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Glimpse of

an African…

Wolf ?

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Saving the Red Wolf

Through Partnerships

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Are Gray Wolves Still

Endangered? PAGE 14

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VOLUME 25, NO. 1 THE QUARTERLY PUBLICATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL WOLF CENTER SPRING 2015

Departments

3 From the

Executive Director

17 Tracking the Pack

20 Wolves of the World

23 Book Reviews

24 Personal Encounter

26 Wild Kids

28 A Look Beyond

On the Cover

Photo by Cécile Bloch.

Did you know...

One easy way for you to help us conserve

natural resources is to make sure we have

your email address. Simply email your

address to ofﬁce3@wolf.org.

In the Long Shadow of

the Pyramids and Beyond:

Glimpse of an African…Wolf?

Geneticists have found that some

of Africa’s golden jackals are

members of the gray wolf lineage.

Biologists are now asking: how

many golden jackals across Africa

are a subspecies known as the

African wolf? Are Africa’s golden

jackals, in fact, wolves?

by Cheryl Lyn Dybas

Are Gray Wolves Still

Endangered?

In December a federal judge ruled

that protections be reinstated for

gray wolves in the Great Lakes

wolf population area, reversing

the USFWS’s 2011 delisting

decision that allowed states to

manage wolves and implement

harvest programs for recreational

purposes. If biological security is

apparently not enough rationale for

conservation of the species, then the

challenge arises to properly express

the ecological value of the species.

by Mike Phillips

The Red Wolf Species Survival

Plan: Saving the Red Wolf

Through Partnerships

In 1967 the number of red wolves

was rapidly declining, forcing those

remaining to breed with the more

abundant coyote or not to breed at all.

The rate of hybridization between the

two species left little time to prevent

red wolf genes from being completely

absorbed into the expanding coyote

population. The Red Wolf Recovery

Program, working with many other

organizations, has created awareness

and laid a foundation for the future to

conserve the species.

by Jeremy Hooper

4 149

International Wolf Center

Jeremy Hooper

Cécile Bloch

Don Gossett

Publications Director

David E. Kline

Graphics Coordinator

Carissa L. Winter

Consulting Editor

Marianne Strozewski

Technical Editor

Dr. L. David Mech

Graphic Designer

Tricia Austin

International Wolf (1089-683X) is published quarterly

and copyrighted, 2015, by the International Wolf

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LEGACY

Your care and passion for wolves can have a lasting impact beyond

your lifetime.

By choosing to leave a planned gift to the International Wolf Center,

you will help secure their future and you will become a member of

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PASSION

2 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

Raptors, Meet Our Wolves

s an education-oriented organization celebrating its 30th year, we’re fascinated with

the relationship wolves have with many animal species. Like wolves, birds of

prey command interest and reverence worldwide. We’re excited to partner with

raptor organizations and experts starting this May to bring a new exhibit for all ages to the

International Wolf Center’s interpretive center in Ely, Minnesota. Through demonstrations

featuring live raptors, educational displays, and beautiful photography from Minnesota’s

Heidi Pinkerton, we hope to enlighten the tens of thousands of annual

visitors about other majestic predators.

With our bias towards interactive learning, this temporary exhibit, Raptors …

Predators from the Sky, will teach about the habitat, prey, biology and behavior

of these carnivorous birds. We invite you to swoop in and become uplifted

by the eagle, falcon, hawk, owl, condor, kestrel, vulture, kite, osprey, merlin,

harrier and more!

Many of us venture out into the world’s wildlands to enjoy tranquility and

beauty, while building lasting memories with family and friends. Although, unfortunately,

we rarely see wolves and other apex predators in the wild, a look skyward will often

reward us with a glimpse—and if we are prepared, a photograph—of a soaring predator.

Heidi’s stunning raptor photos will serve as encouragement to the photographer in all of us.

Our summer issue of International Wolf will have more

about this educational exhibit, as will www.wolf.org.

We hope you’ll join us in Ely from May 2015 through

May 2016 to learn together about raptors and, of

course, wolves. n

INTERNATIONAL

WOLF CENTER

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Nancy jo Tubbs

Chair

Dr. L. David Mech

Vice Chair

Cree Bradley

Secretary

Paul B. Anderson

Treasurer

Cindy Carvelli-Yu

Rick Duncan

Nancy Gibson

Debbie Hinchcliffe

Judy Hunter

Deborah Wold Lewis

Dr. Rolf O. Peterson

Mike Phillips

Debbie Reynolds

Jerry Sanders

Paul Schurke

Dick Thiel

Ray Wells

Teri Williams

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Rob Schultz

MISSION

The International Wolf Center

advances the survival

of wolf populations by

teaching about wolves, their

relationship to wildlands and

the human role in their future.

Educational services and

informational resources

are available at:

1396 Highway 169

Ely, MN 55731-8129, USA

800-ELY-WOLF

218-365-4695

email address:

internationalwolf@wolf.org

Web site: www.wolf.org

Rob Schultz

Rob Schultz, executive director

From the Executive Director

International Wolf Spring 2015 3

In the

Long Shadow

of the Pyramids

and Beyond:

Glimpse of

an African…

Wolf?

Cécile Bloch

Illustration: Shutterstock/IRStone

4 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

A New Wolf in Town

heune, Senegal.The village,

perched along the Senegal

River, doesn’t appear on a

map, but it’s the site of one of the most

far-reaching conservation genetics

discoveries of the decade. There Africa’s

first gray wolf, Canis lupus lupaster,

formerly thought to be the golden jackal

Canis aureus, lopes across the rolling sandy

plains of the western Sahel. The “new

wolf” has a range that extends more than

6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) from Egypt

to Senegal. Biologist Philippe Gaubert of

the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle

in Paris and his colleagues reported

the ﬁnding in the August, 2012, issue of

the journal PLOS ONE.

When the wolf was initially dis-

covered by geneticists in 2011, its range,

they believed, was conﬁned to Ethiopia

and Egypt. Now biologists are asking:

how many golden jackals across Africa

are in fact wolves? “Unique ﬁeld observa-

tions in Senegal allowed us to provide a

diagnosis of the ‘African wolf’ that clearly

distinguished it from the golden jackal,”

says Gaubert. But hybridization between

the two may be happening, at least in

Senegal, based on detection of Canis

lupus lupaster genes in Canis aureus there.

In July 2011, researcher Cecile Bloch,

a co-author of the 2012 PLOS ONE

paper, observed wolf-like canids on the

periphery of packs of golden jackals

near Kheune. The animals were larger

and darker than the jackals. They also

behaved differently, with solitary and

somewhat shy demeanors. The only

interactions observed between the two

were ﬁghting by the larger canids for

carcasses being eaten by golden jack-

als, “the latter inevitably abandoning its

food to the former,” says Gaubert.

Ultimately, Bloch, Gaubert and others

looked at the DNA of seven animals that

proved to be African wolves: one east of

Parc National du Djoudj near Kheune;

ﬁve in Algeria’s coastal region between

Skikda and El-Kala; and one in Mali,

Adrar des ﬂoras, Terarabat. They also

found that two other seeming golden

jackals were mostly African wolves. Both

were in Senegal, one a captive animal at

the Zoo du Parc de Hann in Dakar, and

one in the wild not far from Kheune.

Mitochondrial DNA, which the

scientists used in their study, “shows only

part of the picture of the African wolf’s

lineage,” says biologist Dr. L. David Mech

of the U.S. Geological Survey and the

University of Minnesota. It tells us about

the wolf’s heritage through the mother’s

side; nuclear DNA offers a more com-

plete view. As with other wild canids,

studies (and scientiﬁc journal papers

to be published soon) are underway

to reveal its origins and genetic makeup.

Is lupaster a wolf or a close relative?

While the research is ongoing,

“our assessment of the African wolf’s

range supports the idea of a wide

spectrum of habitats for the species,”

says Gaubert, “from Mediterranean coastal

and hill areas, including hedged farm-

lands, scrublands, pinewoods and oak

forests in Algeria, to tropical, semi-arid

savannas in Senegal and massifs in Mali.”

This range, he says, poses the question

of how such large carnivores went un-

detected for so long. Or did they?

In the Time of the

Jackal-Gods

It is 2494 B.C., Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty.

A procession makes its way to a sun-

temple, where the pharaoh’s Sed Festival,

held in the 30th year of his reign, is

set to begin. The gathering renews the

sovereign’s youthful vitality. A greeting

awaits him: two ofﬁcers wearing caps and

tails lined with fur—fur the Egyptians

believe came from wolves. The human

sentries represent the jackal gods Anubis

and Wepwawet, Anubis’ lesser-known

twin. The two were the guardians of the

border between life and death, a bound-

ary which, in ancient Egypt, only canine

by CHERYL LYN DYBAS

International Wolf Spring 2015 5

believe the Egyptians fashioned elabo-

rate tombs to protect the dead from

the jackals. But were Anubis and Wep-

wawet in fact jackals? Could one or

both gods have been something else?

Egyptians thought so long ago. What

did they know that we don’t, or didn’t,

until 2011? That Wepwawet and Anubis

were wolves in jackals’ clothing.

Millennia later, Aristotle was the ﬁrst

European to write of wolves in Egypt,

stating that they were smaller than those

found in Greece. “The same observation

was made by twentieth-century biologists

when they compared the sizes of jackal

skulls,” says ecologist Claudio Sillero-

Zubiri, deputy director of the Wildlife

Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU)

at the University of Oxford in the U.K.

Fast-forward to a few years ago, when

an Indian biologist named Yugal Tiwari

sent Sillero-Zubiri a picture from a video

Tiwari had ﬁlmed in Eritrea. The footage

showed a lanky canine with large paws

“that might have been a desert-dwelling

wolf,” says Sillero-Zubiri. “We hoped

more information would turn up, but

unfortunately it didn’t.”

