From TheConversation.com:
What’s the value of one animal? When a wild animal is found badly injured, the most humane option is often euthanasia to prevent further suffering. That’s what usually happens, and often for good reason. Even when the resources to rescue one animal are available, a rehabilitated animal brought back into the wild might be rejected by its group, or struggle to find food or escape predators. If it does survive, it may fail to reproduce, and leave no lasting mark on the population.
But every so often a single case comes along where one animal becomes evidence that intervention can do more than save a life on the spot. It can also change what we think is possible.
Click here for the full story.
GOP lawmakers have administration ally to end predator species protections
From RollCall.com:
As congressional Republicans push to delist gray wolf and grizzly bear populations from Endangered Species Act protections, they now have an ally in the administration who has taken a skeptical view of the law designed for the purpose.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Director Brian Nesvik, who was confirmed in August, has advocated delisting the Greater Yellowstone grizzly bear and said both the bear and gray wolf populations have recovered.
Click here for the full story.
Africa’s rarest carnivore: the story of the first Ethiopian wolf ever captured, nursed and returned to the wild
From TheConversation.com:
What’s the value of one animal? When a wild animal is found badly injured, the most humane option is often euthanasia to prevent further suffering. That’s what usually happens, and often for good reason. Even when the resources to rescue one animal are available, a rehabilitated animal brought back into the wild might be rejected by its group, or struggle to find food or escape predators. If it does survive, it may fail to reproduce, and leave no lasting mark on the population.
But every so often a single case comes along where one animal becomes evidence that intervention can do more than save a life on the spot. It can also change what we think is possible.
Click here for the full story.
5,000-Year-Old Wolves Found on Remote [Swedish] Island Challenge Conventional Views of Domestication
From SciTechDaily.com:
Researchers have uncovered wolf remains dating back thousands of years on a small and remote island in the Baltic Sea. Because the island is naturally isolated, the animals could only have arrived there with human involvement.
The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by scientists from the Francis Crick Institute, Stockholm University, the University of Aberdeen, and the University of East Anglia, suggests that gray wolves may have been deliberately managed or controlled by prehistoric communities.
Click here for the full story.
Where did Colorado’s wolves spend time in December?
From SummitDaily.com:
While some of the wolves are part of Colorado’s four packs establishing territories in Pitkin, Jackson, Routt and Rio Blanco counties, others continue to search the landscape for mates and suitable food sources and habitat.
Largely, however, wolf exploration of Colorado remains within similar northern counties in December, according to the latest wolf activity map shared by Colorado Parks and Wildlife on Dec. 23.
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Oregon wolf cattle kills rise in 2025, but state lacks funding for proper payments
From CapitalPress.com:
PENDLETON, Ore. — Wolves have killed far more cattle this year in Oregon, but the state hasn’t allocated funding to properly compensate ranchers, an expert said. The Oregon Legislature could erase the shortfall during its upcoming 2026 short session via a proposed increase in the state’s lodging tax. “We need hats in Salem,” said John Williams, co-chairman of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association Wolf Committee.
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The year in wolves
From AlamosaCitizen.com:
[Idaho] Students hike, howl and collect DNA in Idaho wolf study
From UIdaho.edu:
At the edge of a mist-shrouded meadow near central Idaho’s Salmon River five student researchers stand knee deep in larkspur and Indian paintbrush as one of them uses a funnel to project a mock wolf howl into the silence around them. After a few tries, a wild wolf returns a howl from a forested mountain slope on the other side of the clearing.
U of I wolf researcher and doctoral student Peter Rebholz gives the students a thumbs up. The return howl confirms Rebholz’s hunch that wolves are nearby.
Click here for the full story.
[Montana] State judge allows 2025-2026 wolf hunting and trapping regulations to stand
From MontanaFreePress.org:
A Helena judge has allowed the wolf hunting and trapping regulations the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission adopted earlier this year to stand, despite flagging “serious concerns” about the state’s ability to accurately estimate Montana’s wolf population.
In a 43-page opinion, district court Judge Christopher Abbott wrote that leaving the 2025-2025 hunting and trapping regulations in place while he considers an underlying lawsuit will not “push wolf populations to an unsustainable level.”
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Why Finland’s reindeer are dying by the thousands
From CNN.com:
Russia’s war in Ukraine is having far-reaching and potentially unexpected consequences. In Finland, reindeer herders and scientists suspect wolves are crossing from Russia and killing their herds – because the Russian men who would normally hunt them are in Ukraine.
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The Scientific Lie [Alpha Concept] That Damaged Generations of Men
From PBS.org:
“There’s a really powerful and sometimes dangerous idea that’s taken root in pop culture: the idea of the ‘alpha male’. For decades, the idea of the all-powerful alpha male has dominated media. We’ve been told that in animals, and in human society, the toughest, the most aggressive top dog gets the power, the resources, the mates.
The alpha male is an idea that was born in real studies of animal behavior and biology in the lives and conflicts of social animals. Few scientific concepts have been so thoroughly absorbed by popular culture, but this idea has been so hugely misinterpreted and disconnected from what the science actually says.”
Click here for the full video: