Genomic analysis shows 18,000-year-old-puppy Dogor is a wolf

From Queen Mary University of London:

He was remarkably well preserved – and scientists were able to tell that he was male, his body was 18,000 years old and he was around 2 months old when he died. His name means ‘friend’ in the Yakut language. He was particularly puzzling because normally it’s relatively easy for scientists to distinguish between wolves and dogs.

Queen Mary’s Dr Dave Stanton and Love Dalén from the Centre for Palaeogenetics carried out the genomic sequencing that finally pinpointed Dogor’s true identity.

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Webinar about Minnesota’s draft wolf plan update is July 13

From The Pilot-Independent in Walker, Minnesota:

Anyone interested in learning more about the Department of Natural Resources’ draft wolf plan update is invited to an informational webinar at 6 p.m. July 13.

The webinar is free but registration is required. Participants will have an opportunity to pre-register to ask questions and comment during the webinar.

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Wolves survived the ice age as a single, global population

From arstechnica.com:

Man’s best friend was the first of many animals humans have domesticated. But there was no clear before-and-after moment where dogs were suddenly a distinct population of wolves. While some ancient skeletons are clearly dogs, there are a lot of ambiguous skeletons earlier than that. It’s possible to get a sense of what happened using the genomes of modern and ancient dogs. But this analysis depends heavily on what you think the wolf populations dogs were derived from look like.

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Oregon: Conservationists call for action on Pacific Northwest wolf poaching

From OPB.org in Oregon:

Wildlife advocates say there has been a distressing uptick in wolf poaching cases in the Northwest in the past year and a half.

Four dead wolves were discovered in the northeastern corner of Washington state in February. That followed the poisoning of eight wolves in eastern Oregon in 2021, along with the poaching of a total of eight wolves in Idaho last year.

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Wolf shot in southern Sweden after sheep attack

From thelocal.se in Sweden:

A wolf was shot near the city of Lund in southern Sweden on Sunday, after it was discovered by a farmer while attacking a sheep.

The animal, a female weighing 34kg, was shot according to a paragraph in Sweden’s hunting law which allows livestock owners to shoot predators if they find them attacking their animals.

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Expert warns habitat loss threatens endemic Ethiopian wolves

From China.org.cn

ADDIS ABABA, June 27 (Xinhua) — Native Ethiopian wolves are threatened by loss of habitat mainly due to an ever-depleting number of prey, an Ethiopian wildlife expert has warned.

Girma Ayalew, wildlife health and research expert at the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority, told Xinhua recently that not more than 500 Ethiopian wolves remain in their shrinking and increasingly fragmented habitat on top of the Ethiopian highlands.

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Michigan: Donkeys are livestock guardians in up north battle with gray wolves

From MLive.com in Michigan:

BRUCE CROSSING, MI – What keeps a hungry wolf at bay? Turns out, an angry braying donkey that’s bonded with the other farm animals and doesn’t want to see them dragged away and eaten will do the trick.

In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, some livestock farmers have turned to donkeys for non-lethal means of protecting their herds. The practice has historical precedent in Michigan, but has also gained in popularity worldwide.

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Wolves are making a comeback in Washington

From Axios.com:

Gray wolves are growing more abundant in Washington and seem headed toward recovery — but they’re not out of the woods yet, state wildlife officials say.

By the numbers: Washington’s wolf population grew for the 13th consecutive year in 2021, climbing to 206 wolves in 33 packs, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).

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‘People may be overselling the myth’: should we bring back the wolf?

From The Guardian in the UK:

In 1995, in Yellowstone national park, eight wolves were released from a white truck that had travelled 700 miles from Alberta, Canada. They were the first to live in the park for 70 years and the most fabled predator’s return to the world’s most famous national park inspired research that would feature in ecology textbooks for decades.

A key narrative from this event is that wolves created a “landscape of fear” in the park, which kickstarted big changes in habitats, known as trophic cascades. It is an argument used to justify releasing wolves elsewhere. But increasingly, researchers are looking at the nuances of what happened in the decades after wolves were introduced and challenging this approach.

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Love at first bite: Lonely wolf treks across Czech Republic for 14 days to find love in Poland

From TheFirstNews.com:

A lonely wolf walked across the Czech Republic to find love in Poland – and is now thought to have started a family.

The two-year-old set off from Austria after researchers from the Czech nature organization Šelmy.cz and scientists from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna attached a GPS collar around his neck.

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