From Axios De Moines:
Ancient DNA of sheep and wolves are among the latest animal remains being researched by a Des Moines University scientist who’s been exploring Natural Trap Cave (NTC) in Wyoming for nearly a decade.
Why it matters: The work may help unravel mysteries about animal survival through evolution during the Ice Age.
From West News Magazine:
A constant stream of howling emanated from the second row as soon as Regina Mossotti’s name was announced at the TEDxStLouis presentation on May 13. It was fitting, given that her talk was titled “Who is Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”
“Raise your hand if you’ve ever seen a movie or read a story with a big, bad wolf in it?” Mossotti, former Director of Animal Care and Conservation at the Endangered Wolf Center (EWC), asked the audience. She then shared how movies perpetuate a negative image of wolves, showing them as scary animals, snarling and often covered with blood. She said those images portray the wolf as something to be feared, and if we fear something, we don’t want to save it.
From MPR News:
In the spring of 2017, University of Minnesota graduate researcher Tom Gable had a rare, surreal and as it turns out, fortuitous encounter with a wolf while he was tromping through the thick, swampy woods of far northern Minnesota.
He knew a wolf that researchers had outfit with a GPS tracking collar had been spending time in the area. As he approached, he spotted it splashing in a creek, only 30 feet away. So he quickly hid behind some shrubs, pulled out his iPhone and videoed the scene.
From Channel 3000 / News 3 Now:
Johnson, Republican colleagues reintroduce bill to remove federal protections for gray wolves
From 11 Eyewitness News:
Two families of red wolves are roaming free in eastern North Carolina.
According to the red wolf recovery program, the two families were released into separate areas of the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Tyrrell County.
One family consists of a wild female red wolf, fostered from the Akron Zoo, paired in an acclimation pen with a captive-born male red wolf from the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka, Missouri, along with their three pups.
The second family is a captive-born female and male red wolf pair, along with their year-old female pup from the Endangered Wolf Center and four pups that were born in the spring.
From Crow River Media:
Seven Mexican wolf puppies were born at Brookfield Zoo in Chicago on 27 April 2023, but only one of the males will emerge from their den as the other six puppies have gone on a remarkable journey back into the wild. On 6 May the other pups —four males and two females—were flown to Arizona and placed in wild Mexican wolf dens as part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services’ Mexican Wolf Recovery Program.
From Modern Farmer:
As the wolf population rebounds in the American West, cattle ranchers are going to extreme measures to coexist with the legendary predators.
In the fall of 2014, when the Elzinga family of Alderspring Ranch were bringing their cattle back to the ranch from the jagged river canyons and rocky peaks of their public grazing allotment above Idaho’s Salmon River Corridor, they discovered 14 of their animals were missing.
Despite riding 30 to 50 miles on horseback four to five days a week to check on their herd, the Elzingas had lost $35,000 of revenue to predators.
Most of the signs pointed to wolves.
From The Brussels Times:
A deputy from Belgium’s German-speaking community has called for fresh debate on the status of wolves in Belgium, German-language newspaper Grenz Echo reports. Wolves cause significant damage to livestock in the country each year.
A new litter of wolf offspring are now likely present in the High Fens in Belgium’s German-speaking region. This year, a second litter is expected in the region’s Bütgenbach-Büllingen, German-speaking deputy Christine Mauel announced in a statement.
From Inside Edition:
Authorities have placed several of Mexican wolf pups in dens across the United States in a bid to strengthen the population of the endangered species.
Could Mexican wolves born at an Illinois zoo help bolster the species’ dwindling numbers in the wild? That’s the hope of authorities who have placed several of the pups in dens across the United States in a bid to strengthen the population.
From Wisconsin Public Radio:
Wisconsin’s gray wolves would lose their endangered species status under a bill being introduced by Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
Baldwins’ bill follows decades of legal and political battles over whether the wolf population has recovered enough to warrant dropping federal protections. Her “Northern Great Lakes Wolf Recovery Act” would take a somewhat novel approach by expanding the definition of Minnesota’s wolf population — which has been federally listed as “threatened” since 1978 — to include wolves in Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
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.