -- walrus, polar bears and seals.

    As a student at UAF, he began the first scientific studies on walruses, but it was his work with seals and sea lions that generated serious changes in how Alaska wildlife was viewed. From the time Brooks started studying sea lions for the Territorial Department of Fisheries in the 1950s, through a long stint at Fish and Game until his retirement from public service as the Alaska Region Chief of Management and Enforcement for the National Marine Fisheries Service in 1991, he was a leader in changing attitudes.

    Brooks not only helped end the indiscriminate killing of everything from seals to wolves, he helped change their status from competitors with humans for food to valuable species with key roles in the functioning of healthy, natural environments.

    When Brooks went to work for the Alaska Territorial Department of Fisheries in the 1950s, writes Rearden, department employees were involved in an organized effort to eradicate salmon-eating seals. "The shot them with rifles and shotguns, and at rookeries killed hundreds at a time with underwater blasts of dynamite," wrote Rearden. "Brooks was put in charge of this program, which he despised. He managed to see it stopped."

    Brooks later managed to head off a similar program to slaughter beluga whales after they were blamed for a crash in red salmon populations in Bristol Bay. "Brooks spent the summer of 1955 in Bristol Bay studying the problem," writes Rearden. "I joined him as helper for a couple of weeks. He collected belugas to examine their stomach contents, counted the salmon they held, estimated the number of belugas and evaluated their impact.

    "Brooks concluded the impact of belugas on adult salmon in Bristol Bay was insignificant. In later years, both of us expressed regret at the necessity of proving this by having to kill several dozen of the gentle, harmless little whales."

    Brooks temporarily left Alaska in the late 1950s to pursue doctoral studies at the University of British Columbia (he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Alaska Fairbanks while studying wildlife in the state) but was summoned back at statehood by Gov. Bill Egan.

    Egan asked Brooks to draft the laws to govern wildlife management in the state. Brooks did so, and in 1959 became the first director of the Division of Game within the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He promptly began a job-recruiting drive that brought some of the nation's best young wildlife biologists to Alaska to study ptarmigan, caribou, moose, wolves, deer, sea otters and more. Some of the work he set in motion is still cited to this day.

    But Brooks' high-profile position, along with a determination to prevent science from being dominated by politics, earned him enemies. When Walter Hickel was elected to his first term as governor in 1966, he fired Brooks.

    Non-plussed, the biologist took a job studying polar bears for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It wasn't long, however, before he was pulled away from that work to examine the environmental practices of oil companies beginning exploration at Prudhoe Bay. Brooks documented ugly craters left in the tundra by explosives then used for seismic testing; outlined how tracked vehicles tore up the tundra, leaving scars that wouldn't heal for decades; and criticized the practice of storing liquid waste from drilling in open ponds.

    His detailed report on environmental abuses led to a commendation from Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel, the same man who had fired Brooks from Fish and Game before accepting an invitation to join the Nixon Cabinet in Washington, D.C.

    With Hickel gone, Egan was elected to another term as governor, and in July 1972 appointed Brooks Fish and Game commissioner. One of Brooks' first acts was to end uncontrolled aerial wolf hunting. At the time, Brooks noted that with the creation of the new Alaska Department of Fish and Game, wolves had been reclassified as big-game animals and fur bearers, not vermin. "No longer were they 'bad,' to be slaughtered whenever and wherever," writes Rearden. "Now they were a big-game animal and a furbearer and a valuable part of the environment."

    Brooks served as Fish and Game commissioner until 1977, leaving to join NMFS at a time when the U.S. 200-mile fisheries conservation zone was beginning to enforce controls on foreign fleets that had decimated Alaska's offshore fisheries. It was another war on predators, of a different sort, and Brooks spent the last 14 years of his professional career heavily involved in it.

  • Anchorage Daily News
  • Wolves vs. elk: 10 years after wolves' return, are Idaho's most controversial predators decimating elk herds?

    by Roger Phillips - The Idaho Statesman

    Hunters' fears that wolves would decimate elk herds have so far been unproven since the controversial canines were reintroduced into Idaho 11 years ago. Elk hunters have feared wolves would drastically reduce their favorite game animal, and hunters have complained that where they used to find abundant elk herds they now see fewer elk and more wolf sign.

    But more than 10 years after the wolves' reintroduction in Idaho, the effect of wolves on elk herds remains unclear — it's more a matter of passion and opinion than clear science. The Idaho Statesman talked to five experts to get their ideas on the subject, but there's no consensus, even among these hunters and wildlife biologists.

    Wolves are a handy scapegoat for hunters, and in many cases, they are probably correct. Wolves may have driven the elk from hunters' favorite spots. But statewide elk harvests have remained relatively stable in the past 20 years despite the normal year-to-year fluctuations.

