From the Grand Junction Sentinel in Colorado:
A handful of state lawmakers are crying wolf over a proposal to reintroduce the carnivorous species into Colorado.
Under House Bill 1037, introduced into the Colorado Legislature last week, the gray wolf could only be introduced into those counties where voters approved Proposition 114 on last fall’s ballot, which called for the reintroduction of the animals by 2023.
From Macleans.ca in Canada:
Years ago, on a dark December morning, Ron Doctor was driving alone through the snowy hinterlands of the Northwest Territories when he spotted something odd in the thick, fresh snow. He couldn’t get a good look, so he drove home and returned to the scene during his precious four-hour window of subarctic daylight. The second visit confirmed his suspicions: these were giant wolf tracks, 7½ inches long.
“Holy smoke,” the veteran wildlife officer thought to himself. “This is unreal.” He’d never seen a wolf track that big.
From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
The gray wolf was removed from protections of the federal Endangered Species List on Jan. 4. The delisting returned management authority for the species to Wisconsin and other states.
State control includes the ability to use lethal measures such as hunting and trapping to manage the animals.
From the Bozeman Daily Chronicle:
Bills that would permit the snaring of wolves and extend Montana’s wolf trapping season are advancing toward the governor’s desk.
From The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington:
BILLINGS – After 25 years of inbreeding, Yellowstone National Park’s wolves are becoming genetically more similar, researchers have found.
“They’re still a really healthy population,” said Alexandra DeCandia, who looked into wolf genetics for research she recently published. “It’s not anything we’re worried about.”
In fact, genetic similarity can help Yellowstone’s wolves fight a common enemy – mange, a skin disease caused by parasitic mites.
From EurekaAlert.org:
When there is a choice, wolves in Mongolia prefer to feed on wild animals rather than grazing livestock. This is the discovery by a research team from the University of Göttingen and the Senckenberg Museum Görlitz. Previous studies had shown that the diet of wolves in inland Central Asia consists mainly of grazing livestock, which could lead to increasing conflict between nomadic livestock herders and wild predatory animals like wolves. The study has been published in the journal Mammalian Biology.
From SixthTone.com in China:
It took more than three decades, but Chinese environmental groups and advocates have finally gotten their wish: an updated protected wild animals list with more than 500 new species on it. Issued earlier this month, the new National List of Key Protected Wild Animals represents the first significant adjustment to the list since the initial version published in 1989.
Thirty-two years is a long time in the conservation world, and the updated document reflects how China’s understanding of wildlife protection has shifted and evolved during that stretch. Arguably the most significant change is how the lists treat supposedly “harmful” animals, including upgraded protections for the dog-like dhole. Even more notable, wolves — whose population plummeted in China over the past several decades — were added to the list of second-class protected animals, the first time they have received such protection.
From The Brussels Times:
The wolves of Belgium were involved in 46 attacks on livestock in 2020, exactly twice as many as in 2019, according to the Flemish Agency for Nature and Woodland.
Overall attacks on livestock – a total of 66 including attacks by dogs and foxes – resulted in 140 dead animals, 15 injured and 14 missing without trace. Of the total, wolves were responsible for 108 deaths, 87 of them sheep, as well as seven injuries and eight disappearances.
Click here for the full story.
From OPB.org:
Several wolves recently crossed state lines from established packs in Oregon into California. Experts say dispersing wolves could expand territory and strengthen the species’ genetic diversity.
Last week, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife identified OR-93, a wolf traveling from the White River Pack in Oregon’s Warm Springs Reservation area to Lassen County, California. And in December, a member of Oregon’s Mt. Emily Pack known as OR-85 was caught on camera in Siskiyou County, California, with another unidentified wolf.
From the Wisconsin State Journal at www.Madison.com:
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources will allow hunters to kill 200 wolves in the last week of February even as the state appeals a judge’s order requiring the winter hunting season.
Acting on orders of a Jefferson County judge, the Natural Resources Board voted unanimously Monday to authorize a February hunting and trapping season for the gray wolf, which was removed last month from the federal endangered species list.
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.