From SFGate.com in California:
It’s night in the rugged hills of northeastern California. A herd of cows, many with young calves at their sides, begin shifting nervously. The October winds have brought news of danger nearby: A lone gray wolf, eyes glowing yellow in the moonlight. Known as OR-103, the young male has gone days, perhaps weeks, without a kill. And he’s hungry.
If you’ve never seen a gray wolf up close, you may be imagining a husky or a large coyote. Instead, think of a mastiff. Males weigh up to 150 pounds, with paw prints the size of human hands and fangs as long as your thumbs. Most American wolves prefer deer and elk, but OR-103 has a crippled front paw, and no way to catch such lightning-quick prey.
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Rep. Lauren Boebert and fellow Republicans want gray wolves off endangered species list
From the Finger Lake Times:
DENVER — Colorado’s U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert and 23 other Republican members of Congress wrote federal officials this month asking that they remove the gray wolf from the federal endangered species list.
A northern California judge’s February ruling placed the gray wolves on the federal endangered species list once more after they were taken off during former president Donald Trump’s administration.
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Wisconsin: Spring hearings will ask citizens whether to ban hunting wolves with dogs, end killing contests
From Wisconsin Public Radio:
Wisconsin’s Conservation Congress will hold its annual spring hearings online next week to collect input from residents on dozens of natural resource issues, including whether the state should ban hunting wolves with dogs and end wildlife killing contests.
The citizen advisory group for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Natural Resources Board is holding the hearings online for the third year in a row. The hearings begin at 7 p.m. on April 11 and run through April 14.
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March marks another wolf killing in Oregon, the 11th in a year, combined reward for information reaches over $80,000
From original.newsbreak.com:
Killing a wolf for reasons apart from self-defense is illegal in Oregon, and gray wolves are a protected species under state law. There were at least 173 gray wolves in the state at the last official count at the end of 2020.
Five wolves from the same pack were poisoned to death in Union County in February 2021 which was followed by three grey wolves, two females and a male, similarly poisoned to death within the same county. Two other wolves died in separate suspected killings. Then, on March 25, 2022, another wolf was found dead in the foothills of the Richland Valley.
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Annual Washington wolf population report shows growth in 2021
From the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife:
OLYMPIA – Washington’s wolf population continued to grow in 2021 for the 13th consecutive year. The 2021 annual wolf report was released today by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and shows a 16% increase in wolf population growth from the previous count in 2020.
“Washington’s wolves continue to progress toward recovery, with four new packs documented in four different counties of the state in 2021,” said Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) Director Kelly Susewind.
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A day in the life of a wild Minnesota wolf
From Minnesota Public Radio:
Scientists studying wolves in and around Voyageurs National Park have released what they believe is a first-ever video showing an entire day in the life of a wild wolf, shot from the wolf’s perspective.
The 25-minute video from the Voyageurs Wolf Project is filmed using a remote camera attached to a GPS research collar placed on a lone male wolf, dubbed Wolf O2L. It shows everything the wolf did at five-minute intervals over the course of one day last June in northwestern Minnesota, south of Lake of the Woods.
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CSU studies: What influenced Coloradoans on close vote to reintroduce wolves
From Colorado State University:
In November 2020, Colorado voters approved Proposition 114, which mandated that Colorado Parks and Wildlife develop a plan to start reintroducing gray wolves (Canis Lupus) to the western part of the state by 2023. The initiative passed narrowly with 50.9 percent of the Colorado public voting in favor.
Given the close nature of the vote and the need to integrate diverse perspectives in the wolf reintroduction plan, researchers at the Colorado State University Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence conducted two studies on what influenced public voting on the issue.
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Dogs know exactly what they’re doing when they give you the ‘puppy eyes’
From Popular Science:
Most pet owners probably know what it’s like to cave to those “puppy dog” eyes—no matter the age of their canine. When your dog looks at you with that curled brow and doleful stare, it’s difficult not to give it a loving scratch or meaty treat. And why not: You and your furry friend have been conditioned by thousands of years of evolution for this moment, according to a growing body of research by biological anthropologists like Anne Burrows.
“Dogs are our closest companions,” she says. “They’re not closely related to us [as a species], but they live with us, they work with us, they take care of our children and our homes. So investigating different aspects of the dog-human bond, I thought, would help me understand human evolution and human origins.”
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Wolves force California ranchers into deadly compromises
From SFGate.com in California:
It’s night in the rugged hills of northeastern California. A herd of cows, many with young calves at their sides, begin shifting nervously. The October winds have brought news of danger nearby: A lone gray wolf, eyes glowing yellow in the moonlight. Known as OR-103, the young male has gone days, perhaps weeks, without a kill. And he’s hungry.
If you’ve never seen a gray wolf up close, you may be imagining a husky or a large coyote. Instead, think of a mastiff. Males weigh up to 150 pounds, with paw prints the size of human hands and fangs as long as your thumbs. Most American wolves prefer deer and elk, but OR-103 has a crippled front paw, and no way to catch such lightning-quick prey.
Click here for the full story.
For Wolves, the Culture War Is Extremely Deadly
From Rolling Stone:
In February 2021, a black wolf wandered across the border of Yellowstone National Park in Montana. Called 1155, he wore a radio collar that park biologists fit him with three years before. When he left the safety of the park, 1155 was what biologists call a “dispersed male,” leaving his pack to travel alone in search of a mate. As a descendant of wolves reintroduced in 1995 to Yellowstone and Idaho’s Frank Church-River of No Return wilderness, he was playing out a role in a success story three decades in the making: to ultimately restore wolves to their former range from which they’d been exterminated.
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Chernobyl Was a Wildlife Haven. Then Russian Troops Arrived
From Wired.com:
GERMÁN ORIZAOLA was standing in the shadow of Chernobyl Power Plant’s reactor Number Four—the epicenter of the worst nuclear accident ever.
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