    Despite the rapidly growing wolf population, now estimated between 500 and 600, Idaho Department of Fish and Game statistics show 86,342 hunters killed 21,523 elk last year. It was the largest elk harvest in a decade and the seventh-highest on record dating back to 1935. Not a hunter? As wolf packs continue to grow, the outcome will mean more than whether there's elk meat in a hunter's freezer. Elk hunting adds tens of millions of dollars to Idaho's economy.

    F&G surveyed hunters in 1996 and found they spent about $105 every day they hunted elk. Each hunter averaged 6.7 days hunting last year, which would put the value of the elk season at more than $60 million. Between 80,000 and 90,000 people participate in elk hunting every fall, second only to deer season. Nonresident elk hunters spent nearly $7.6 million dollars on hunting licenses and elk tags alone last year.

    Even without wolves, much has changed in the elk hunting world in the last 20 years. There were regulation changes unrelated to the wolf reintroduction; wildfires that burned hundreds of thousands of acres and improved habitat; mild winters, hard winters, and many other factors that have affected elk herds and how F&G manages them.

    "Most changes are due to cumulative effects, not a single factor," F&G wildlife bureau chief Jim Unsworth said. But wolves have remained the most controversial factor in the past decade.

    After 29 wolves were released into the remote Central Idaho backcountry in 1995 and 1996, they have flourished and now occupy nearly all the terrain between the Snake River and the Canadian border. That same area also is home to most of Idaho's elk, which are the wolves' favorite prey. In most places, they appear to be coexisting. Elk populations are meeting F&G's objectives in 26 out of 29 of its elk management zones.

    Even so, F&G is asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to allow the state to kill wolves in one of the three zones management zones not meeting objectives to see if fewer wolves will benefit struggling elk herds.

    F&G's harvest data shows harvests have remained stable, but the percentage of successful elk hunters has declined since wolves were reintroduced. Between 1985 and 1994, the average hunter success rate was 26 percent. Between 1995 and 2004, the average success rate dropped to 22 percent. Elk hunting is now more tightly regulated than it was before wolves were reintroduced. Hunters must now choose one area to hunt, and in many units choose which weapon they use to hunt. In the Boise River Zone, if you hunt with a rifle, you can't hunt with a bow and arrow or muzzleloader, and vice versa.

    All of the people who commented for this story had copies of the harvest data.

  • Idaho Statesman
  • Wisconsin Dells Wolf May Have Been Killed

    DNR Halted Efforts To Trap Animal

    MADISON, Wis. -- The Department of Natural Resources said that since June 1 it has halted efforts to trap a wolf or wolf-dog hybrid spotted on a farm east of the Wisconsin Dells. Officials were intending to euthanize the animal because it attacked at least two animals -- including a pet dog and a Holstein calf.

    Efforts to trap the wolf have stopped because it hadn't been seen for two weeks, WISC-TV reported.

    The DNR told News 3 on Friday that a wolf was recently shot by a Sauk County turkey hunter who apparently mistook it for a coyote. The DNR will not confirm whether that wolf is the same one that was spotted near the Dells.

    Inquires about the wolf or the DNR's wolf-management policy should be directed to the DNR.

  • Channel 3000
  • BC's Misguided War on Predators

    Wolf Sterilization Scheme Backfires

    By CHRIS DARIMONT and CHRIS GENOVALI

    Absent of any legitimate scientific rationale and at the behest of the trophy hunting lobby, the British Columbia government is moving to carry out predator control programs to systematically sterilize or kill wolves in different regions of the province. For example, wolf sterilization has been underway in a vast region of the Northern Rockies known as the Muskwa-Kechika. In the Muskwa-Kechika the Ministry of Environment is carrying out a program to sterilize wolves that is based on questionable science and is primarily designed to maximize sport hunter benefit by increasing the number of ungulates.

    The Ministry's rationale for controlling wolves in the Muskwa-Kechika is to enable arbitrarily determined population targets for ungulates (that is, deer, elk and moose) to be achieved, not because any one of these populations is in imminent danger of extirpation. These ungulates are valued for trophy hunting and the reason is clearly to provide more and better hunting opportunities for moose and elk.

    Recent media reports in BC have exposed the failure of the Ministry's ill-conceived management prescription for wolves in the Muskwa-Kechika. Not surprisingly, however, the failure was entirely predictable. In fact, we had forecasted precisely this outcome in a letter to then Environment Minister Joyce Murray and her staff in early 2003.

    Freedom of Information access to Ministry documents have described uncertainty in identification of breeding wolves to be sterilized, and the potential of social disruption following sterilization. We informed the Ministry of this three years ago, warning that problems would include, among others, 'the difficulty of identifying the dominant breeding pair of wolves in a pack, and, even if they are identified, the changing nature of pack hierarchies means that a breeding pair one year may not be the breeding pair the next'. We suspect pack disruption and the subsequent increases in wolves was the result of an interaction between sterilization and continued "harvests" of wolves. Again, we warned, 'The plan compounds the problems associated with sterilizationbecause it proposes allowing, and even increasing, hunting and trapping of wolves at the same time. Sterilization, to be effective at all, requires a stable pack structure. Hunting and trapping risks the loss of dominant pack members, resulting in pack fragmentation, allowing more, not fewer, wolves to reproduce.' Wolf packs in the Muskwa-Kechika are apparently "booming" despite the Ministry's suspect management actions.

    Controlling wolves by lethal or non-lethal sterilization is technically unsound as a long-term management tool. Lethal control has a dubious record of success as a means of depressing numbers of wolves over time, because removing individual wolves may fragment packs and allow more wolves to breed. When entire packs are eliminated, wolves from outside the control area often immigrate to fill the void.

    In the case of the Muskwa-Kechika, the Ministry is counting on the sterilization of wolves to provoke less public opposition because in theory no wolves are killed. The reality of sterilization, however, appears to be something else. Its effectiveness has not been established. As a result, when the management objective of reducing wolf numbers is not achieved through sterilization managers have resorted to lethal methods of control.

    This option is recognized in the Muskwa-Kechika Wildlife Management Plan, which ominously states that if control objectives are not achieved through surgical sterilization or fertility-lowering drugs, "additional methods" will be considered. One of the greatest and most obvious values of science is its predictive utility. That the Ministry chose to ignore our recommendations, along with voluminous scientific literature that would issue similar counsel, suggests they simply did not want science to interfere with their dubious sterilization experiment.

    The Ministry's plan to sterilize wolves was ill-informed and anachronistic management masquerading as science, designed to appease their preferred constituents in the trophy hunting lobby, which complained that wolves were reducing opportunities to shoot ungulates for recreation and profit. The major goal of this plan is to manipulate an ecosystem to suit human purposes, not to save any endangered or threatened populations. It is management biased toward maximizing specific, preferred species to the detriment of others, and ignores natural and dynamic ecosystem processes.

    Aside from the predictable inefficacy and ecological irresponsibility of the Ministry's program, we propose that the forceful removal of the reproductive organs of wild wolves is morally indefensible, and we suspect the majority of British Columbians would agree.

    Chris Darimont is a Conservation Biologist and PhD candidate at the University of Victoria.

    Chris Genovali is executive director of the Raincoast Conservation Society. They can be reached at: chris@raincoast.org

  • Counter Punch
  • Friday, June 09, 2006

    Wolf on the lamb, stays in the area

    Thunder Bay News Source

    It appears a runaway wolf that escaped his enclosure at Chippewa Park isn't wandering too far from home.

    The four-year-old male scaled the fence of the enclosure at the Park's wildlife exhibit on Wednesday. Parks Supervisor Bruce Phillips says since then, there have been several confirmed sightings of the animal in the park area. The wolf was born and bred at the park. Phillips believes the animal is frightened and simply wants to return home. Several live traps have been placed around the park.

    The public is being cautioned again, that if they see the wolf, they should not approach it, but instead should contact park officials.

  • Thunder Bay News Source
  • Bush Administration in Process of Wiping Out Endangered Mexican Gray Wolf

    The Mexican gray wolf, or lobo – the diminutive border wolf identified by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1986 as the most endangered mammal in North America – is being trapped and shot into oblivion by the Bush administration.

    Reintroduced into the wilds of Arizona and New Mexico in 1998 after being exterminated early in the 20th century, the Mexican wolf was projected to reach 102 animals in 18 breeding pairs by the end of this year. Instead, after initial success, the population declined by 20 percent in both 2004 and 2005 and continues to decline today. At the end of last year only 5 breeding pairs and 35 total wolves could be counted in the wild.

    In the last two weeks, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s wolf control program killed 10 Mexican wolves, including six pups in one pack. An additional, orphaned pup is too young to survive in the wild and has almost certainly starved or been eaten by other predators. Three more packs are at imminent risk because they have preyed on livestock. In many cases, wolves learn to prey on livestock by scavenging on the carcasses of cattle and horses that die of other causes.

    In June 2001, independent scientists who were hired to write the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Mexican Wolf Three-Year Review warned that the control program was removing too many wolves and would prevent the population from reaching its goals unless critical reforms were instituted immediately. The Fish and Wildlife Service pledged to take action but has failed to do so.

    The proposed reforms would bring the Mexican wolf program up to the same standards as those used in the successful reintroduction program for northern gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. That reintroduction began in 1995, three years prior to the Mexican wolf reintroduction, and has resulted in approximately 1,000 wolves now roaming a tri-state region.