More to the Story

But Wepwawet and Anubis did not

remain quiet in their underworld. While

doing ﬁeld work in Ethiopia, scientists

from universities in Ethiopia and Norway

noticed that certain golden jackals looked

different. “They were larger, more slen-

der, and sometimes had a whitish color,”

says Nils Stenseth, a geneticist at the

University of Oslo. The researchers col-

lected scat specimens for DNA analy

sis. The samples, including some from

“more usual-looking” golden jackals,

were shipped to Stenseth’s laboratory for

analysis. “With breathless excitement,”

remembers Sillero-Zubiri, the Oslo sci-

entists contacted him and others on the

project. The jackal samples appeared to

be wolf DNA—but didn’t correlate with

samples in GenBank, the world’s largest

repository of genetic sequences.

Cécile Bloch

divinities traversed. Called “the openers

of the roads,” Anubis led the way to the

south, Wepwawet to the north.

Anubis and Wepwawet were named

for the propensity of jackals to hunt

rodents by night near cemeteries. Some

Shutterstock/IRStone

6 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

“We could hardly believe our eyes,”

says Eli Rueness, a geneticist at the

University of Oslo and lead author of

the January 2011 paper in PLOS ONE

reporting the results. “We had unwit-

tingly uncovered genetic evidence of a

cryptic canid [a species hidden within

a species] that looked like a golden

jackal,” says Sillero-Zubiri, “but whose

genetic code told another tale.” The biol-

ogists unveiled the news: some golden

jackals are gray wolves. Scientists then

updated the wolf’s scientiﬁc name to

Canis lupus lupaster, after the gray wolf

Canis lupus. Hereafter, it is referred to

simply by its scientiﬁc name, lupaster.

Lupaster is the only gray wolf on the

African continent. The discovery tells

researchers that members of the gray

wolf lineage lived in Africa as far back as

three million years ago. The wolves even-

tually spread through the Northern

Hemisphere. They became the

well-known gray wolves of the

northern United States and

Canada. “We now know

that wolves were indeed

in Africa in the days of

the ancient Egyptians—

and long, long before,”

says Stenseth.

Lupaster looks like

a large, blackish-yellow

dog. Its tail is brush-

like, with black hairs on

the end. A mane of long,

coarse, black-tipped fur runs

from its crown to the base of its

tail and onto its shoulders and hips.

The golden jackal is smaller than lupaster,

with soft, pale fur, and it is a social animal.

A breeding pair is often followed by its

offspring, and it sometimes forms packs

when hunting. Its cry, heard just after

dark or shortly before dawn, is a long,

wailing howl followed by three yelps:

“dead Hindoo, where, where, where.”

In contrast, lupaster travels alone.

A nocturnal creature, it is sometimes

glimpsed as the sun begins to set,

when it emerges from caves and crev-

ices, and from tombs. Whether it howls

remains unknown.

Wepwawet continues to open new

roads. Further analysis links the lupas-

ter specimens from Ethiopia with the

same genetic sequences of animals

2,500 kilometers to the north in Egypt.

“The results place lupaster in Egypt, as

well,” says Sillero-Zubiri.

Lupaster’s range extended as far south

as the Sinai Peninsula, scientists knew,

but didn’t, it was thought, reach main-

land Africa. Stenseth, Sillero-Zubiri and

others, however, believed that many

canids identiﬁed as golden jackals as

far south as Kenya and beyond might

be lupaster.

Philippe Gaubert proved them right.

“As we look more closely with genetic

tools at even well-studied species such

as the gray wolf in North America,” says

biologist Dr. Rolf Peterson of Michigan

Technological University, “we’re reﬁn-

ing our understanding of these animals.

For Africa, and for North America, what

we thought 10 years ago about the bio-

geography of the wolf has been turned

on its head.” The 2011 and 2012 ﬁnd-

ings, Peterson believes, are far from the

end of the story.

Lone Wolf in a Starkly

Beautiful Land

Genetic techniques are revealing the

hidden biodiversity of largely unex-

plored places such

as Ethiopia. The

discovery of lupas-

ter’s true identity

shines a light on a

formerly dark cor-

ner of the world:

the Afroalpine

Field observations distinguish the African wolf (left) from the golden jackal (right), but biologists

have unveiled evidence that the golden jackal, with its soft, pale fur may be a hybridization of the

blackish-yellow lupaster, with its brush-like tail and mane of coarse, black-tipped fur.

Cécile Bloch

Lee R. Berger

KENYA

ETHIOPIA

ERITREA

SUDAN

EGYPT

SOMALIA

SOUTH AFRICA

DJIBOUTI

SENEGAL

MALI

Addis

Ababa

Shutterstock/IRStone

International Wolf Spring 2015 7

fauna and ﬂora, an assemblage of spe-

cies that evolved in the relative isolation

of the highlands of the Horn of Africa.

Understanding the intricacies of that

biodiversity may come not a moment

too soon for lupaster. Although golden

jackals are listed by the International

Union for Conservation of Nature

(IUCN) as a “species of least concern,”

lupaster may be much rarer. “It’s a prior-

ity, for both scientiﬁc and conservation

efforts, to determine this wolf’s where-

abouts and numbers,” says Stenseth.

Gaubert agrees. “Since ‘jackal-like’

canids in Africa are regularly killed to

protect livestock,” he says, “it’s urgent

to develop a conservation strategy for

the African wolf. Shepherds say that the

African wolf hunts larger livestock such

as sheep, goats, and even cows, whereas

the golden jackal only preys on lambs.”

The Menz Guassa Community

Conservation Area in Ethiopia’s high-

lands may hold the key. Lupaster has been

seen most often in this land of short scrub

plants sprouting from rock-strewn hill-

sides. “The region is among the Ethiopian

highlands’ most pristine and secluded

natural wonders,” says Zelealem Tefera,

a scientist at the Frankfurt Zoological

Society (FZS) Ethiopia Ofﬁce. The FZS

supports conservation projects through-

out Africa in countries like Ethiopia,

Tanzania and Zambia.

Guassa villagers live in kebeles

(farmers’ associations). In the day’s last

light, Wepwawet may walk among them.

“Out of the corner of your eye at sunset

you might just spot lupaster,” says Karen

Laurenson, an ecologist and veterinarian

at the FZS-Ethiopia Ofﬁce. She’s glimpsed

an animal that emerges at dusk, seem-

ingly out of thin air, to disappear just as

quickly. “I think I’ve seen lupaster, but

didn’t know at the time what it was.”

Laurenson is concerned that the wolf

could be gone before we know it. “Golden

jackals and other canids are susceptible

to rabies, canine distemper virus, and

other diseases. With a population that

may, or may not, be very small, lupaster

could disappear in the blink of an eye.”

Lupaster

vs.

Homo sapiens?

Disease and inbreeding clearly

aren’t the only challenges lupaster faces.

Uncovering this cryptic species’ secrets

may be a mixed blessing.

“My Grandma told me about wolves

that stole her livestock,” offers one

villager. “I’d always ask if she was sure it

wasn’t a hyena, dog, jackal, or fox, but

her answer was ﬁrm: ‘it’s a wolf.’ She said

that wolves were once very common,

but that she hasn’t seen any for decades.

I’ve heard many claims like that.”

Where there’s livestock, lupaster may

be, too. “We know so little about this

subspecies,” says Zillero-Zubiri. “Who

can say whether and when it takes

sheep? It’s still a shadow on a ridge.”

Luckily, says Tefera, “People here refer

to it as the ‘nomad jackal’ rather than the

more common jackals they’ve accused of

killing their lambs.” Its elusiveness may

be lupaster’s salvation.

Wepwawet Among Us

“Woollff!” shouted Lajos Nemeth-

Boka, lead naturalist and tour leader for

GreenEye Ecotours in the U.K. It was

November 2007 when Nemeth-Boka was

driving slowly along the west bank of the

Nile River between Luxor and Aswan,

Egypt. “An animal crossed the road in

front of us, coming from the Nile’s shore

and running toward the Sahara sands,”

he says. “I’ve seen golden jackals and

I’ve seen wolves, and there is a big differ-

ence between the two. This was clearly

a wolf.” It was, he believes, lupaster.

In later Egyptian art, Wepwawet

was depicted as part-human, part-wolf,

with the body of a human and the head

of a wolf. European Egyptologists

mistook Wepwawet for a jackal, even

though the ancient Egyptians clearly

identiﬁed the god, and the animal for

which it was named, as a wolf. According

to texts inscribed in the pyramids,

Wepwawet often led the way to suc-

cess for Egyptians from messengers to

kings. Five thousand years later, will we

give Wepwawet’s incarnation the recog-

nition—and protection—its position as

Africa’s only gray wolf deserves? n

Science journalist and ecologist Cheryl

Lyn Dybas, a Fellow of the International

League of Conservation Writers, also

brings a passion for wildlife and conser-

vation to National Geographic, Natural

History, National Wildlife, BBC Wildlife,

Scientiﬁc American, The Washington

Post, and other publications.

Editors Note: This article has been adapted

from previous pieces in Natural History and

Africa Geographic.

Cécile Bloch

8 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

f the road to extinction was a hundred

miles long, the red wolf was already in

the ninety-ninth mile and was about

to drop off the edge into extinction.” These

were the words of Curtis Carley, wildlife

biologist and future coordinator of the

Red Wolf Recovery Program. In the 1970s,

Carley, with help from scientists including

Ron Nowak and Howard McCarley, led

a charge to save the remaining red wolves.

They were about to embark on a conser-

vation journey unlike any other.

The Red Wolf Species Survival Plan:

Saving the Red Wolf Through Partnerships

Text and Photos

by JEREMY HOOPER

International Wolf Spring 2015 9

Like all wolf populations in the

United States, the red wolf (Canis rufus)

had been mostly eliminated from

the landscape due to intense human

persecution, habitat loss and degra-

dation, and prey declines resulting

from over-harvesting by humans.

This forced scientists, government

ofﬁcials, and the general public to

make a decision—attempt to save

the species or watch it go extinct.

In 1967 the red wolf was listed by

the newly adopted federal Endangered

Species Preservation Act. When the

Endangered Species Act became law in

1973, a recovery plan was developed

for the red wolf. At this time, the num-

ber of red wolves was in rapid decline,

with those remaining forced to breed

with the more abundant coyote (Canis

latrans) or not to breed at all. The rate

of hybridization between the two spe-

cies left little time to prevent red wolf

genes from being completely absorbed

into the expanding coyote population.

Recognizing that the red wolf’s existence

was in peril, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife

Service (USFWS), led by Carley, began

an effort to capture and remove the

remaining red wolves from the wild.

Though such an effort to cause the

functional extinction of a species in the

wild seemed counterintuitive and was

challenged by many, Carley believed

that this was the only way to save the

species from extinction. Over a seven-

year period (1973-1980), 400 canids

that resembled red wolves were captured

within the wolf’s historical range. Of

these 400, only 17 were identiﬁed as red

wolves; the majority were coyotes and

red wolf-coyote hybrids. Of these 17, 14

would become the “founders” of the red

wolf captive population, removed from

the wild and taken to Point Deﬁance

Zoo and Aquarium (PDZA) in Tacoma,

Washington. This marked the beginning

of the red wolf captive breeding program.

Captive Program History

The USFWS partnered with PDZA in

1973 to maintain and manage red wolves

The red wolf is

recognized as

being in danger

of extinction.

The red wolf is

listed as an

endangered species

under the

Endangered

Species

Preservation Act.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife

Service begins study

of the red wolf in

southeastern Texas and

southwestern Louisiana.

The captive

breeding center

at Point Defiance

Zoo and Aquarium

(PDZA) acquires

first red wolf.

The first litter of

red wolf pups is

born at PDZA.

The Endangered

Species Act becomes

federal law. The first

Red Wolf Recovery

Plan is completed,

and implementation

begins.

Red wolves are

successfully

released on Bulls

Island, South

Carolina.

in captivity that had been removed

from the wild. Their goals were to

certify the genetic purity of wild-

caught wolves, increase the number

of genetically pure red wolves in cap-

tivity, and maintain a continuing red

wolf gene pool for reestablishment

of the species in the wild and for

distribution to selected zoos. New

husbandry techniques were quickly

developed, including the adoption

of an unconventional “hands-off”

approach designed to reduce the

likelihood of wolf-human habituation

by minimizing interactions between

wolves and their keepers (unlike some

gray wolves, red wolves are not hand-

raised in captivity). Scientists were hope-

ful this approach would maintain a level

of the wolves’ intolerance of humans,

minimizing the potential for human-wolf

conﬂict at reintroduction sites.

By 1981 the American Association

of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) had

developed the Species Survival Plan

(SSP) program with a stated mission

to “cooperatively manage speciﬁc, and

typically threatened or endangered,

species populations within AZA-

accredited Zoos and Aquariums, Certiﬁed

Related Facilities, and Sustainability

Partners.” The AZA approved the red

wolf for the SSP program in 1984, lead-

ing to the development of a new manage-

1962 1963 1964 1965 19 66 1967 1968 1969 1970 19 71 1972 1973 1974 19 75 1976 1977 1978 1979

Brief Historic

Time Line for

the Endangered

Red Wolf

The commitment of the Red Wolf SSP

will continue to be a critical factor

in the long-term survival of one of the

world’s most endangered animals

as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

prepares to announce its decision about

whether to continue or to terminate

the Red Wolf Recovery Program.

10 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

The last red wolves

are removed from the

wild. The red wolf is

declared functionally

extinct in the wild.

The Red Wolf

Recovery Plan is

revised, updated

and approved.

The Alligator River

National Wildlife

Refuge (ARNWR)

is established.

Four pairs of captive-born

wolves are released in

the ARNWR. An island

propagation site is

established on Bulls

Island, South Carolina,

to acclimate wolves

to the wild before

mainland release.

Second-generation

pups are born in the

wild in the ARNWR.

The first litter of pups

via artificial

insemination is born

at PDZA.

Red wolves are released

in Pocosin Lakes

National Wildlife Refuge

(PLNWR). First pups are

born in the GSMNP.

Scientists and experts

determine hybridization

with coyotes to be the

greatest threat to

recovery of the red wolf.

An Adaptive Management

Plan is developed to

address and manage

hybridization.

The first wild litter of pups

is born in the ARNWR.

A second restoration

project is started in

Great Smoky Mountains

National Park (GSMNP).

The GSMNP

reintroduction

project is

canceled.

1980 19 81 1982 1983 1984 1985 19 86 1987 1988 1989 19 90 1991 1992 1998 19 99 2000

1993-1997

ment plan to ensure the persistence of a

“healthy, genetically diverse, and demo-

graphically varied captive population.”

By 1989 the USFWS had integrated the

SSP into the Red Wolf Recovery Program,

marking the ﬁrst time a USFWS Recovery

Plan had been combined with a Species

Survival Plan.

The Red Wolf Species Survival Plan

(RWSSP) initiated a network of facilities

across the country with a common goal

of restoring the red wolf to its native

range. This network provided more space

for housing red wolves, increased oppor-

tunities for breeding and research, and

a broader outreach campaign. Resulting

increases in the captive population

brought the program closer to its goal

of wild reintroduction.

In 1987, ten years after the ﬁrst pups

were born in captivity and seven years

after the species was declared biologically

extinct in the wild, eight red wolves were

released into Alligator River National

Wildlife Refuge in eastern North Carolina.

This represented several ﬁrsts: an attempt

to reintroduce a wolf into the wild; a car-

nivore from captive stock; and a species

previously declared extinct in the wild.

While the need for assisting in wild

recovery efforts has shifted as the wild

population has grown, the RWSSP, led

by coordinator Will Waddell, contin-

ues to play an integral role in recovery

efforts by: 1) scientiﬁcally managing

the captive population and supplying

wolves for release when needed to add

genetic vigor to the wild population or

when additional reintroduction sites

are identiﬁed; 2) supporting ﬁeld con-

servation activities, such as by applying

captive research to the ﬁeld; 3) working

in areas such as genome banking

and assisted reproduction, contracep-

tion, behavior and husbandry; and

4) promoting red wolf awareness.

The RWSSP: A Closer Look

A cornerstone of the RWSSP’s suc-

cess has been the management of captive

breeding. In a systematic fashion, breed-

ing efforts are designed to increase genetic

International Wolf Spring 2015 11

diversity and ensure long-term viability

of the red wolf population. Built from

just 14 wolves, the current population

is characterized by closely-related indi-

viduals. As a result, undesirable effects

believed to be attributed to inbreeding,

such as lower birth weights, smaller

litter sizes, physical abnormalities, and

increased pup mortality, continue to

pose potential problems. To mitigate

these effects, the RWSSP collaborates

with scientiﬁc advisors from the AZA

Population Management Center (PMC) to

base breeding efforts on a comprehensive

genetic and demographic analysis of the

population. With the help of a computer

software program, information on the

pedigrees of all wolves in the population

reveals how closely related individuals

are to one another and to the population

as a whole. From this information, pairs

whose offspring would be least related to

the population are identiﬁed for breeding,

the key to improving genetic diversity.

Such stringent captive-breeding man-

agement became even more valuable in

2002 when program biologists began a

pioneering effort to supplement the wild

population with captive-born pups.

Cross-fostering integrates genetically

valuable, captive-born pups into wild lit-

ters in an attempt to increase population

numbers and, most importantly, genetic

diversity. For both an increase in popu-

lation and diversity to occur, a captive-

born pup must be raised by a wild wolf

pack, survive to maturity, and reproduce.

Usually, candidates for fostering, both

captive and wild, are selected based on

three ideal factors. The captive and wild-

born pups must be similar in age, less

than 2 weeks old, and the wild litter must

be relatively small, to prevent overbur-

dening the mother. The ﬁrst successful

cross-fostering in 2002 led to a captive-

born male wolf producing a wild litter

of his own in 2004. Cross-fostering has

become an effective tool in red wolf recov-

ery efforts. Acceptance of fostered pups

by wild mothers has been high, leading

to more captive-born wolves producing

litters in the wild. Recognizing these suc

cesses, the Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery

Program recently adopted and completed

a successful cross-fostering effort.

In 2007, the 20th anniversary of the

release of red wolves into North Carolina

and the 30th anniversary of the ﬁrst red

wolf litter born at PDZA, the Red Wolf

Recovery Program was awarded the North

American Conservation Award from the

AZA, illustrating the beneﬁts of organi-

zations working together to conserve a

species. Moreover, it demonstrates that

zoos, nature centers, and similar orga

nizations can and will play a signiﬁcant

role in future red wolf conservation. Not

only do they bring awareness to red wolf

conservation, they provide the public

an opportunity to see red wolves and to

experience a rare glimpse into the social

lives of these mysterious canids. n

Jeremy Hooper is a graduate student at

the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga,

where he’s studying the relationship

between humans and coyotes in the city

of Atlanta, Georgia. He has been involved

with the RWSSP since 2008 through his

work at the Reflection Riding Arboretum

and Nature Center in Chattanooga.

Jeremy’s goals are to improve relations

between humans and predators through

research, education and partnerships.

The entire North

Carolina red wolf

population is wild born

except for two pups

born at North Carolina

Zoo and fostered into a

wild den, where they

are raised by wild wolf

parents.

One hundred to 130 wild

red wolves roam 1.7 million

acres in northeastern North

Carolina. Over 170 exist

in captive populations.

