Michigan: Don’t kill wolves – just keep them away

From The Daily Mining Gazette in Michigan:

You’re operating a farm or ranch. What do you do when wolves are killing your livestock or pet dogs? Trap them and shoot them, right? That’s what farmers and ranchers — and government agencies — have been doing for decades.

Now there are new, nonlethal alternatives. Even better, these solutions are more permanent than lethal methods. Kill a wolf, and there’s another wolf behind him, eager to attack. Keep a wolf away, and the rest of his pack will stay away too. They may even help keep other packs away.

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Washington: Wolf pack kills calf, forcing decision on lethal control

From The Lewiston Tribune in Idaho:

SPOKANE — A wolf pack in northeastern Washington state has killed another calf, forcing the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to determine whether to cull the pack, officials said.

The Togo pack of wolves has attacked three calves over the past 30 days, surpassing the threshold of livestock kills for the department to consider killing one or two wolves to curb the livestock killing, The Capital Press reported.

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Wolf restoration in Colorado shows how humans are rethinking their relationships with wild animals

From phys.org:

From sports to pop culture, there are few themes more appealing than a good comeback. They happen in nature, too. Even with the Earth losing species at a historic rate, some animals have defied the trend toward extinction and started refilling their old ecological niches.

I’m a philosopher based in Montana and specialize in environmental ethics. For my new book, “Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries That Change How We Think About Animals,” I spent three years looking at wildlife comebacks across North America and Europe and considering the lessons they offer.

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Is the alpha wolf idea a myth?

From Scientific American:

If you’ve ever heard the term “alpha wolf,” you might imagine snapping fangs and fights to the death for dominance. The idea that wolf packs are led by a merciless dictator is pervasive, lending itself to a shorthand for a kind of dominant masculinity.

But it turns out that this is a myth, and in recent years wildlife biologists have largely dropped the term “alpha.” In the wild, researchers have found that most wolf packs are simply families, led by a breeding pair, and bloody duels for supremacy are rare.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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%.

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