Just in time for the full moon

[Barbarossa]

Coming to the woods near you: Wolves!

http://www.thewmurchannel.com/news/4873553/detail.html

Environmental groups, including the National Wildlife Federation, Vermont Natural Resources Council, Maine Wolf Coalition, Environmental Advocates of New York and Maine Audubon Society, joined in the lawsuit. They argued that good wolf habitats exist in northern Maine and in New York's Adirondack Mountains, and that northern Vermont and New Hampshire likely would become an important corridor for wolves migrating between those two habitats.

Do wolves migrate long distances like that? "Honey, let's pack up the cubs and visit my cousins in New York next week."

Kostyack and Parenteau both said wolves are important predators at the top of the food chain that could help to keep burgeoning moose and beaver populations in check and help to run noisome coyotes out of the north woods.

It sounded like they dislike coyotes.

 

[Chip]

Populations expand to carrying capacity. Coyote are a bit quicker and more productive, but wolf and cougar are the rightful heirs. Wolf, Cougar and Boar populations will be on the rise just as deer, coyote and bear have been.

"Documents recently received from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in response to MWC's Freedom of Information Act request filed by board member Walt Pepperman confirm that the 85 pound canid shot by a hunter on December 19, 2001 in Day, New York was a wolf. The wolf was killed by Russell Lawrence as it and a smaller canid came to feed on a deer carcass set out as bait. It is the first wolf documented killed in New York in more than one hundred years. Several days after Mr. Lawrence killed the animal, he saw another set of large canid tracks in the vicinity but he did not kill this latter animal.

The New York Dept. of Conservation publicly reported at different times that the animal was a coyote and a wolf/dog hybrid in spite of DNA evidence that it was likely a gray wolf. In June of 2003, MWC board member John Glowa reported the animal to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Special Agent Robert Garabedian of Albany, NY. Agent Garabedian subsequently began an investigation that included confiscation of the pelt and skull because possession of a federally endangered animal is a violation of federal law. The hunter who shot the wolf was not prosecuted because he claimed he believed the animal was a coyote. (The Pennsylvania hunter who was successfully prosecuted for killing Maine's 1993 wolf reportedly bragged to MDIFW staff that he had killed a wolf.)"

 

[Barbarossa]

Populations expand to carrying capacity.

That's it in a nutshell. I don't have much idea of what the capacity is, but I understand that wolves need quite a bit of range and stay well away from human population. In eastern Massachusetts we have a healthy coyote population that won't get chased out by wolves. I don't think they would even range into the White Mountains.

 

[dougb]

Do Coyotes Smell Worse Than Wolves?

. . . help to run noisome coyotes out of the north woods.

Am I missing something? Doesn't noisome mean something smells bad? Or do they want wolves to run 'noisy' coyotes out?

 

[Gris]

I have heard that red wolves inter-breed with coyotes...

 

[Cactus Jack]

I klnow that in western CO people have released hybred wolves unsuccessfully. AQll they were was pets they felt should be back in the wild. Really disappointing that people feel it's ok to "civilize" the animals then release them to the wild. That is apt to cause more problems. Just because they can buy a "purebred wolf" as a pet, doesn't mean it's ok to set it loose in the wild. No way to prove it is a purebred anyhow.

I wish people would get an education in the issue before letting their pets loose. Kinda like a time they were finding 10 pound gold fish in a lake over by GJ some years back.