Adaptive management

is working to control the

coyote population in

the recovery area.

Coyote hunting at night with

artificial light is suspended in

5-county red wolf restoration

region pending the outcome

of a lawsuit filed by Southern

Environmental Law Center

(SELC) on behalf of the Red Wolf

Coalition (RWC), Defenders of

Wildlife (DOW) and the Animal

Welfare Institute (AWI).

A federal court issues a preliminary

injunction blocking the North Carolina

Wildlife Resources Commission

(NCWRC) from authorizing coyote

hunting—including at night—in the

5-county red wolf restoration area.

Settlement Agreement is reached

between plaintiffs (RWC, DOW, AWI)

and NCWRC. The NCWRC agrees

(1) to impose specific conditions on

coyote hunting in the restoration

region and (2) to list the red wolf as a

threatened species in North Carolina.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)

conducts internal review of Red Wolf

Recovery Program.

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

One of the 2002

fostered wolves

fathers a litter of

eight pups.

Alarming increase occurs

in suspected or confirmed

gunshot mortalities. Wild

population is estimated

at 90–100 wolves.

SELC, on behalf of

RWC, DOW and

AWI, asks a federal

judge to halt all

coyote hunting in

5-county red wolf

restoration region

in northeastern

North Carolina.

USFWS will

announce its

decision regarding

the future of the

Red Wolf Recovery

Program.

Red Wolf Recovery Program

… demonstrates that zoos,

nature centers, and similar

organizations can and will

play a signiﬁcant role in

future red wolf conservation.

12 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

the Cinderella Wolf (wolf 42) and the 06’ female (wolf

832). Known for their intelligence, leadership, hunt-

ing abilities, and parenting, these wolves are admired

by scientists and the general public.

As is standard practice, Cane was placed in quaran-

tine before release into the main enclosure with Old

Mom. Met with nervous anticipation, the day ﬁnally

arrived. We opened the door. He was in. Mom initi-

ated the ﬁrst meeting. Side by side they both stood

ﬁrm and tall. Several times early on, Cane put a paw

on Old Mom’s back, and she would soon return the

favor. After a couple of minutes, Cane went on his way

seemingly more interested in exploring his new home.

According to the reports, Cane was most aggressive

around food. We threw in two pieces of meat. Each

grabbing a piece, the two wolves moved away from

each other. Then, in a moment I’ve never forgotten,

Old Mom seemed to decide, “I want his piece, too.”

She took it from him. Since that day, neither Tish nor

I have seen any of the behaviors mentioned by Cane’s

past keepers. Old Mom had straightened him out. n

— Jeremy Hooper

Old Mom Stands Firm

n December 2012, a large male red wolf weighing 70-80

pounds arrived at the Reﬂection Riding Arboretum

and Nature Center, a RWSSP cooperator located in

Chattanooga, Tennessee. His name was Cane, and all we

knew about him was that he had a history of dominant and

aggressive behaviors toward other wolves, notably females.

Due to these persistent behavioral issues, the RWSSP wanted

to transfer 7-year-old Cane to a new facility. Tish Gailmard

was the Director of Wildlife at Reﬂection Riding and also

a member of the RWSSP Advisory Committee. She and I

came to a similar conclusion—if any wolf was capable of

holding its own, it was Old Mom.

An 11-year-old, 40-pound female red wolf, Old Mom

is a very conﬁdent, dominant animal. Nicknamed “Busy

Feet” by a past keeper, she’s constantly on the move,

patrolling her enclosure, eyes alert and tail held high.

She usually initiates and ends howls, closing with a

long series of impressive barks, as if reinforcing claim

of her area. As I’ve watched her over the years, I’ve

imagined what she would have been like as a wild

red wolf. My thoughts raced with comparisons of

well-known, successful gray wolves from Yellowstone—

Old Mom

Cane

International Wolf Spring 2015 13

by MIKE PHILLIPS

n a stunning move on December 19, 2014, Federal Judge Beryl Howell ruled that

Endangered Species Act protections be reinstated for gray wolves (Canis lupis)

in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and parts of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, North

Dakota and South Dakota. The ruling resulted from a lawsuit ﬁled by the Humane

Society of the United States and other wildlife protection groups against the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) December 2011 decision that removed the

act’s protections. That delisting decision allowed state ﬁsh and game departments

to manage wolves and to implement harvest programs for recreational purposes.

The judge’s ruling ended all public taking of wolves in the Great Lakes states for

depredation control or any other purpose except defense of human life. The ruling

did not put an end to federally enacted depredation control efforts in Minnesota,

where the wolf was returned to threatened rather than endangered status.

Rob Jackson

Are Gray

Wolves Still

Endangered?

14 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

Even though the ruling could be

interpreted as indicating otherwise,

the gray wolf is biologically secure in

Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin

and should have remained so, even with

liberal state management. However, a

thorough reading of the Endangered

Species Act indicates that biological

security and legal recovery are not nec

essarily one and the same. The latter

requires wolves to be far more common

and widely distributed than the former.

One can argue that wolves have been

biologically secure in Minnesota since

the 1970s when approximately 1,000

animals lived there. The state used that

argument to oppose the original listing of

the species. But the Endangered Species

Act has always required that the gray

wolf be more common than that. The

law requires that a species be secure (not

endangered or threatened, but suitable

for delisting) across a signiﬁcant portion

of its range. Put another way, recovery

requires that before delisting can occur a

species can only remain insecure (threat-

ened, endangered, or extirpated) across

no more than an insigniﬁcant portion

of its range.

This notion of recovery is consistent

with the deﬁnitions for important words

in the act including endangered, threat-

ened, and species. It is consistent with

the USFWS’s previous delisting deci-

sions for species other than the wolf. In

those cases, the species in question were

fairly common and widespread at the

time of delisting. Finally, this notion

of recovery is consistent with the all-

important “Findings” section of the

Endangered Species Act which speciﬁ-

cally identiﬁes ecological value as an

important reason for conserving imper-

iled species. It is very hard for the eco-

logical value of a species to be properly

expressed if it is absent from many of

the ecoregions of its historical range.

In sum, Judge Howell took sharp

exception to the USFWS’s advance of a

novel, relatively easily attained approach

to gray wolf recovery. While it is easy

to understand that the difﬁculty of

wolf recovery offered rationale for this

approach, it is important to note that

the courts have rendered it unlawful.

Why?

Judge Howell set aside the delisting

decision because she concluded that the

USFWS had failed to adequately explain

why the majority of the Great Lakes

wolf population area, where the species

remains extirpated, was insigniﬁcant

and, therefore, superﬂuous to recovery.

The term insigniﬁcant is important in

the context of the Endangered Species

Act, since its counterpart signiﬁcant is

included in the deﬁnitions for endan-

gered and threatened species:

• Endangered species—any species

…which is in danger of extinction

throughout all or a significant

portion of its range.

• Threatened species—any spe-

cies which is likely to become an

endangered species within the

foreseeable future throughout all

or a signiﬁcant portion of its range.

When considering signiﬁcant and

insigniﬁcant it is important to accept

that the insigniﬁcant portion of a spe-

cies’ range can include large areas that

are not occupied securely, if at all, by

the species. Recovery does not require

that a species occupy all of its range. It

is equally important, however, to accept

that in every meaningful way, signiﬁcant

has to mean more than insigniﬁcant.

Recovery does require that a species be

fairly widespread in the area considered

by the original listing action, which

typically is the species’ historical range,

before federal protections are lifted.

Judge Howell also concluded that the

USFWS erred by adopting a piecemeal

approach to wolf recovery by delisting

the Great Lakes gray wolf population

when it was never more than a subset of

the originally listed entity (i.e., the gray

wolf across a much larger area) which

had not been recovered. According

to the judge the Endangered Species

Act only allows for the delisting of the

Wolves will

probably

always stir

deep emotions

in us. How

one perceives

Judge Howell’s

ruling probably

depends more

on personal

values than

facts.

originally listed entity in total, rather

than piecemeal.

Lastly, Judge Howell was concerned

that the USFWS had failed to adequately

explain why a liberal recreational

harvest of wolves did not threaten the

species. It is worth noting that since del-

isting, Great Lakes region trophy hunters

and trappers have killed more than 1,500

wolves. A recent USFWS internal report

indicates that recreational and manage-

ment harvests can cause declines in wolf

populations, despite the birth of far more

pups (about 11,000 since delisting) than

wolves killed by hunters and trappers.

Since Judge Howell’s ruling was some-

thing of a shocker, given the presence

of more than 3,000 wolves and several

hundred breeding packs in the Great

Lakes states, it is reasonable to consider

possible consequences.

International Wolf Spring 2015 15

The USFWS’s most recent vision for

recovery of the wolf subspecies that

occupies the Great Lakes states called

for delisting from the Great Plains to the

Paciﬁc Northwest based solely on its bio-

logical security in Minnesota, Michigan,

and Wisconsin (and, curiously, Canada).

Judge Howell’s ruling strongly suggests

that this vision comes up short. Why?

Because the area targeted for delisting

includes vast tracts of highly suitable, but

unoccupied, habitat that is signiﬁcant

in many relevant ways. Judge Howell’s

ruling bolsters an interpretation of the

Endangered Species Act that concludes

that federal protections for the wolf must

apply until the species is securely dis-

tributed across much more of this area.

The judge’s ruling might prompt

some elected ofﬁcials to try to gut the act.

Given the controversial nature of wolves,

it is reasonable to expect blowback of

this sort. I suspect, however, that any

substantive change to the Endangered

Species Act would be hard to enact.

Given the public’s overwhelming and

persistent support of the law, President

Obama would seem an unlikely ally in

such an effort, and procedural rules for

the U.S. Senate could be exercised to

prevent such a bill from ever passing.

