Latest Gray Wolf Stories
Federal wildlife officials said on Friday that they will take over 1,300 gray wolves in the Northern Rockies off the endangered species list in the next 60 days. An attachment to the budget bill signed into law Friday by President Barack Obama has taken away the wolves' protection in five Western states. This will be the first time Congress has taken a species off the endangered list. Idaho and Montana are planning public wolf hunts this fall. The states had a similar mindset last year...
US District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula, Montana has halted a state proposal to lift the endangered species protections for wolves in Montana and Idaho, the Associated Press (AP) reports. The plan would have resulted in public hunting of up to 1,300 wolves in the two states.Molloy cited the court's lack of authority to put part of an endangered species population under state management exposing that population to hunting. The judge noted, "Congress has clearly determined that animals on...
For those old enough to remember Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom" television series, the dynamics of predator-prey relationships seemed clear enough: predators thinned out prey populations, which enabled a smaller, but stronger, population to survive and reproduce.However, a new paper by University of Notre Dame biologist Gary Belovsky appearing in the prestigious journal Ecology Letters suggests that predator-prey relationships are much more complex than originally thought.The...
Cattle ranchers in southwestern Alberta have suspected it for a long time and now, GPS tracking equipment confirms it: wolf packs in the area are making cow meat a substantial part of their diets.University of Alberta researchers tracked wolves to bone yards, where ranchers dispose of dead cattle, and to sites of fresh cow kills. The study was done over two grazing seasons in 2008 and 2009. The vast study area in southwestern Alberta includes private ranchland and wooded public lands...
Following others' gaze direction is an important source of information that helps to detect prey or predators, to notice important social events within one's social group and to predict the next actions of others. As such, it is considered a key step towards an understanding of mental states, such as attention and intention.Many animals will follow the gaze of others into distant space. Following a gaze around a barrier, which is considered to be a more cognitively advanced task, is much less...
A controversial wolf hunt taking place in Sweden has sparked criticism from environmentalists along with legal action from the European Commission, ending with hunters failing to cull one of the 20 animals in the quota, officials told AFP on Wednesday.By an hour after sundown Tuesday when the hunting season ended, only 19 of the 20 animals had been culled. "It's too bad. We would have gladly taken it," the head of the hunters' association in the central Swedish region of Vaestmanland told the...
A biologist at Utah State University said in a newly published paper that man's best friend may be a formidable enemy to wildlife, pointing out the harmful effects loose dogs have on other animals. Based on data from existing research and from their own case studies, Julie Young of Utah State and four other scientists concluded that feral and free-roaming canines may be responsible for wildlife woes, by hunting, harassing, or transmitting diseases to them. While it is widely accepted that the...
Scientists have discovered that the Egyptian jackal, which was previously thought to be a subspecies of the golden jackal, is actually a relative of the grey wolf. Genetic information shows that the species is more closely related to Indian and Himalayan wolves than golden jackals. The researchers said that the renamed "African wolf" was the only grey wolf species found in Africa. They also called for an urgent assessment of its conservation status. There has been a long-running...
New molecular evidence reveals a new species of grey wolf living in Africa. Formerly confused with golden jackals, and thought to be an Egyptian subspecies of jackal, the new African wolf shows that members of the grey wolf lineage reached Africa about 3 million years ago, before they spread throughout the northern hemisphere.As long ago as 1880 the great evolutionary biologist Thomas Huxley commented that Egyptian golden jackals "“ then as now regarded as a subspecies of the golden jackal...
The European Commission launched legal action against Sweden on Thursday for allowing hunters to shoot 20 wolves this year. The European Union's executive arm raised concerns about Sweden's wolf policy, including the licensed hunting of a threatened species and the "arbitrary ceiling" of 2010 wolves that was set for the animal's population. Sweden opened a hunting season on January 15 that allowed hunters to kill 20 wolves. The commission said that over 6,700 hunters...
Latest Gray Wolf Reference Libraries
The Caspian seal (Pusa caspica) is one of the smallest species in the true seal family that is native only to the Caspian Sea. It can be seen on shorelines, rocky islands, and ice blocks that occur throughout the sea. In warmer months, these seals will inhabit northern areas of this range, but in colder months, they inhabit cooler waters and the mouths of the Ural and Volga rivers. It is thought that these seals only occur in the Caspian Sea because they moved there during the Quaternary...
The muskox (Ovibos moschatus), also known as the musk ox, is native to the Arctic areas of Canada, United Sates, and Greenland. Populations have been introduced into Norway, Sweden, and Siberia, but these are small. There was a population in Antarctica, but it was wiped out due to hunting and climate change, which caused its habitat to decline. Despite this, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service introduced a new population onto Nunivak Island in Antarctica, as a means of supported...
The Czechoslovakian Wolfdog originated as an experiment in 1955 in the former Czech Republic. The breed was created by breeding a German Shepherd with a Carpathian Wolf, in attempts to create a "wolfdog" which blended the qualities of a dog and a wolf. The breed looks the part. The build of the Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, as well as its hair are wolf-like. The color of its coat is gray, with either a yellow or silver tint and a light mask. Its hair is straight and thick. The breed stands over...
The Southern-East Asian Wolf (Canis lupus pallipes), also known as the Turkish or Iranian Wolf, is a subspecies of Gray Wolf which ranges from Northern Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iran. Israel seems to be the last hope for the Southern-East Asian Wolf's survival in the Middle East because it is the only country in the region where they have legal protection. There are between 150-250 wolves all over northern and central Israel. The biggest dangers to the wolves in...
The Mexican Gray Wolf (Canis lupus baileyi), is the rarest, most genetically distinct subspecies of the Gray Wolf in North America. Until recent times, the Mexican Gray Wolf ranged the Sonora and Chihuahua Deserts from central Mexico to western Texas, southern New Mexico, and central Arizona. By the turn of the 20th century, reduction of natural prey like deer and elk caused many wolves to begin attacking domestic livestock, which led to intensive efforts by government agencies and...