    The scientists’ two most important recommendations were to: (1) allow wolves to roam outside the arbitrary boundaries of the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area, just like all other endangered species are allowed (Mexican wolves are currently trapped if they go onto the “wrong” national forest); and (2) require ranchers to remove or render inedible the carcasses of cattle and horses that die of non-wolf causes and habituate wolves to regarding livestock as prey.

    “The Bush administration is running an extermination program masquerading as a recovery program,” charged Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. Robinson’s book, Predatory Bureaucracy: The Extermination of Wolves and the Transformation of the West (University Press of Colorado, 2005), details how a second extermination of the Mexican wolf is now underway.

    The U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey poisoned and trapped all wolves in the western United States between 1915 and 1945, including Mexican wolves. In 1950, its successor agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, began sending American salaried personnel and U.S.-produced poison to Mexico to duplicate the extermination program there.

    After passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, only five wolves could be captured alive in Mexico for an emergency captive breeding program; four of those were males and just one was female. No wolves have been confirmed alive in the wild in Mexico since 1980.

    The Center for Biological Diversity will lead reporters to areas of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico and the Apache National Forest in Arizona where three wolf packs are likely the next targets for the Fish and Wildlife Service to try to wipe out.

  • Center for Biological Diversity
  • Wisconsin wolf population shows moderate increase

    Overwinter population estimated at 465 to 500 animals

    MADISON – Using a combination of track surveys, monitoring of radio-collared animals and reported observations, state wildlife biologists estimate that the gray wolf population in Wisconsin was in the range of 465 to 502 animals at the end of the 2005-2006 winter. The population includes 115 packs and at least 12 loners and represents about a 7 percent increase from the 2004-2005 winter count of 435 to 465.

    Biologists aided by volunteers have conducted annual wolf population surveys since the winter of 1979-80. Surveys are conducted by following snow covered forest roads noting wolf tracks in fresh snow and by locating and observing the 40 or so Wisconsin wolves currently wearing radio-collars.

    The 2006 count includes 16 to 17 wolves occurring on reservations, leaving 449 to 485 wolves outside of Indian reservations, according to Adrian Wydeven, a conservation biologist and wolf specialist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

    Wisconsin’s Wolf Management Plan calls for a population of 350 wolves outside of Indian reservations. “This puts the current population at about 100 wolves above the plan’s goal,” Wydeven said.

    Wolves are currently listed as a protected wild animal by the state of Wisconsin. However, the federal government continues to list wolves as an endangered species.

    The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced in March 2006, its intent to “delist” wolves in Wisconsin and adjacent states and return all management authority to the states. Public comments on the proposed delisting will be accepted until June 26. People can comment on the proposal through the agency’s Web site at (exit DNR).

    The delisting could be finalized in late 2006 or early 2007.

    “Wolves returned to Wisconsin by dispersing naturally from Minnesota in the mid 1970s after being extirpated for about 15 years,” says Wydeven. “No wolves were ever reintroduced by humans into Wisconsin. With state and federal protection, the wolf population has grown and spread across much of the forests of northern Wisconsin and the Central Forest region.”

    Although illegal killing of wolves declined in the 1990s, wolves continue to be shot and trapped illegally. In 2005 at least 13 wolves were killed illegally in the state. Recently, two wolves were shot during the turkey hunting season in Price and Sauk Counties.

    Ecological balance

    The growing wolf population has provided ecological benefits for forest ecosystems, but at the same time has brought depredation concerns.

    Biologists and foresters report an increase in number and kind of forest floor plants in some areas where wolves have either reduced or controlled deer numbers or have caused deer populations to disperse over a wider area. Reduced deer browsing has allowed some deer-preferred plant species to recover and a more normal balance of plant types to return.

    In other areas, wolves have brought beaver populations into a better balance on the landscape reducing road flooding caused by dam building. Trout streams also have benefited from a reduced beaver population where reduced dam building has improved stream flows.

    In 2005, wolves preyed on livestock at 25 farms, mostly in northern Wisconsin, killing 31 cattle, three horses and three sheep while injuring three cattle. This was an increase from 22 farms in 2004, and 14 farms in 2003. Wolves also killed 17 dogs and injured six dogs. Problem wolves were trapped by US Department of Agriculture-Wildlife Services at 14 farms and 29 wolves were euthanized by special permit from the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

    Trapping of depredating wolves continues and so far in 2006, trapping efforts on four farms reporting wolf depredation has resulted in seven wolves being trapped and euthanized in northern Wisconsin. On June 1, attempts to trap a wolf or wolf-dog hybrid on a farm east of Wisconsin Dells were halted. There had been no reported activity or confirmed sign of the animal for the past two weeks. Had the animal been captured it would have been transferred to an educational facility in Minnesota that volunteered to house the animal. The animal killed one calf and injured another calf and a dog.

    FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Adrian Wydeven (715) 762-1363

  • Wisconsin DNR
  • Hikers report wolves near Aspen

    DOW: Impossible to immediately confirm sighting near Capitol Lake

    By John Colson

    A local man and California woman believe they spotted two adult wolves in the Capitol Lake area this week, and state wildlife officials say they might be correct. "They were right there," said Chloe Minor of Carmel, Calif., describing how she and Aspen resident Gary Foster came within about 20 feet of the animals while hiking about 10:30 a.m. Monday. "And these were no coyotes," she added emphatically, to which Foster agreed.

    A Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman said Minor, 37, and Foster, 46, called the DOW to report the sighting. He said he could not say whether the animals were wolves. "It is certainly possible that there are wolves in Colorado," said Randy Hampton, the agency's Grand Junction spokesman. But, he said, "I am not aware of any reports of wolves that are using Colorado as home range."

    Instead, he suggested, these could be wolves that have migrated north or south from places where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been reintroducing wolves, such as Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico or Arizona. "It's impossible to confirm that these are wolves," Hampton said. "It's also impossible to say that they're not."

    Minor said she and Foster had risen from a night of camping a couple of miles from Capitol Lake, a short distance below the snow line on Capitol Peak, and were roaming around the area on a trail when they saw the animals appear before them. "It scared me," Minor said. "They looked at me, then ran off a little, then looked at me again and took off." After the sighting, she said, she spotted a jackrabbit leaping through the brush, "so I thought maybe they were chasing it."

    Hampton and other state officials said there have been reports of wolflike animals in the Colorado mountains recently, and that there have been cases of dog-wolf hybrids either being released or escaping into the wild around the state. The last native gray wolf living in the wild in Colorado was killed in 1935, according to the DOW, and no wolves were seen in the state for decades.

    Two years ago, a car on Interstate 70 near Idaho Springs hit and killed a female wolf that had apparently wandered into Colorado from the Yellowstone National Park area. And on Feb. 16, DOW officials managed to capture images of what is believed to be a gray wolf north of the town of Walden, in the northern part of the state.

    Hampton said wolves can travel up to 50 miles in a day as they roam for food and mates, and have appeared hundreds of miles from where they were last presumed to be. But, he cautioned, such sightings often "turn out to be something else," such as a dog, coyote or hybrid. Still, he said, the DOW will investigate this report, as it does all such sightings.

  • Aspen Times
  • Wisconsin DNR: Wolves preyed on livestock on a record 25 farms last year

    ROBERT IMRIE - Associated Press

    WAUSAU, Wis. - Wisconsin's growing number of gray wolves killed or injured livestock on 25 farms last year - triple the number from four years ago, a state official said Wednesday. "We have been setting new records in the number of farms with depredation problems for the last four years," said Adrian Wydeven of the state Department of Natural Resources. "Luckily, we are able to get permits to trap and euthanize problem wolves." Among the 37 livestock killed by wolves in 2005 was an injured horse and two newborn colts, he said. The killing of horses by wolves has been rare, occurring only three times in previous years, Wydeven said. The most southern farm that lost livestock to wolves was near Westfield, in northern Marquette County, he said.

    "We are starting to hear more concerns that people feel the population is too high," Wydeven said in a telephone interview from his office in Park Falls. "I am hearing more reports of people having kind of close encounters with wolves, where they either seem to follow them or stare at them from a distance or happen to get kind of close to them."

    The wolf expert attributed it to the animal's curiosity or that some are becoming less fearful of humans, in part because people reportedly are leaving animal carcasses for them. The risk of a wolf hurting someone is still low, he said, but last fall, in northern Saskatchewan, Canada, a wolf killed a man who took a walk from a remote mining camp. "That is the first real documentation of a wild wolf attack in North America in the last 100 years," Wydeven said.

    Wolf critic Jim Johnson Jr., 54, of Hixton in Jackson County, said the wolf populations must be reduced so livestock and pets aren't being slaughtered. "Problems on 25 farms is 25 farms too many," Johnson said. "We need to get the wolves back to a number where they are not going to be a nuisance. The days when the wolf could roam free is a thing of the past. There is just too many people here."

    A late winter survey, based on tracking and monitoring of radio-collared wolves, estimates 465 to 503 wolves in 115 packs populate mainly the northern and central forest regions of Wisconsin - up about 7 percent from a year before, the DNR said. The state's goal is to have 350 wolves on lands it controls outside of Indian reservations.

    Johnson said the DNR's wolf estimates are too conservative.

    Dave Withers of Iron River, chairman of the wolf committee of the Wisconsin Bear Hunters Association, said the growing number of farmers having to deal with livestock losses from wolves is alarming. "It tells me they are a nuisance. What else?" he said. His group believes Wisconsin should manage a population of about 100 wolves, which would eliminate many problems.