The ruling might prompt some

elected ofﬁcials to try to amend the

Endangered Species Act to minimize

the consequences of recovery. Some

amendments may be in order. It could

be useful to amend the phrase “sig-

nificant portion of range” to read

“signiﬁcant portion of historical range

where habitat remains suitable or can

be made so through reasonable means.”

Granted, such an amendment would

create a slippery slope, given the myriad

deﬁnitions that could be attached to

signiﬁcant, suitable, and reasonable means.

However, the vast extent of private land

across much of the gray wolf’s histori-

cal range precludes recovery there. Due

to extensive private land in Illinois, for

example, the state seems lost to the

gray wolf. No reasonable means seem

to exist to change that fact. There is no

doubt that passage of the Endangered

Species Act cleared the way to secure a

future for the gray wolf, but it was large

tracts of public land, not private land,

that allowed that future to be realized.

Rather than gutting or lightly amend-

ing the Endangered Species Act, a more

likely legislative response to Judge

Howell’s ruling would be ﬁscal in nature.

Congress could, for example, defund

activities by attaching riders to unrelated

spending bills. This is the approach that

Congress recently used to express dis-

favor with the USFWS’s consideration

of listing the greater sage grouse. Or

Congress could legislatively delist the

wolf as it did in Idaho and Montana.

Several legislators are now preparing

such a bill.

Wolves will probably always stir deep

emotions in us. How one perceives Judge

Howell’s ruling probably depends more

on personal values than facts. Whether

it is cause for celebration or regret, it

clearly signiﬁes that biological security

is not necessarily an adequate threshold

for wolf recovery under the Endangered

Species Act. It seems that even contro-

versial species must be fairly widespread

before federal protections can be lifted,

or the USFWS has to adequately explain

why more widespread distribution is

not possible or necessary to honor the

spirit and intent of the act.

Mike Phillips has been a Montana state

legislator since 2006 and is currently a

state senator. For the last 29 years he has

worked with threatened and endangered

species in the research, management and

policy realms. He led the effort to restore

the red wolf to northeastern North

Carolina and the gray wolf to Yellowstone

National Park. He has served on every

Mexican Wolf Recovery team convened

since 1995, and has directed the Turner

Endangered Species Fund since he

co-founded the organization with Ted

Turner in June 1997.

??????????

Rob Jackson

16 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

Nancy Gibson

Tracking the Pack

Looking Toward the Future with

an Eye to the Past

by Lori Schmidt, Wolf Curator

s part of the International Wolf

Center’s wolf care plan, we have

chosen to rotate new pups into

the Exhibit Pack every four years.

Even though the memories of 2012

pups, Luna and Boltz, seem recent, we

are heading toward the 2016 pup intro-

duction. The Center maintains wolves

as ambassadors to the wild for the pur-

pose of educating our visitors about the

physical and behavioral traits of wolves.

One aspect under discussion in the

scientiﬁc community is genetic variations

among wolf populations. In 1989, when

we started the resident wolf program

at the Center, there were 24 accepted

subspecies of wolves in North America.

By 1995, due to new analyses of skull

measurements, subspecies of the gray

wolf in North America have been reclassi-

ﬁed to include ﬁve subspecies of wolves.

To gain more insight into this issue,

search the Center’s website http://www.

wolf.org for the article, “The Scientiﬁc

Classiﬁcation of Wolves: Canis lupus

soupus.” For the purpose of this article,

we currently recognize ﬁve subspecies.

These subspecies are the Canis lupus

occidentalis or northwestern wolf, Canis

lupus arctos or arctic wolf, Canis lupus

nubilus or Great Plains wolf, Canis lupus

baileyi or Mexican wolf, and Canis lupus

lycaon, the eastern timber wolf.

The Center’s captive wolf program

has been managing multiple sub-

species of wolves since 2000, allowing

visitors to the educational facility in

Ely, Minnesota, or visitors to our web-

site, to observe the behavioral patterns

and physical characteristics of our

wolves. In May 2000 the Center ﬁrst

diversiﬁed its Exhibit Pack by adding

arctic wolves represented by Shadow

and Malik. Grizzer, Maya and Nyssa,

representing the Great Plains wolves,

joined the exhibit in 2004. With the

arrival of Aidan and Denali in 2008, both

northwestern wolves, the Exhibit Pack

contained three of the ﬁve subspecies.

The natural process of aging warranted

the retirement of Shadow from the

Exhibit Pack into the Retired Pack in July

2010. We are currently managing two

subspecies in the Exhibit Pack: Aidan and

Denali are northwestern wolves; Luna

and Boltz are Great Plains subspecies.

As we look to the future introduc-

tion in 2016, we turn an eye to the

past and share many fond memories of

Shadow and Malik’s time in the exhibit.

Their unique white pelage, representative

of arctic wolves, drew the attention of

many visitors, and the pair bonding of

Maya and Shadow proved the point that

scientists often make—regardless of

the subspecies, a wolf is a wolf is a wolf. n

Nancy Gibson

Kelly Godfrey

During the winter of 2005, even though the Center’s

wolves are spayed and neutered, Shadow chose Maya to be

the dominant female and display a behavior called parallel gait.

Captive born Shadow and Malik as they neared

one month of age; note the white guard hairs are

just starting to appear on their heads and legs.

Wild, two-month-old arctic pups photographed

on Ellesmere Island, Canada;

note white guard

hair already

present.

International Wolf Spring 2015 17

INTERNATIONAL WOLF CENTER

Major Contributors and Special Gifts

Albrecht Family Foundation

Michele Amacker

Hayes Anderson

Anonymous

Patricia Bellace

Scot Bernstein

Boy Scout Troop 411,

Stacy MN

Leslie Brown

Lori Buswell

Cindy Carvelli-Yu

Patricia Clarke

Lisa Crawford

Kevin Culver

David D. Dayton

James Denton

Daniele de Ponthiere

Connie Di Bratto

Brian and Ellen Dietz

Melanie Donaghy

Connie and Mike Dowler

Richard Duncan

Joseph Ehrbar

Alan and Sharon Fearey

Denise and Mike Ferguson

Friends of Tamarac

National Wildlife Refuge

Sonia Fuerstneau

Bridget Fusco

Valerie Gates

Deborah Gentile

Michael Gerritsen

Nancy Gibson and

Ron Sternal

Edward Gleason

Carol J. Green

Joe and Jody Greenhalgh

Wesley Haut

Charles and Sharon Heck

Debbie Hinchcliffe and

Jerry Sanders

Judy Hunter

Neil Hutt

Michael Huwaldt

Richard Jolkovsky

Kristine Karnos

Christopher Kennedy

Jeanie and Murray Kilgour

Paula Kocken

Robert and Kathleen Kulus

Connie and Nick LaFond

James Lundsted

Donna Mack-Iwanski

Kathryn Mahigan

Sylvia Mannig

Linda McGurn

Dr. L. David Mech

Dave Messinger

Seamus Metress, Ph.D.

Barbara Müller

Janice Navratil

Roger and Hollie Parsons

Robert Patterson

Patricia Pettis

Tanya Reiss

Debbie Reynolds

The Constance Robert

Fund of the Community

Foundation for

Greater New Haven

Paul E. Robert

Michael Ross

Michael Sanders

Daniel and Susan Schmitt

Martha Schoonover

Bradley and Melissa

Schumacher

Paul and Susan Schurke,

Wintergreen Dogsled

Lodge

Kathleen and

Michael Shopa

Sharon Siebert

Andrene Smith

Guy Smith

Code Sternal

Nancy jo Tubbs

Joseph Velasquez

Michael Vieths

John and Donna Virr

Bruce Weeks

Ray Wells

Jean West

James Wiener

Virginia Wolfe

Brian and Kathy Yelton

Memorials

In memory of Bebe and Bella:

Donna Duran

In memory of Marian Bloechl:

Dianne Wulff

In memory of Arlin Erickson:

Dick and Deb Thiel

In memory of Jim Gates:

Joan Gates

In memory of Pat Gillespie:

Essential Health, St Mary’s

Hospice, Virginia, MN

In memory of Heidi

and Brandy:

Richard Bartlett

In memory of Lakota:

Nancy Vanderwerff

In memory of Marcia Larson:

Tracy Bygrave

In memory of

Mary Nicholson:

Margaret Nicholson

In memory of Vivian Nohr:

Catherine Criel

In memory of Remy:

Lisa Nivens

In memory of Shadow:

Kathy Belgea

Helena Goscilo

In memory of

William Weisman:

Audrey Wolf

In memory of Wildlife:

Marina Mooney

Honorary

In honor of Darlene Berchin:

Darlene Berchin

In honor of Ryan Bruno’s

birthday:

The Visco Family

In honor of my children:

Stephanie-Ann Bahr

In honor of Pam Churn:

Lorianne Churn

In honor of Lynn Cook:

Barbara Cook

In honor of William Fox:

Elaine and Myron Schlechter

In honor of Greg Gailen:

Jill Weems

In honor of Susan Goebel:

David Bedrin

In honor of Karl Hassis:

Thomas Cowette

In honor of Judi Jarnberg’s

birthday:

Sarah Booth

In honor of Bob Landis:

Deborah Hinchcliffe and

Jerry Sanders

In honor of Conrad Patrick, Jr.:

Nick Patrick

In honor of Debbie Reynolds:

Susan Anderson

In honor of Siobhan Rix:

Joanna Pasternack

In honor of Jerry Sanders:

Rich Hinchcliffe, Jr.

In honor of my 6th-grade

SETSS class:

Iveliz Colon

In honor of the marriage of

Kris Sheldon and Anine Jensen:

Sally Larson

In honor of Paige Snyder,

who is very concerned

about the wolves:

Robert Snyder

In honor of Frederick deRosset

Strong’s 100th birthday:

Richard and Gail deRosset

In honor of Eli Weissman:

KB Weissman

Matching Gifts

Ameriprise on behalf of:

Erik Johnson

Melissa Kotek

Christopher Lamere

Paul Trevizo

Connexus Energy on behalf of:

Shannon McDonald

Hospira on behalf of:

Stanley Lipinski, Jr.

