Associated Press

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) – Gov. Bill Richardson has temporarily banned trapping in on the New Mexico side of an area where Mexican gray wolves have been reintroduced into the wild along the New Mexico-Arizona border.

Richardson ordered the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish to prohibit trapping for six months while it studies what risk traps and snares pose to wolves.

A federal effort to reintroduce the endangered subspecies of the gray wolf into the Southwest began in 1998.

Biologists had predicted a self-sustaining wild population of 100 wolves by now, but the latest count at the end of 2009 found 42.

The program has been plagued by illegal shootings, complaints from ranchers who have lost cattle to wolves and environmentalists who criticize the way the federal government has managed the program.

Jul. 27, 2010 (United Press International) — A Texas couple’s account of their wolf hunt in British Columbia has angered Canadian conservationists.

(second story with image here)

Lynne and Eddie Hopkins said they bagged five wolves and two coyotes in February during a hunt with Wicked River Outfitters, Postmedia News reported Tuesday. The couple, members of the Dallas Safari Club, won the hunting trip, which costs $4,000 U.S., in a club auction.

The couple described the hunt in Camp Talk, the club’s magazine. Eddie Hopkins said the guide used a snowmobile on a frozen lake to cut off a black wolf, the color he wanted to bag.

Under British Columbia’s “fair chase” policy, hunters are not supposed to use bait or motorized vehicles to “herd” wolves.

Dennis Beattie, owner of Wild River, said his company obeys the policy.

“On this hunt, they were cut off from going to the bank, you drive between them and the bank, and then you do your hunting,” he said. “They’re not chasing these animals. That’s totally against the law and it’s against our rules of ethics.”

Ian McAllister of Pacific Wild said that if what happened is legal the law should be changed.

“Most British Columbians would be as sickened as I am by this so-called sport,” said Joe Foy of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. “That article was some kind of sick eco-porn for those that like to hurt living creatures for the fun of it.”
(Source: UPI )

Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY — Recent attacks on Utah sheep and cattle herds show the kinds of conflicts that could arise if the wolf population increases in the Beehive State, a state official said.

Utah’s mountains aren’t secluded enough to prevent conflicts if wolves return in large numbers, Department of Agriculture and Food Commissioner Leonard Blackham said.

Mike Linnell, Utah director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, said a ranch herder in southern Idaho killed a wolf that earlier had attacked livestock in northern Utah’s Cache County. A report that the wolf was shot in Utah was incorrect.

Linnell also said wildlife agents trapped and destroyed a wolf in Rich County in northern Utah on Saturday. It had preyed on calves in the area.

Dennis Wright of Coalville said he found two calf carcasses about two weeks ago in Summit County. He said state wildlife agents confirmed that the predator was a wolf.

“People don’t understand how they kill,” Wright said. “They’ll hamstring an animal. They’ll cut both hamstrings on an animal.”

Blackham said it likely traveled from Idaho or Wyoming.

“They haven’t caught that one, but they’re working on it,” Blackham said. “It’s probably moved on by now because it hasn’t repeated itself within the last week to 10 days.”

Wolves should be allowed to be in some wilderness areas, said Norman Bishop, a member of the board of directors of the Wolf Recovery Foundation.

“There are certainly places where nobody likes wolves, like livestock ranges,” Bishop said. “But on wilderness areas and areas where there (is) little conflict, they are a tremendous boon to the ecosystem.”

There have been periodic wolf sightings in Utah for years. In September 2002, wolves killed 15 sheep and lambs near Hardware Ranch in Cache County.

It’s not clear how many wolves there are in the state. A 2002 report estimated that Utah could one day support 700 wolves statewide.

In Utah, ranchers are permitted to shoot menacing wolves only in an area north of Interstate 80 and east of Interstate 84 to the Wyoming and Idaho lines.

Associated Press

CHEBOYGAN, Mich. — Wildlife experts say there’s evidence wolves are breeding in the northern Lower Peninsula, a century after their extermination.

The U.S. Agriculture Department and Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment said Tuesday they trapped a wolf pup last week in Cheboygan County.

It happened as workers tried to trap and place a radio collar on a wolf. A wolf pack was confirmed in the area earlier this year.

State biologist Jennifer Kleitch says it’s the first evidence of wolf breeding in the Lower Peninsula since people exterminated the predators in the early 20th century.

State agency wildlife division chief Russ Mason says it shows wolves are recovering in their previous habitat and need to be managed.

Online:

Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment: http://www.michigan.gov/dnre

By Smaranda Biliuti, News Editor
July 24th, 2010, 10:50 GMT

Archaeologists found in a Swiss cave, a jaw fragment belonging to an ancient dog. After radiocarbon-dating it they concluded that it is over 14,000 years old and that it might be the earliest dog ever known.

Establishing when the first fully-domesticated wolf became a dog is a rather sensitive subject among researchers, and some already say that fossils much older than the Swiss have already been discovered. Scientists have different theories about how and when dogs originated, as one analysis of modern dogs and wolves concluded that the first domesticated wolf (the first dog) lived in Asia, another in Eastern Europe and a third in the Middle East.

Well, archeology graduate student Hannes Napierala and archaeologist-zoologist Hans-Peter Uerpmann, study coauthors at the University of Tübingen in Germany say that the upper-jaw discovered in 1873 in Kesslerloch Cave, near Switzerland’s northern border with Germany, proves that domestic dogs lived there betwenn 14,100 and 14,600 years ago. Napierala states: “The Kesslerloch find clearly supports the idea that the dog was an established domestic animal at that time in central Europe.”

At Germany’s Bonn-Oberkassel site, scientists also found 14,000 year-old dog fossils among prehistoric people’s tombs, according to Wired.

In a paper published online in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, the two researchers say that older fossil skulls identified by other teams as dogs are more likely to be Ice Age wolves. They also talked about a 31,700 year-old specimen discovered last century in Goyet Cave, Belgium, that was believed to be the world’s oldest dog in 2009.

The leader of the analysis on the Goyet fossil, paleontologist Mietje Germonpré of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, said: “the Kesslerloch dog is not the oldest evidence of dog domestication.”

Scientists say that the Kesslerloch jaw and the few teeth remaining on it are smaller that those of wolves recovered on the same site. They believe that domestication must have reached an advanced stage at the time of its death, because of a space between two teeth. At the beginning of the domestication stage, the jaws get smaller and teeth don’t have enough space. Their crowded aspect disappears as they later shrink as well.

This debate is not yet closed and it will take much more research on additional fossils to establish dogs’ history.