New York Officials: DNA Confirms Wolf Killed in 2021

From Grand View Outdoors:

DNA tests confirmed that a licensed New York hunter killed a wolf during the 2021 coyote season, state officials said. New York State Department of Environmental Conservation officials confirmed an animal killed by a hunter in Cherry Valley, Otsego County, was a wolf.

Initial DNA analysis completed in summer 2022 determined the wild canid to be most closely identified as an Eastern coyote. The hunter voluntarily submitted DNA for further analysis to Dr. Bridgett vonHoldt, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, as part of a joint research effort by multiple parties.

Click here for the full story.

Save the wolf, EU environment ministers urge Brussels

From Politico:

EU environment ministers are howling that the European Commission should do more to protect wolves.

Twelve of the bloc’s environment ministers reacted to a European Parliament resolution that called to downgrade the gray wolf’s protection status to help livestock farmers, by urging the Commission to preserve its place as a protected species.

Click here for the full story.

Germany: Fate of wolf that killed von der Leyen’s pony to be decided today

From Politico:

In the next few hours, it will be decided if the wolf that killed the pony of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will survive.

On September 1, 2022, a wolf used the cover of darkness to sneak into a well-guarded compound in northwest Germany and kill Dolly, the 30-year-old pony belonging to von der Leyen.

Click here for the full story.

Idaho’s wolf numbers are declining. Fish and Game hopes to whittle population by 60%

From the Idaho Statesman:

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game estimates wolf populations have dropped, and officials said they hope to implement a plan that would slash numbers to a fraction of the current population. In a Fish and Game Commission meeting last week, agency officials presented a new wolf population estimate and debuted a draft for a wolf management plan that will likely be approved this spring.

Click here for the full story.

Italy: The incredible rescue of a wolf that fell into a stream

From MSN.com:

Firefighters in Verona (Italy) rescued a wolf that ended up in a waterway, in the city center. Initially mistaken for a dog, the wolf, exhausted, had stopped on the branches of a fig tree and then ended up in the ditch.

Click here for the full story.

US plans end to wolf protections, critics say it’s premature

From News8000.com:

U.S. wildlife officials plan to lift protections for gray wolves across the Lower 48 states, re-igniting the legal battle over a predator that’s run into conflicts with farmers and ranchers after rebounding in some regions, an official told The Associated Press.

Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announced the proposal during a Wednesday speech at the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Denver, a weeklong conservation forum for researchers, government officials and others, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Spokesman Gavin Shire said in an interview with the AP.

Click here for the full story.

 

IDFG: Wolf population down 13 percent in Idaho

From KXLY.com in Spokane, Washington:

IDAHO — According to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, the wolf population in the state has gone down 13 percent.

Surveys show that Idaho’s wolf population estimate in 2022 has gone down 206 wolves compared to 2021 estimated. IDFG says these estimates are based on camera surveys measuring the population at its annual peak in the summer.

Click here for the full story.

Asha the wolf, captured in the U.S., to be shipped to Mexico

From Reuters.com:

TAOS, N.M., Jan 25 (Reuters) – Environmentalists on Wednesday protested U.S. government plans to transfer an endangered Mexican gray wolf captured in New Mexico to Mexico, saying it should be allowed to roam free and repopulate the Rockies.

The she-wolf, named Asha by schoolchildren, was captured near Taos, New Mexico, on Sunday after heading further north than any other Mexican wolf recorded since the species’ 1998 reintroduction after near extinction.

Click here for the full story.

Czech conservationists return wolf struck by car back into the wild

From expats.cz:

Although experts doubted its chances of survival, an injured wolf made a surprising recovery and is once again wandering in its natural habitat in the mountains near the Czech-German border.

The first recovery of its kind in Czechia, this was a learning experience for conservation groups now better prepared to handle a similar incident in the future.

Click here for the full story.

Wolves eliminate deer on Alaskan Island then quickly shift to eating sea otters, research finds

From Oregon State University:

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Wolves on an Alaskan island caused a deer population to plummet and switched to primarily eating sea otters in just a few years, a finding scientists at Oregon State University and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game believe is the first case of sea otters becoming the primary food source for a land-based predator.

Using methods such as tracking the wolves with GPS collars and analyzing their scat, the researchers found that in 2015 deer were the primary food of the wolves, representing 75% of their diet, while sea otters comprised 25%.

Click here for the full story.