Medtronic on behalf of:

Cathy Gray

In-Kind Donations

Justin Benjamin

Charles Biviano

Carol Brooks

Leslie Brown

MaryAnn Canning

Christine A. Coletta

Carlos Horta Font

Google

Traci McFadden

Kathleen Melde

Eleanor Sabatini

Susan Todd

Doris Werner

Kathy Yelton

Estates

Margaret A. Haines

Edna Mae Lamb

Sustaining

Members and

Monthly Donors

Bob Akerley

Mara Arico

Rebecca Becker

Darcy Berus

SEPTEMBER 2014 – NOVEMBER 2014

Major Individual Donors and Foundations

18 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

INTERNATIONAL WOLF CENTER

Member Proﬁle

Jen Webb—

Finding Strength

in a Time of

Personal Tragedy

By Darcy Berus

nyone who sees Jen Webb’s

ﬁve wolf tattoos can tell

she loves wolves. They’ll

hear excitement in her voice

when she talks about her dis-

covery of the International Wolf

Center. She said, “I was surﬁng

online and found what I thought

was an amazing place and all you

do to teach people about this

misunderstood creature.”

On the phone from her

Pennsylvania home, Jen shared

with me why she’s been a member

of the International Wolf Center

since 2006. “I’ve always had a

passion and fascination for these

beautiful animals…I would give

anything to see a wolf in person

and take a picture of one, but traveling

is an issue for me. That’s why I haven’t

been able to visit (the International Wolf

Center’s Interpretive Center in Ely).”

Not long ago, Jen experienced the

tragic loss of Rich, her husband of 22

years. In her search for strength, she

looked for ways to get up each morning

and face the day. “I needed to be a part

of something positive and latch onto

it …something to help me focus,” she

said. After seeing the Center’s CrowdRise

online fundraising drive for a new “Wolf

Wagon” for the Wolf Care program, she

decided to create her own CrowdRise

campaign to boost the effort. “I was

hoping not only to meet my goal, but I

wanted to help in whatever way I can…

It gave me something positive to be

involved with.”

Jen’s campaign was a huge success!

She not only exceeded her goal—so far,

over $1,600 and counting—but she is

regaining her personal strength and

positive spirit.

“You take a lot of things for granted.

You ﬁgure there’s always tomorrow. But

I’ve come to see that it’s not always true.

And then it takes time to heal. It was

important for me to get involved. I want

to give and help wolves, however I can.”

Thank you, Jen, for reaching out to

the International Wolf Center and letting

your dedication to our mission help you

in your personal recovery journey. We

are touched by your story and are grate-

ful for your generous, enduring spirit.

Photo courtesy of Jen Webb

Anne Braaten

James Brady

Carol Brooks

Michael Byrnes

Mary Ann Canning

Carly Dent

Linda Dougherty

Matthew Dresnick

Cameron Feaster

Martina Fehlhaber

Vic and Yvonne Gagliano

Jennifer Herstein

Carol Hodges

Karen Hodsdon

Judy Hunter

David Kline

Catherine Kling

Debbie Kowalski

Hui Chuan Li

Valerie Lockhart

Louise Murphy

Roberta Odell

Michael Pastorelli

Dana Pond

Nancy Powers

Henry and Carol Rompage

Bette Jean Rua

S. Schade

Pierre Schlemel

Rob Schultz and

Andrew Engelhart

C.A. Sharp

Catherine Shepard

Rebecca and Ronald Sinclair

Paul Smith

Peter Smith

Patti and Bob Sobecke

Carol Lynn and Ronald

Sokoloff

Lynn Streadwick

Walt Stump

Leslie Teuber and David Albert

Nancy Vanderwerft

Manuel Vazquez

Sandra Weiner

Steffanie Wiggins

Linda Williams

International Wolf Spring 2015 19

Andersen veriﬁed that this wolf origi

nated from the Mielkeler pack in Sachsen,

the easternmost part of Germany. The

wolf was born in 2009 and had traveled

around 850 kilometers (more than 528

miles) to the northern part of Jylland

called Thy, home to a national park,

as well as diverse landscapes including

beaches and farms.

DNA samples and photos now show

that wolves have spread to several parts

of Jylland, and that at least eleven wolves

have been in Denmark, all males.

They come from Germany, Poland and

the Baltic countries, and some have

traveled over 900 miles (more than 1448

kilometers).

As in many other countries, Prior

notes, the return of wolves has provoked

discussion among the Danes. The popula-

tion is polarized: those who do not want

the wolf, typically hunters and farmers

who claim the country is too small for a

Wolves Return to Denmark: A Long

Journey, An Even Longer Time

by Tracy O’Connell

erete Prior writes from Denmark

about the arrival of wolves in

her country. She spent a week

with International Wolf Center staff in the

Northwest Territories, and has remained

a friend of the Center through the years.

She notes that Denmark had not been

home to wolves in the wild for several

decades. The last wolf was killed in 1813.

Nearly 200 years later, in October 2012,

a wild wolf was observed in Jylland,

also called Jutland, the Danish main

land that shares a border with northern

Germany. The animal died a month later

from an infection in the chest which had

caused a buildup of ﬂuid in the lungs,

according to an autopsy. It showed no

sign of rabies, distemper or parvovirus

infections.

With the help of German scientists

from the Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut

und Naturmuseum, a major science

museum in Frankfurt, and DNA tests,

the Danish scientist Liselotte Westley

Awen Briem

Wikimedia Commons/Jens Buurgaard Nielsen

Tved Klitplantage in Thy

National Park, Denmark:

Evidence shows that wolves

from Germany, Poland and

the Baltic countries have

traveled hundreds of miles to

the diverse landscapes of this

national park in Denmark.

20 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

meters (more than 8,500 feet) and the

snow would have been about six meters

(more than 19 feet) deep at the time.

Nicholls notes, “Slavc was one of

an estimated 4,000 wolves living on the

Balkan peninsula of south-eastern Europe.

This most urbanized, industrialized and

farmed continent on Earth is now home

to some 12,000 wolves, 17,000 brown

bears and 9,000 Eurasian lynx.”

If it was a mate Slavc sought, the trip

paid off. In early 2012 he passed through

Italy’s Lessinia Natural Regional Park in

the province of Verona. Biologists there

had seen video footage of a female wolf,

judging by its posture when it urinated.

Slavc kept going, however, and tarried

for a while farther north, in a region of

vineyards and greenhouses, where he is

believed to have killed the only domestic

livestock he hunted on this trip. Then he

backtracked to the regional park, depicted

online as a verdant wonderland of 10,000

hectares (more than 24,500 acres). Here

he met the she-wolf, now dubbed Juliet,

in tribute to the Shakespearean character

of that region whose story did not end as

well. Park rangers conﬁrmed the prints

of two canids together in the snow. The

pair produced litters in 2013 and 2014;

the 2014 litter had seven pups.

THE UNITED

KINGDOM:

A plan to re-introduce now-

departed species into the UK, described

by British environmental activist George

Monbiot in his book, Feral, has been set

back by a government plan to subject

species not now present in the landscape

at least some of the time, to eradication

and control. The re-wilding plan has the

support of the John Muir Trust, which

sees ecotourism among the advantages,

and millionaire Paul Lister, who wants to

introduce bears and wolves to what he

envisions to be an enclosed 50,000 acre

area (more than 20,234 hectares) which

encompasses his estate in Sutherland,

as well as other land. Other species that

would be similarly barred by the gov-

ernment’s proposed ruling: the lynx,

European beaver, brown bear, spotted

hyena, lion, wolverine and blue stag bee-

tle. “Some would be widely welcomed;

others not at all, but it’s clear that a debate

about which species we might bring back

is one that many people in this country

want to have, but that the government

wants to terminate,” in the words of James

Delingpole, himself vocal in opposition

to the re-wilding proposal, writing in

the UK’s Breitbart online news service.

ITALY

SPAIN

SWEDEN

NORWAY

GERMANY

POLAND

FRANCE

DENMARK

SLOVENIA

AUSTRIA

ALGERIA

TUNISIA

MOROCCO

UNITED

KINGDOM

MALTA

Lessinia Natural

Regional Park

Thy National Park

Berlin

Sachsen

large predator and that the wildlife will

suffer; and those who welcome the wolf

as a long-lost inhabitant of the country

and a tribute to the diversity of nature.

The Danish government has agreed

on a management plan for wolves which

states that it is illegal to hunt them and

forbidden to destroy the areas where

wolves have established themselves.

Denmark is committed to follow the

European Union rules which dictate

strong protection of wolves, while pay-

ing compensation to farmers who lose

livestock to wolf attacks. It has basically

adopted the same rules as Sweden, where

two men were sentenced to two years in

prison last September for killing a wolf.

Meanwhile, farmers are investigating

new measures, such as various kinds

of fences and the use of guard dogs, to

protect livestock, especially sheep.

Elsewhere in the World…

SLOVENIA:

Wolf OR-7 made waves

throughout the world’s media

for his wide-ranging travels from his

native Oregon pack to California and

back to Oregon, spawning a movie and

fan club. Now he has a counterpart

in Europe—Slavc, a wolf collared in

2011 in southern Slovenia, which has

traveled 2,000 kilometers (more than

1,242 miles) to Italy. Slavc stayed with

his natal pack from his June collaring

into December, then headed north. His

travels were tracked by Slovenian biolo-

gist Hubert Potočnik, who gave the play-

by-play in an interview last August with

Henry Nicholls for the online news site

theguardian.com.

