Southern Utes ask Colorado Parks and Wildlife to restrict wolf releases to northern zone

From the Durango Herald:

It was not until Feb. 22 – the last possible day for the public to submit comments – that the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission received a letter from the Southern Ute Indian Tribe about the draft wolf restoration and management plan.

The commission held five meetings about the proposal to hear community feedback. The bulk of comments came, primarily, from representatives of two factions: Wildlife advocates urged the commission to adopt more stringent language limiting any potential hunting of wolves, while ranchers voiced concerns about their perceived inability to defend stock from predators.

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Rare Footage of the World’s Only Wild Red Wolves Captured in North Carolina

From Newsweek:

A rare red wolf has been caught on a trail-cam in North Carolina’s Alligator River Wildlife Refuge. The wolf is one of the world’s most endangered carnivores, and fewer than 17 adults are thought to exist in the wild today.

“People have killed them for generations,” Will Harlan, Southeast director for the Center for Biological Diversity in North Carolina, told Newsweek. “They were targeted in extermination campaigns throughout the 20th century. By 1980, red wolves were declared extinct in the wild.”

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Colorado: Rep. Lauren Boebert’s bill to delist gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act gets its first hearing

From CPR.org:

GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert’s bill to delist the gray wolf from the Endangered Species Act faced its first subcommittee hearing Thursday.

But before she talked about her bill, Boebert started with an aside, showing photos of human babies she said were born in Washington, D.C., with what looked like birth defects. Boebert, a staunch anti-abortion supporter, then asked if her Democratic colleagues would want to put babies on the Endangered Species Act.

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Two gray wolves captured and collared in Northern California

From the Los Angeles Times:

Two members of California’s small but rebounding gray wolf population have been located and given tracking collars, bolstering the state’s conservation efforts, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced Friday.

The agency says they located and captured the two wolves on March 17 in Siskiyou County through “intermittent signals” coming off the malfunctioning collar of one wolf. The wolves were given satellite collars, which will transmit regular location updates back to the department.

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The Myth of the Alpha Wolf

From the newyorker.com

In 1958, as part of a research project on wolves, David Mech, a graduate student in wildlife ecology at Purdue, was flying over Isle Royale National Park, on Lake Superior. From above, he saw a wolf pack capture and kill a moose. This was rare. More than nine times out of ten, he had witnessed the wolves’ prey escape. “I wanted to see how old this moose was, and to see if it was ill,” Mech told me recently. He had the pilot drop him off some distance away, and snowshoed in. “I remember arriving to the edge of this clearing, and there were these fifteen wolves feeding on this moose,” he said.

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Also check out the following article:

Alpha wolf: What does it mean, and should it still be used? 

USFWS delays publication of final revised red wolf recovery plan

From The Coastland Times:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced it is delaying the publication of the final revised red wolf recovery plan to ensure it has adequate time to use the results of a forthcoming population viability analysis (PVA) for informing the final revised recovery plan for the red wolf. The original, court-ordered publication date of Feb. 28, 2023 will now be extended to Sept. 29, 2023.

Read more at: https://www.thecoastlandtimes.com/2023/03/20/usfws-delays-publication-of-final-revised-red-wolf-recovery-plan/

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Yampa Valley ranchers unite in effort to inform wolf recovery rules including lethal take

From the Steamboat Pilot & Today in Colorado:

Ranchers and other residents across Northwest Colorado are focused on obtaining what they see as the most favorable regulations possible when Colorado reintroduces gray wolves in the state, likely before the end of this year.

Last week, a group of about two dozen Moffat County residents, including everyone from county commissioners to local livestock producers and those whose livelihoods depend on the local hunting industry, welcomed an expert in the field of wolf recovery to pick his brain before a series of public meetings this week, including one Wednesday, March 15, in Craig.

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Colorado: Packed house at Wheeler for a Q&A with wolf experts ahead of state’s reintroduction

From the Aspen Times:

Wheeler Opera House was packed Wednesday evening for Aspen Center for Environmental Sciences’ “Living with Wolves: Coexistence in Colorado” event. This sold out show began with a collection of short films and a presentation from keynote speaker Joanna E. Lambert, PhD.

Lambert is a professor of environmental studies and faculty of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder who has a deep passion for the wild and natural world, resulting in a career spent publishing and teaching about the evolution, ecology and conservation of wild animals.

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Wolves back in Belgium after 100 years, sparking controversy

From the BBC:

The researcher from the Flemish Institute for Nature and Forest Research (INBO) walks us along a countryside track in Belgium’s eastern province of Limburg.

It’s not long before he spots a wolf print that most of us would never notice. The front paw track, lightly pressed into the mud, is probably just a few days old.

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Another Wild Wolf Killed in New York, Radio-Isotope Test Confirms

From the Center for Biological Diversity:

ALBANY, N.Y.— Conservation groups announced today that testing by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the New York State Museum revealed that a wolf killed in upstate New York in 2021 was eating a wild diet and was a wild wolf.

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