From Duluth News Tribune:
GRAND RAPIDS — The Minnesota Deer Hunters Association has announced a partnership with Wolf.Report , a new online platform for reporting wolf sightings, and they want the public to log on with their personal wolf experiences.
Association officials said the joint effort “aims to provide deer hunters and outdoor enthusiasts with a unique opportunity to contribute valuable citizen data on wolf encounters.”
From European Commission:
Today, the Commission is tabling a proposal for a Council Decision to adapt the protection status of the wolf under the international Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, to which the EU and its Member States are parties. The wolf’s protection status under the Convention was established based on the available scientific data at the time of negotiation of the Convention in 1979. On the basis of an in-depth analysis on the status of the wolf in the EU also published today, the Commission proposes to make the wolf ‘protected’ as opposed to ‘strictly protected’. It follows the Commission’s announcement in September 2023 that on the basis of the data collected, it would decide on a proposal to modify, where appropriate, the status of protection of the wolf and to update the legal framework, to introduce, where necessary, further flexibility.
From High Country News:
This week has surely been a strange one for the wolf known as 2302-OR. A lean 68-pound yearling with shaggy black fur and amber eyes, she had been a member of the Five Points Pack, which makes its home in the mountains of northeastern Oregon. But on Sunday, Dec. 17, her world changed: First, she was knocked out by a tranquilizer dart fired by a biologist in a helicopter, then inspected by veterinarians and fitted with a GPS collar. Her brother, 2303-OR, received the same treatment, as did three other wolves from different Oregon packs — some 421 pounds of Canis lupus altogether.
From The Oregon Capital Chronicle:
The wolf issue continues to heat up across the West, with states like Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and now Colorado, all getting a chance to show their preferred flavor of wolf management.
Here in “progressive” Oregon, wolves are continuously being slaughtered by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, often with the help of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services. This state-sponsored killing (plus private poaching) has resulted in suppressed wolf numbers and a hampered recovery effort.
From The Guardian:
Wolves could be hunted again across western Europe after the European Commission proposed to reduce their protection, in what lawyers said was an ominous move against effective environmental laws.
The commission has proposed that EU member states downgrade the wolf’s status under the Berne convention from “strictly protected” to “protected” after two decades in which the species has returned to many countries from which it has been extinct for decades, including Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark.
From Oregon Capital Chronicle:
The wolf issue continues to heat up across the West, with states like Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and now Colorado, all getting a chance to show their preferred flavor of wolf management.
Here in “progressive” Oregon, wolves are continuously being slaughtered by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, often with the help of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services. This state-sponsored killing (plus private poaching) has resulted in suppressed wolf numbers and a hampered recovery effort.
From ABC News:
GRAND COUNTY, Colorado — Somewhere on a remote mountainside in Colorado’s Rockies, a latch flipped on a crate and a wolf bounded out, heading toward the tree line. Then it stopped short.
For a moment, the young female looked back at it’s audience of roughly 45 people who stared on in reverential silence. Then she disappeared into the forest.
From Down to Earth:
Some 300 environmental and animal protection organisations have written to the president of the European Commission (EC), Ursula von der Leyen, demanding that existing legal protections for wolves in Europe be upheld and enforced consistently across the European Union’s member states.
The organisations made the demand in an open letter issued on December 18, 2023. Calling the wolf a part of the Continent’s natural heritage, the organisations further demanded the EC to “promote uptake of coexistence measures between wolves and local communities since many of those opportunities are under-utilised by the Member States”.
From OPB:
Northeastern Oregon’s rocky mountains and arid, shrub-steppe valleys might seem like unforgiving terrain for most creatures. But wolves thrive here.
Most of Oregon’s 38 known wolf packs roam this region, where the relative isolation compared to the state’s western half gives them more freedom to travel, and to hunt. They prey on mule deer and elk, and when those are tough to come by, rabbits and grouse. Sometimes that’s not enough, especially for growing pups, so they turn to cattle pastures.
From EarthTouch News Network:
You might presume a sea otter mainly lives in fear of a lethal bolt from the blue in the form of an orca or white shark. Turns out, though, that some threats come on four legs.
A recent paper in Ecology underscores the dietary (and strategic) versatility of the gray wolf – historically among the most widely distributed large carnivores on Earth – and, more specifically, just how marine-oriented the menus of coastal wolves along the Pacific margin of northwestern North America can be.
The International Wolf Center uses science-based education to teach and inspire the world about wolves, their ecology, and the wolf-human relationship.