Concerned that Slavc would be shot

by people confusing him with a stray

dog because of his collar, Potočnik

reached out to the media with infor-

mation throughout his trek. He reports

Slavc crossed two major motorways

in the early days, using underpasses

and overpasses to navigate trafﬁc. He

swam the Drava River, a tributary to the

Danube, at a place that was 280 meters

(more than 900 feet) wide, where there

were no bridges. He crossed the Austrian

Alps where the lowest pass was 2,600

International Wolf Spring 2015 21

CHINA:

It was widely reported last

August that a pack of starving

wolves attacked a farming community

in rural China near the Mongolian bor-

der, injuring six people, some severely.

Some sources claimed the wolves were

after the village’s sheep population, and

only attacked humans who were defend-

ing the ﬂocks. Editors note: International

Wolf has no independent conﬁrmation of

the alleged attacks on humans or whether the

wolves were rabid

ROMANIA:

In an article last June, freelance

journalist Luke-Dale Harris

described the way the public’s popular

conception of wolves as bad animals

causes them to be singled out more

than lynx or bear for public hatred. “The

wolf is a demonic image that corrupts,

destroys innocence, and makes victims of

the small ones,” a theater producer tells

him of the villain in the classic children’s

play, The Goat with Three Kids. “He feels

the smell of blood and ﬂesh. He goes

on high rocks and howls at the moon.

All of this makes us think of him like

of a demon.” Harris contends Romanian

media “take a similar approach,” noting,

“Stories of the grisliest wolf attacks are

splashed all over…and feature sensa-

tionalist headlines.”

INDIA:

The nation’s ﬁrst-ever attempt

at counting its wolf population

aims to do so by documenting howls.

“Every wolf howl is unique, just like every

tiger has a unique stripe pattern on its

body,” says Bilal Habib, a scientist at the

Wildlife Institute of India and an expert

on wolves. Ananda Banerjee, writing in

the English-language Indian website Mint,

notes that there is no well-documented

population estimate for wolves anywhere

in the Indian subcontinent. The pro-

posed census will be through a means

called “capture and recapture,” he says,

explaining that it is a method commonly

used to estimate a species’ population.

Scientists will record samples of wolf

howls in various areas over various sea-

sons, using the formula Total = original

number tagged x total recaptured ÷ number

tagged on recapture.

Banerjee addresses the challenges

of protecting the wolf in India, citing

that nation as the cradle of wolf evolu-

tion in which a proposed three species

exist, two of which—the Indian and

Himalayan wolves—are unique to the

subcontinent. The third, the Tibetan

wolf, is from the wolf-dog

clade, or ancestry, that is found across

the rest of Eurasia and North America.

He notes that human population pres-

sure will continue to exert demands on

wolf habitat, as the treeless grasslands

are considered by the government to be

a wasted area and, therefore, not pro

tected as a resource, but rather marked

for development.

The goal of protecting wolves is seen

as less noble than protecting other spe-

cies, like the rhino, elephant, lion or

tiger, Banerjee explains. Adding to the

difﬁculty of protecting wolves is their

need for big tracts of land in which to

disperse new populations, which this

crowded nation can ill afford. Noting

the negative views of wolves because of

their depredation of livestock, Banerjee

draws attention to the positive myths

that have grown up around these ani-

mals as indication that their stories can

be cast in a more positive light, citing

Romulus and Remus, who, according to

legend, built Rome after being raised by

a wolf, and Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling’s

The Jungle Book, whose extraordinary

talents are credited to his being raised

by wolves in the jungle.

Tracy O’Connell is associate professor

emerita of marketing communications at

the University of Wisconsin-River Falls

and a member of the International Wolf

Center’s communications

and magazine

committees.

George Hughes

International Wolf has no independent conﬁrmation of the alleged attacks on

humans or whether the wolves were rabid

22 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

and development of major highways,

often interrupt natural corridors, while

national parks, wilderness areas and

continental-scale conservation efforts

support the “carnivore way.” Eisenberg

aids the lay reader with helpful deﬁni-

tions of biological terminology and offers

stories of face-to-face encounters with

these provocative predators.

Mission: Wolf Rescue. Targeted for kids

10 and older, this 128-page National

Geographic Kids large paperback by

Kitson Jazynka and Daniel Raven-

Ellison is irre

sistible for all

ages. Full-page

photographs

and eye-catch

ing graphics sur-

round readable

information and

activities that

ground children

in the basics of

wolf behavior

and biology.

Throughout,

they are intro

duced to engag-

ing observations

from profession-

als who interact

with wild animals, including biologists,

photographers, veterinarians, and res-

cue workers. The booklet encourages

sensible ways to help wolf populations,

and it might well inspire a child’s pas-

sion to work with animals. Adults could

do worse than to share this with a kid

and, themselves, become enthralled

once again with the world of wolves.

dults can gain insight into key

predator research and the pathway

for the migration of imperiled

species, while kids can become inspired

to care about and work with animals.

These awesome animals sometimes

frighten, often delight, and always engage

readers of all ages.

The Predator Paradox: Ending the

War with Wolves, Bears, Cougars, and

Coyotes. Author John

A. Shivik is an even-

handed storyteller and

experienced researcher

who brings into sharp

focus the world of

“varmints”—wolves,

bears, cougars, and

coyotes—as well as

those who revere,

detest, or study them.

In short, readable sec-

tions, The Predator

Paradox introduces the

insights of key predator

researchers and con-

servationists, includ-

ing Dave Mech, Diane

Boyd, Hank Fischer

and Doug Smith. Shivik

references a myriad of

inside sources. He quotes Richard Nixon

signing the 1973 Endangered Species

Act, saying, “…nothing is more price-

less and more worthy of preservation

than the rich array of animal life with

which our country has been blessed.”

Interviewing a widowed grandmother

whose small Wisconsin cattle herd lost

two head to wolves, Shivik notes, “The

dead were cows with calves. The wolves

ate her cash income for the whole year.

It’s not the magnitude of the killing;

it’s how personal it feels.” The second

half of the book focuses on the cre-

ative fervor and imperfect science of

ﬁnding methods to deter wolves from

taking livestock. Flags, surgical steril-

ization, fences, artiﬁcial scent marking,

and relocation projects are detailed in a

way that will fascinate anyone who has

ever, even for a minute, been intrigued

by predator research.

The Carnivore Way: Coexisting with and

Conserving North America’s Predators.

Researcher Christina Eisenberg takes

us on a trek from

Mexico, north

through the

Rocky Mountains

to Alaska. This

potential wild

lands corridor, she

contends, is essen-

tial for the disper-

sal, breeding, and

future survival of

our charismatic

megafauna: griz-

zly bears, wolves,

lynx, jaguars, cou-

gars and wolver-

ines. Offering a

chapter on each

one, Eisenberg

provides an over-

view of how sci-

ence, policy, and

environmental ethics promote, or stand

in the way of, a pathway for the migra-

tion of these imperiled species. Human

extraction activities, such as logging,

The Predator

Paradox: Ending

the War with Wolves,

Bears, Cougars,

and Coyotes

2014. Beacon Press

Written by John Shivik

208 pages

The Carnivore Way:

Coexisting with and

Conserving North

America’s Predators

2014. Island Press

Written by Christina

Eisenberg

328 pages

Excitement, Entertainment, Learning

Can Be Shared

by Nancy jo Tubbs

Mission: Wolf Rescue

2014. Turtleback Books

Written by Kitson Jazynka and

Daniel Raven-Ellison

128 pages

International Wolf Spring 2015 23

The Red Wolves of the Ozarks

by Steve Weems

arly pioneers to the Ozark hills

of Carroll County, Arkansas,

recounted wolves as being abun-

dant. According to the book Pioneer

Tales by Cora Pinkley-Call, the earliest

European settlers to Carroll County

had to continually guard their stock

against the threat posed by wolves and

other predators. At night wolves would

“come and pick up the crumbs from

where (the settlers) had eaten” in their

primitive pioneer camps. The wolves

were often described as large and either

reddish-gray or black in color. Biologists

say it was the red wolf that was found

in Carroll County.

I’ve long been fascinated by the stories

of wolves in Carroll County. I recall sit-

ting with my grandfather, Jack McCall,

on cold winters’ nights, asking about

them. He would spit tobacco juice into

a coffee can at his feet, feed the stove

another stick of wood, and patiently

answer my questions.

In my time Jack McCall was an

elderly, compact man in a cowboy hat.

He was a lifelong farmer and timber

man whose livelihood took place out of

doors, tending his livestock and land.

At an early age I realized that his life

was centered more on the production

of food than earning money. Cash was

necessary, but you couldn’t eat it. And

when you have twelve children, like he

and Granny, an abundant food supply

is critical.

Jack McCall was quick to defend that

food supply with a gun. He didn’t take

kindly to competition, whether it be

groundhogs in the garden or predators

in the livestock. He considered it to be a

life and death matter for all concerned.

I’ve heard the opinion that Carroll

County never had any actual wolves—

that the old tales were of coyotes. I’ve no

doubt that Jack McCall would have been

surprised by this argument as wolves

and coyotes not only look different, they

sound different. In his younger days, he

killed wolves for the bounty and because

they killed sheep. Later, he killed coy-

otes because they preyed on his chickens

and ducks. In his mind the two types

of animals were not the same. Wolves

were obviously bigger than coyotes, but

they also carried themselves differently

when they moved. In John Sealander’s A

Guide to Arkansas Mammals, he recounts

an Arkansas red wolf specimen tipping

the scales at 90 pounds. I’ve read that

out West, pure coyotes seldom weigh

more than 30 pounds.