    Last year, wolves also killed 17 dogs, of which 12 were hound dogs being used to hunt bears or in training to hunt bears, Wydeven said.

    The wolf is a native species that was wiped out in Wisconsin by the late 1950s after decades of bounty hunting. Since the animal was granted protection as an endangered species during the mid 1970s, wolves migrated into the state from Minnesota and their numbers have been growing ever since. Minnesota has the largest wolf population in the lower 48 states at around 2,400.

    Wolves killed livestock, primarily cattle, on 22 Wisconsin farms in 2004, 14 farms in 2003 and eight farms in 2002, the DNR said. Last year, $72,355 was paid to compensate people for losses due to wolf killings and injuries, Wydeven said. In addition, 29 wolves were trapped at 14 farms and euthanized under a special permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

    The DNR has federal authority to euthanize 43 problem wolves this year and so far seven have been trapped and killed, the wolf expert said. The state is seeking more flexibility in dealing with the problems, but that can't happen until the wolf is removed from federal protection lists, a process that will take at least another year, Wydeven said. When the DNR developed its management plan for wolves in 1999, the agency expected all federal protections would be removed - called the delisting of wolves - within a year or two, giving the state complete say in the management of the animals, including the setting of hunting or trapping seasons, Wydeven said.

    Instead, some people are dealing with wolf problems themselves, given that livestock losses are just the "tip of the iceberg" of problems caused by the predators, said Eric Koens, who has a herd of 100 beef cattle in Rusk County and is director of the Wisconsin Cattlemen's Association.

    The DNR reports at least 13 wolves were killed illegally last year, including two shot during the turkey hunting season in Price and Sauk counties.

    "There was a lot more than that I'll tell you right now," Koens said. "Those were the ones they found."

  • Duluth News Tribune
  • Tuesday, June 06, 2006

    Lone Oglebay red wolf pup heads south

    THE LONE female red wolf born at the Good Zoo at Oglebay in late April is being raised by a wild wolf mother in North Carolina.

    "Our pup has been accepted by its foster mother and is doing well," said Joe Greathouse, animal curator at the Good Zoo. "The red wolf recovery program has given our zoo the wonderful responsibility of assisting in the preservation of this endangered species, and the cross-fostering of this pup to a wild mother has been an incredible opportunity for us to contribute to the conservation of this magnificent species in the wild as well."
    Will Waddell, the red wolf breeding program coordinator for the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) and wildlife biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, determined that the pup born at Oglebay would be an ideal candidate to be fostered by a wild female red wolf for release into the wild. The biologists had been observing a wild red wolf with a small litter of her own and made the recommendation in early May that this wild female red wolf would be an appropriate foster mother.

    Waddell said that for these important release projects, the biologists choose wild mothers that have stable territories, have proven their success in raising pups in the past, and have relatively small litters during the year any zoo pups are added to their litter.

    The pup was transported by the Oglebay zoo staff in mid-May to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina. Greathouse said the pup was bottle-fed a canine milk replacement formula by zoo staff twice on the long trip to North Carolina to ensure that she would be well nourished upon arrival.

    "The biologists from the Fish and Wildlife Service had radio-tracked the mother wolf and located her den and her 3 pups prior to my arrival," said Greathouse. "Our pup was then equipped with an electronic identification tag and marked with the scent of one of the wild pups before she was placed into her new den."

    "The pup born at Oglebay is very important to the Red Wolf Recovery Program, because it represents the possibility of enhancing the genetic diversity of the wild population when she is old enough to breed and produce pups of her own, " added Waddell.

    "Cross-fostering the Oglebay pup to a wild mother is important to the endangered species recovery program for two reasons," said Chris Lucash, Red Wolf Recovery Program Biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

    "It is the most efficient method of incorporating new genes into the wild population, because not all of the bloodlines of the original red wolves that were placed in zoos are equally represented in the wild population. Past efforts to release adult or juvenile captive-raised red wolves proved to be very risky for the individual animal and damaging to the public's perception of what a wild wolf should act like. Cross-fostering pups born in zoos to wild mothers helps ensure that the released animals are instilled with the wild behaviors that will be necessary for the success of the wolf in the wild."

    In the days following the release of the pup, the mother was radio-tracked multiple times to ensure that she was taking care of the Oglebay pup.

    The biologists discovered that she had moved the pups to two new dens, a practice common amongst wild red wolf mothers, and each time, that the biologists checked on the pups, the Oglebay pup was found with the wild pups and was in good health. The biologists will continue to track the mother now from a distance with radio-tracking equipment, but they will have little additional contact with the pups now to ensure that they maintain their wild behaviors. Biologists will attempt to locate the Oglebay pup again in six to seven months to equip her with her own radio-tracking collar, so they will be able to monitor her location on a weekly basis as she becomes a wild adult wolf.

