From The Times of India:
DEHRADUN: The first scientific population estimate of Indian peninsular wolves (canis lupus pallipes), known to be more to be more than a million years older than all other wolf species in the world, has revealed that only 3,100 members of the species are left in the country. This makes them almost as endangered as tigers, whose estimated population in the country is around 2,967.
From The New Yorker:
The gray wolf prefers to eat fleet ungulates—elk, deer—but when Europeans arrived in America with livestock its menu expanded. A wolf that cannot find its favored meal may turn to cattle and sheep. Livestock producers and big-game hunters have considered wolves an existential threat since Colonial days. In 1634, a tract called “New England’s Prospect,” by William Wood, described the animals as “the greatest inconveniency,” noting that there was “little hope of their utter destruction, the Country being so spacious, and they so numerous.”
Idaho has plenty of cattle and elk, both of which generate a lot of profit: the cattle industry is worth nearly two billion dollars, and the state collects about six million dollars a year in hunting fees—about ninety thousand people hunt elk. Of the Western states, Idaho has long had a reputation as the most hostile toward the gray wolf, a once endangered species; it’s legal to slay pups in their dens there.
From the Coloradoan:
Two groups on opposite sides of Colorado’s wolf reintroduction measure agree the deadline to put paws on the ground is in serious jeopardy after last month’s ruling to relist wolves and move management from states like Colorado to the federal government.
Voters narrowly approved Proposition 114 in 2020, mandating the predators be reintroduced west of the Continental Divide no later than the end of 2023.
From the United States Fish and Wildlife Service:
The wild population of Mexican wolves in the United States continued to grow in 2021. According to the 2021 annual count, the U.S. population of Mexican wolves has increased by 5 percent since the previous year, raising the total number of wolves in the wild to a minimum of 196 animals. This marks the sixth consecutive year of growth in the wild population.
From November 2021 through February 2022, the Interagency Field Team (IFT) conducted ground and aerial counts of Mexican wolves in Arizona and New Mexico. According to the IFT, the population is distributed with 112 wolves in New Mexico and 84 in Arizona. In 2020, the team documented a minimum of 186 wolves. The slower growth in 2021 is attributed to low pup recruitment in the wild population.
From The Daily Princetonian:
There was nothing particularly unusual about Bridgette vonHoldt receiving an email from a man in Texas with pictures of strange-looking, reddish-hued coyotes.
As an associated faculty member in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) and at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, vonHoldt specializes in the hybridization of canids, a family of mammals that includes dogs, wolves, and coyotes. As a result, she gets a lot of queries from dog owners in her inbox asking her to identify the ancestry or possible wolf heritage of their furry best friends.
From CBC.ca in Canada:
A study on eastern wolves near Georgian Bay is taking a unique approach by braiding western scientific techniques together with Indigenous knowledge systems.
Wiikwemkoong’s species at risk co-ordinator Theodore Flamand said he’s been hoping to organize a project like this for four years. He’s partnered with nearby communities, researcher Jesse Popp, who has roots in Wiikwemkoong, and the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry (MNDMRNF).
From chron.com in Houston, Texas:
More than 1.75 million animals were killed across the country by the department in 2021, about 200 creatures every hour, according to the latest annual toll of animals killed by Wildlife Services, a department within the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Wildlife Services says it “provides wildlife damage management assistance to protect agriculture, natural resources, property and health and safety” through the implementation of “integrated wildlife damage management programs.” The department says the killing and euthanizing of animals is necessary to protect agricultural output, threatened species and human health.
From Mongabay in India:
About four decades ago, one winter morning, a 10-12-year-old boy was accompanying his father on horseback on the rugged terrains of Ladakh. They had set off from their hamlet Rumste, part of the larger Gya village, around 75-80 km from Leh town. Their journey to collect manure from dogpas (nomadic herders in Ladakh), which they would later use in their fields, however, was cut short when they heard a commotion. They discovered many people had gathered near a shandong (traditional wolf traps in Ladakh) where a shanku (Ladakhi name for wolf) had been trapped. As per the local custom, the wolf was being stoned to death by the village residents. The boy, along with his father, also joined others in stoning the predator, which was soon crushed under the barrage of rocks thrown at it.
From Colorado Public Radio:
A Colorado rancher has brought in reinforcements to help him protect his livestock from wolves.
Don Gittleson now has seven donkeys at his mountain ranch near Walden, Colo., close to the Wyoming border. On a recent morning, three of the donkeys watched with intense focus as Gittleson entered a cattle pen, their ears snapping forward to track the sound of his steps.
From the Taos News:
Northern New Mexico may be sandwiched between two ongoing wolf reintroduction programs, and while Taos County residents probably won’t hear these animals howling any time soon, scientists have found the region would provide a suitable habitat for Mexican gray wolves and support connectivity to other wolf populations.
Meanwhile, howling among ranchers, government agencies and environmental groups who supported the Mexican gray wolf reintroduction program in southwest New Mexico and eastern Arizona — where wolves have come into conflict with cattle — might be a little quieter in Taos County, if comments made at a Taos Soil and Water Conservation meeting last month are any indication.
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.