There is a story from the 1930s of

McCall men being seen with a horse-

drawn wagon piled with the bodies of

dead wolves. They’d been running the

wolves with hounds into areas where men

lay in wait with riﬂes, ready to ambush

and kill. I don’t exactly understand the

shutterstock/Colin Stitt

The farm that Granny

grew up on is now a small

part of the Nature Conservancy’s

King’s River Preserve…

The red wolf, though, is missing.

24 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

intricacies of this hunting method, but it

was apparently successful. The hounds

would likely have been foxhounds or

coonhounds, the traditional athletic,

long-eared dogs used for tracking and

giving chase in the Ozarks. Though more

rare, another type of dog was employed

to battle these predators.

When I was young, Granny also told

me about wolves, which she indicated

were numerous in her childhood. Raised

upriver several miles from her future

husband in the Mason Bend of Kings

River, she saw them only occasionally,

but heard them often. Across the river

from her family’s log house was a high

bluff where the wolves would congregate

at night and howl. Like other sheep farm-

ers of the time, her father hated wolves.

She recalled that circa 1918, he left on

a trip, traveling what was considered a

great distance. He returned with two

massive wolfhounds, dogs powerful

enough to hunt and bring down wolves

on their own. When the wolves gathered

across the river on the bluff, Granny’s

father would release the wolfhounds.

The farm that Granny grew up

on is now a small part of the Nature

Conservancy’s Kings River Preserve in

Carroll County. The preserve protects

ten miles of clear, free ﬂowing river and

the surrounding acreage for a variety

of native species, several quite rare. The

red wolf, though, is missing.

The Arkansas Game and Fish

Commission says that in the 1940s,

Carroll County had one of the larg-

est populations of wolves left in the

state, the small farms and woodlands

providing good habitat. Each year the

number of pure wolves dwindled, as

they were hunted by man and interbred

with coyotes.

Carroll County continued to offer a

$15 bounty on wolves in 1966. In 1967,

the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed

the red wolf as endangered under the

Endangered Species Preservation Act.

In 1969 the Arkansas Game and Fish

Commission gave wolves protected sta-

tus. By 1980 the red wolf was ofﬁcially

extinct in the state of Arkansas.

Late in life, Jack McCall, not one for

giving a predator an even break, was

wistful about the disappearance of the

wolves from Arkansas. He wondered

if it was man’s place to annihilate an

entire species. n

Steve Weems returned to writing moti-

vated by his love of the forests and lore

of his native Ozark Mountains. He draws

inspiration from deep woodland hikes,

clear spring-fed creeks, and the thrill of

continually discovering nature’s mysteries.

His writing is often fueled by the desire to

capture the tales of a disappearing culture

learned from the elders of his family.

He lives with his wife and three children

in a deep hollow near Eureka Springs,

Arkansas. Murder in the Ozarks is his

first full-length novel.

Blog/Web site: http://steveweems.com/

Jack McCall and his hounds

Photo courtesy of Steve Weems

International Wolf Spring 2015 25

Telemetry The use of electronic equipment to

locate a distant source. Researchers use telemetry

equipment, such as receivers and antennas, to locate

signals emitted from radio collars which have been

put on the wolves they are studying.

Biologist A person who studies living organisms,

life processes and/or the animal and plant life of a

particular place. Biologists also study the relationship

of living things to one another.

Canis lupus

The scientific name for the gray wolf.

rizzer is a Great Plains subspecies of the

Gray Wolf (Canis lupus nubilus). He is cur-

rently the only wolf in retirement at the

International Wolf Center. He was born on May 5,

2004. Grizzer was removed from the Exhibit Pack in

March, 2011, after the loss of his littermate, Maya.

It was determined that Grizzer had been losing con-

ﬁdence in his status and, without the support of his

littermate, he struggled to compete with his younger

packmates. Now in the retirement enclosure, he has

less stress, but he can still interact with the other

wolves through the fences. This winter Grizzer has

been alert to the sounds of nearby sled dogs and the

ravens perched overhead waiting to steal a scrap of

food. Visitors to the Center cannot see Grizzer in the

retirement enclosure, but he can be seen through the

live wolf cams at www.wolf.org as well as in weekly

updates on YouTube about all the ambassador wolves

at the Center.

International Wolf Center

26 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

Word Search

Use the Word Bank below to

find the words hidden in the

puzzle. Words may be found

horizontally, vertically, diago-

nally, forward and backward.

wolf

telemetry

biologist

transmitter

radio

frequency

winter

airplane

receiver

antenna

signal

research

Boltz

Luna

Aidan

Denali

Grizzer

inter is a great time

for scientists to track

and study wolves, because

wolves are easily seen against

the white winter snow, espe-

cially from an airplane. With

the thick summer foliage gone

and with the use of radio-telemetry equipment, scientists can track

and study radio-collared wolves and their packs.

Radio telemetry works like a radio station, sending out very high

frequency (VHF) signals. Wolves are captured and ﬁtted with trans-

mitter collars. When the wolf is released, the transmitter starts send-

ing out VHF signals. When the wolf biologists are in range with an

antenna and receiver, they hear the beeping noise emitted from a

wolf’s collar. Thanks to this technology, wild wolves can be located

and studied.

Visitors to the International Wolf Center can learn about track-

ing, observation, data collection and radio telemetry. They can even

try all the radio telemetry equipment outside at the Center. Check

our website www.wolf.org to look for radio telemetry classes for kids

and adults. n

I T T S H G E N R W K F T R X X Z F L Q

Y A R M A O U E T X R G U V Y Q P V V R

Y U S A Q L Z T W R E S E A R C H B L Z

F H M J N Z C Y A J C E M M P H X K K Y

R B O B I S C J D S E E N M H K W U R E

E G S R Y K M Z P K I K K V A S F T C J

Q I G M T N E I H H V N E F N K E P A U

U J R B N V U N T H E G C Y T M P G K A

E W I A D M S E T T R C J W E H S T E N

N K I V U M B S V H E H J L N H G F T X

C S R Q A A I J Z H X R E V N B O L T Z

Y I I M W G V J X U V T M D A S L U N A

B R E G O O Y S K D V G T X M Y F I S T

Y L V L L R R F D K E R F G T N O T I M

D E O B F E J U D C H N Q H N B W X G E

X I T O T N R A D I O L A I D A N T N D

B B E N F A I R P L A N E L D O D A A S

I Q I W M X S S V W P Q U I I A D G L X

P W T H Q Y M S O D P Y Y E F C W O L F

F P R I F X M J B J M X F A A E K H P X

Darcy Berus

International Wolf Spring 2015 27

The Future Holds Challenges

for Washington’s Wolves

by Diane Gallegos

fter being absent for over 70 years,

wolves have been recolonizing

in Washington since early 2000

by dispersing from neighboring Idaho,

Montana, Oregon and British Columbia.

Currently the gray wolf (Canis lupus) is

listed and protected as endangered in

Washington under state law and pro-

tected under the federal Endangered

Species Act in the western two-thirds

of the state. Wolves in the eastern third

were removed from federal protection

in 2011.

The Successes

In 2007, in anticipation of wolves’

return, the Washington Department of

Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) convened a

citizens’ stakeholder group to develop

a recovery and management plan. The

Washington Wolf Conservation and

Management Plan, adopted in December

2011, serves as the wolf recovery plan

for the state. Addressing gray wolf-live-

stock conﬂicts is an essential part of the

plan. Thanks to a bipartisan effort, the

state legislature provided funding for

research, training and cost-sharing for

nonlethal deterrents, including range

riders, fencing, night penning, guarding

and herding animals, and the removal

of carcasses. In addition to support with

nonlethal deterrents, the plan also pro-

vides for compensation in the event that

producers experience livestock losses, as

well as the legal permission for livestock

producers in the eastern portion of the

state to kill wolves caught in the act of

attacking livestock or guarding animals.

The Challenges

Although a great deal of support is

available to Washington livestock pro-

ducers, some have chosen not to par-

ticipate in nonlethal deterrent programs,

research, or compensation, and they are

pressuring WDFW to employ intensive

lethal management of wolves. Human-

caused mortality has been a major cause

of losses for Washington’s wolves since

wolves began recolonizing in the state,

including the killing of two breeding

females in 2014.

The Future

While wolf recovery continues to have

broad public support in Washington,

we are at a crossroads. Will we work

together to effectively employ current

nonlethal tools and support the research

needed to develop new methods of pro-

tecting livestock, or will we revert to

intensive lethal practices of the early

1900s? The state wolf conservation goal

is a minimum of 15 successful breed-

ing pairs for three consecutive years

in three recovery regions across the

state from eastern Washington to the

Olympic Peninsula. I believe that with

cooperation, collaboration, and inno-

vation Washington can be a leader in a

sustainable 21st century wolf manage-

ment program that protects these apex

predators (along with bears and cougars)

while continuing to have functioning

livestock production. n

Diane Gallegos has served as the executive

director of Wolf Haven International since

2011. She began her career as a ﬁeld

biologist and has served in leadership

positions for a number of nonproﬁt

organizations prior to joining the staff

at Wolf Haven.

Photo courtesy Wolf Haven International

Although a great deal of support is available to Washington

livestock producers, some have chosen not to participate in nonlethal

deterrent programs, research, or compensation, and they are

pressuring WDFW to employ intensive lethal management of

wolves… While wolf recovery continues to have broad public

support in Washington, we are at a crossroads.

28 Spring 2015 www.wolf.org

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entertained and amazed by our Exhibit Pack. Learn and be

inspired by wolf educators in daily programs or take in a

specialty program perfect for you, your family or group. Plan

your next adventure today!

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Programs featuring live guest raptors along with

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Gene Ortiz

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.

The Red Wolf Species Survival Plan: Saving the Red Wolf Through Partnerships. International Wolf 25(1):9-13

Article

March 2015

Jeremy Hooper

The Red Wolf Species Survival Plan: Saving the Red Wolf Through Partnerships. International Wolf 25(1):9-13

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