    The last remaining 17 wild red wolves were captured from the wild in the 1970's and brought to zoos for breeding. The red wolf was declared extinct in the wild in 1980, but zoo-born red wolves have since been successfully released back into the wild. There are approximately 100 wild red wolves living at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina.

    There have been a total of 22 red wolf pups born at The Good Zoo since 1988. There are only 135 red wolves in just 37 North American zoos.

  • Times Leader
  • Monday, June 05, 2006

    Rare pair fail first fling at New York refuge

    By ROB RYSER - THE JOURNAL NEWS

    LEWISBORO — A rare pair of red wolves that arrived at a sanctuary last year as part of a federally sponsored species survival plan had the local wolf warden expecting a pack of pups this spring. But for all the den digging and other "nesting" activity by the 3-year-old female in May, the mating season passed at the South Salem refuge without offspring.

    Perhaps it is the newness of surroundings or youth — the male is only 2 years old — but, with the survival of the species on the line, conservationists had been hoping for a more fruitful spring.

    "I'm not sure what it adds up to," says Barry Braden, managing director of the Wolf Conservation Center, who examined the female earlier this week and found she was not pregnant. "Wolves reach sexual maturity at 22 months, but that doesn't mean that he knew what to do, or that she knew what to do." Wolves in captivity have about a 30 percent chance of reproducing.

    The wolf center also breeds endangered Mexican gray wolves under the auspices of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

    Red wolves were down to 14 animals in the early 1980s, when the government began to breed them at sanctuaries such as South Salem's. Today there are 170 red wolves in 38 breeding centers, with another 100 living wild. The future of South Salem's red wolves as a breeding pair will be the subject of a conference in August. Conservationists could substitute a new partner or change the pair altogether.

    "My personal feeling is they will probably give them another year," Braden said.

  • Journal News
  • Sault Ste. Marie man films wolf in backyard

    By SCOTT BRAND - The Evening News

    SAULT STE. MARIE - While the old saying “The wolf is at the door” is generally meant to convey economic trouble, it took on a more literal meaning for a local family when the animal made a backyard visit to their home near the intersection of Three Mile Road and Riverside Drive Friday evening.

    Kevin Garlinghouse not only came into The Evening News early today with a pretty good story, but had more than a minutes worth of videotape evidence of the wolf.

    “To me, it's kind of neat,” said Garlinghouse of his initial reaction. In his travels he has seen wolves over in the Seney area and down by his cabin in the Stalwart area, “But this is the first one I've seen in my yard.” Garlinghouse guessed that the animal he had on tape was a younger male and from all appearances it seemed to be in good health.

    “My wife is kind of nervous, she likes to walk,” said Garlinghouse, quickly adding the family will also be keeping a close eye on their little Pomeranian. He also added that he felt it was important for his neighbors with “small children and pets” to know there is a wolf in the area.

    Garlinghouse said his father, who lives near the juncture of Riverside Drive and Three Mile Road, had also seen the wolf in recent days. Despite two sightings in a short period of time, Garlinghouse expressed the belief that this particular animal was just “passing through.”

    The Garlinghouse sighting is not the first report of wolves either on the edge or inside the Sault Ste. Marie City Limits in recent years. The animals in all of the prior incidents apparently moved on to better grounds and were not seen, nor heard from again, after the initial wave of reports died down.

    The Michigan Department of Natural Resources reports there is no evidence of healthy wolves ever attacking human beings in North America. There have been a number of reports in recent years, however, where wolves have killed farm animals including turkeys, chickens and sheep. Additional reports also indicate a wolf will kill domestic dogs in some instances and that has likewise occurred in the Eastern Upper Peninsula.

  • Soo Evening News
  • Wolf sanctuary offers visitors a close encounter with wildlife

    Marilyn Chung - The Desert Sun

    Tonya Littlewolf clasps her hands around her mouth and lets out a piercing howl. After a few attempts, the calls are answered by a choir of wolves around her, who cry out at the desert sky as visitors snap pictures. But Littlewolf and her guests are not looking in from the other side of a fence. They are with the wolves and, for one day at least, part of the pack.

    "There's something spiritual about looking into a wolf's eyes. It touches your soul and it changes you," she says. Littlewolf runs Wolf Mountain Sanctuary in Lucerne Valley, which houses 17 wolves she has rescued through the years.Most come from unfit homes were they were illegally kept as pets and one is a former Hollywood star.

    Elite Land Tours, based in Palm Springs, shuttles visitors to the sanctuary, where they are allowed to enter the wolf enclosure and under Littlewolf's watchful eye, interact with the animals. "Most people are surprised by how big they are and how (social) they are," says Mark Farley, owner of the tour company. The visitors sit in a wooden shed as wolves walk up to them and sniff their temporary pack members. Some pet the wolves, others feed them dog biscuits. Most are awed by the experience.

