Colorado Reintroduced Wolves. They Might Have the Wrong Personalities to Succeed

From SentientMedia.org:

A growing body of research suggests animal personalities can impact reintroduction to the wild. When wolves were first released in remote parts of Grand County, Colorado, one year ago, researcher Marc Bekoff noticed differences in the way the individual wolves reacted. While two of the five wolves remained cautious — staying in their holding cages until coaxed out — another bolted as soon as the opportunity arose. A growing body of research says these variations in behavior can be explained by the personality of the wolves in question, but researchers and government officials don’t necessarily agree on how to take these personalities into account.

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As California’s wolf population claws its way back, some ranchers are nervous

From USA Today:

SAN FRANCISCO – The last wild wolf in California was shot in 1924. It wasn’t until 2011 that another padded across the Oregon border.

Today, gray wolves are making a major comeback in the Golden State. This year the state is home to nine packs containing an estimated 70 wolves, up from 44 last year. Most live in the northeastern part of the state, though there is one pack about 200 miles north of Los Angeles.

State wildlife staff believe at least 30 pups were born this year, meaning more packs are likely to form in the coming years.

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Europe’s growing wolf problem

From The Week:

Plans are underway to allow EU farmers to kill wolves but is the predator being unfairly attacked?

In 2022, a grey wolf in Germany’s Lower Saxony region killed a pony called Dolly. It’s not unknown for wolves to kill other animals but this one had messed with the wrong pony: Dolly was the beloved pet of Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.

Dolly’s death-by-wolf set in motion a chain of events that culminated in an historic vote in Strasbourg this week, which modified the protection status of wolves. It’s seen as a “major win” for farmers who want “more freedom to shoot animals that threaten their livestock”, said Politico.

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Ancient Wolf’s Diet Suggests He Was a Pet

FromNewser:

Animal in Alaska ate lots of salmon, likely from humans, study suggests.

When did wolf become dog? It’s a debated question and central to a new study presenting what appears to be the earliest evidence of the human-dog relationship in the Americas. It comes from the 12,000-year-old bones of a canid—a wolf, coyote, or dog—found at Swan Point in interior Alaska. This canid, living far from the coast, ate salmon on the regular, and researchers think it was getting the fish from humans. Other ancient canids in the region did not eat salmon. This suggests, according to researchers, that the animal was living with and being fed by humans, or at least that there was some kind of mutually beneficial relationship, some 2,000 years earlier than previously known, per a release.

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The only successful attempt: humanity has tried to domesticate wolves several times, and modern dogs are the only successful result

From ITCommunity:

For thousands of years, the line between wolves and dogs has been blurred. Groups of people in different parts of the world, independently of each other, have repeatedly tried to domesticate wild wolves. However, we can see the result of only one such attempt today. A recent study shows that even after dogs spread across Eurasia and the Americas, people in what is now Alaska interacted with a strange mix of dogs, wolves, wolf-dog hybrids, and some coyotes.

Archaeologist François Lano from the University of Arizona and his colleagues studied 111 sets of dog and wolf bones from archaeological sites in the interior of Alaska.

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Opposing Colorado wolf groups take reintroduction fight to Canada

From The Coloradoan:

Colorado’s wolves have not had a confirmed livestock depredation in nearly three months, the longest stretch since the beginning of the year.

But the controversy over reintroducing wolves continues to fester with opposing groups of the issue taking their fight to Canada, where the next 15 wolves are scheduled to be captured for release in Colorado early next year.

Many of the more than 20 organizations — mostly representing agriculture — that petitioned the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to pause the reintroduction in September sent a letter Nov. 26 to British Columbia’s Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship.

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World Wildlife Fund warns of dire consequences after Bern Convention weakens wolf protection

From AA.com.tr:

GENEVA

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has sharply criticized a decision by the Standing Committee of the Bern Convention to lower the protection status of wolves, calling it a “dangerous” setback for conservation efforts in Europe.

The Council of Europe’s Bern Convention Committee has adopted an EU proposal to modify the status of wolf protection from “strictly protected fauna species” to “protected fauna species.”

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Late Pleistocene onset of mutualistic human/canid (Canis spp.) relationships in subarctic Alaska

From Science Advances:

Large canids (wolves, dogs, and coyote) and people form a close relationship in northern (subarctic and arctic) socioecological systems. Here, we document the antiquity of this bond and the multiple ways it manifested in interior Alaska, a region key to understanding the peopling of the Americas and early northern lifeways. We compile original and existing genomic, isotopic, and osteological canid data from archaeological, paleontological, and modern sites.

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Fighting for survival: the endangerment and conservation of the red wolf

From Old Gold & Black:

The creature’s swift speed is attributed to its muscular long legs. Its dark reddish-brown coat gives it the ability to blend in seamlessly with the surrounding environment. Golden eyes are essential to tracking its prey. Despite numerous adaptations that help them survive in the wild, red wolves are now classified as an endangered species due to the impacts of humans.

Less than 20 reside in eastern North Carolina; the last place they still live in the wild.

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Dog domestication happened many times, but most didn’t pan out

From ArsTechnica.com:

Between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago, people in Alaska kept reinventing dogs with mixed results.

The dogs that share our homes today are the descendants of a single group of wolves that lived in Siberia about 23,000 years ago. But for thousands of years after that split, the line between wolf and dog wasn’t quite clear-cut. A recent study shows that long after dogs had spread into Eurasia and the Americas, people living in what is now Alaska still spent time with—and fed—a bizarre mix of dogs, wolves, dog-wolf hybrids, and even some coyotes.

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