    "It's an incredible honor to just be here, to be accepted by them. When you look into their eyes up so close and they stare back at you, it's incredible," says Dolly Marks, an Oregon resident vacationing in Palm Springs who visited the sanctuary with Elite Land Tours. The sanctuary is busy during Marks' visit with a handful of desert visitors and a camera crew from the "Today Show" filming for an upcoming segment.

    "It's an amazing experience for people. It's a chance to come face to face with wolves," says Jerry Groven, a driver and guide for the tour company. "People compare it to swimming with dolphins," he says .

    Littlewolf opened the sanctuary in 1985 but her experience with wolves goes back much further. "I've been with them my whole life," she says. A mix of Italian and Native American, Littlewolf grew up with her grandfather, an Apache Indian, and her mother in Arizona where the family rescued and rehabilitated wild animals, including wolves. As a little girl, her mother and grandfather told her she had the spirit of the wolf and named her Littlewolf. The wolves also seemed to recognize their kindred spirit and accepted her as part of their pack from an early age.

    Littlewolf remembers one of her earliest experiences with the wolves when as a young child her mother dressed her up to go out to visit friends. "I wanted to say goodbye to the wolves so I went out to them," she says. But the wolves didn't take a liking to her new dress and ripped it. Littlewolf worried that she would be in trouble and ran into the wolf den. "I crawled on my knees and did the danger bark. The wolves started barking too and surrounded me for protection," she says.

    Now Littlewolf is the one trying to protect her spiritual kindred. "My grandfather told me that was my summons in life," she says. "I've rescued wolves from breeders, homes and the movie industry," she says. Wildlife permits, which cost $3,000 per year, allow her to keep up to 17 wolves. Littlewolf says she spends about $4,000 every month on food for the animals. To help with the costs she began giving the hands-on tours shortly after opening the sanctuary. "In all these years I have never had any problems, never had an incident," she says. "Wolves are social animals, very family oriented."

    Littlewolf reads the animals for any signs that indicate they may not want someone inside their enclosure. "They would let me know. They would growl and I watch for those reactions," she says. "She really has a special relationship with the wolves, they respect her," Farley says.

    Littlewolf gives visitors specific instructions before they enter the den so that the wolves will respect them as well. "Take off your sunglasses, they (wolves) need to see your eyes, no hats and no things dangling from you, they like to take stuff," she says to Marks and her group of visitors before they enter the wolf pen. She hands visitors dog biscuits to feed the wolves. "Put your hands under and not over their heads when you feed them," she says.

    Littlewolf enters the pen first and since she is considered the alpha female by the pack, she is quickly greeted by the excited animals who watch her every move as if waiting for the next set of instructions. Yawto, a Montana tundra wolf, is the alpha male and if he accepts people the rest of the pack will also accept them, Littlewolf says. Yawto sniffs all of the visitors as Wacipi, his sister and the pack's omega wolf, hides in a corner. "She's at the bottom of the pecking order so she's usually in the background," Littlewolf explains.

    The wolves quickly accept the new pack of humans and take treats from the visitors. Darlene Otta, Marks' friend from Oregon, leans over and hands Yawto a treat, which he eagerly takes from her hand. "They're amazing, the way they look at you," she says. The wolves are visibly excited, but unlike dogs they don't wag their tails of beg for affection. Instead, most stare at visitors directly in the eyes and they seem more interested in the nearby camera equipment from the TV crew than in being petted. But that is not to say they are not playful.

    As the visitors begin to feel more comfortable, Yawto, the pack leader, walks up behind a reporter and slowly pulls a notebook out of his back pocket. As soon as the wolf has hold of the notebook he takes off running, with Littlewolf behind him trying to retrieve the notes. "They do this just for fun, they like to take things," Littlewolf explains.

    They also remain wild.As visitors watch, two wolves begin to growl at each other. Noticing the visitors' nervous looks, Littlewolf quickly steps in and takes control. The wolf growls but as the alpha female, Littlewolf raises her body over the wolf, who quickly lies on his back and submits to the pecking order.

    The visitors spend about 30 minutes with the wolves and after leaving the den they hang out with the oldest and most famous member of the pack. Apache Moon, a Mackenzie Valley timber wolf, appeared in the Kevin Costner movie "Dances with Wolves," as an extra with Littlewolf. He is the sanctuary ambassador and used to go on educational trips with Littlewolf. But at 20, well past the usual nine years wolves live in captivity, he now spends his days sleeping under the shade of a tree surrounded by three cats that watch over him.

    "They're a part of me and I'm a part of them and we need to protect them and keep them safe. That's what we're here to do," Littlewolf says.

  • The Desert Sun