Canis Stew: The Inevitable Disappearance of the Pure Wolf
By Ted B. Lyon
Photo Credit: Holly Kuchera/Shutterstock.com
“I was much struck how entirely vague and arbitrary is the distinction between species and varieties.”
—Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
“The domestic dog is an extremely close relative of the gray wolf, differing from it by at most 0.2 percent of mtDNA sequence . . . In comparison, the gray wolf differs from its closest wild relative, the coyote, by about 4 percent of mitochondrial DNA sequence.
—Robert Wayne, PhD “Molecular evolution of the dog family”
As this book has the form of my presenting a case for managing wolves in North America that will conserve purebred wolves and minimize conflicts with people, I’d like to summarize some of what we’ve covered so far by beginning with a story.
California once had a wolf population, but wolves were eradicated there at least a hundred years ago. Then, in 2011, a lone gray wolf, “OR7,” left his pack in northeastern Oregon and journeyed 1,062 miles south, crossing into northern California. His path was monitored via radio collar. Becoming an overnight media celebrity, OR7 roamed about nine hundred miles in northern California, and then in early March of 2012, he turned north and headed back into Oregon, seemingly because he was unable to find any wolves to unite with in California. If only he would have gone a little farther south, he might not have returned to Oregon.
In August of 2015, a pack of seven wolves, two adults, and five offspring were filmed in northern California. All had coats that are very dark or black. OR7 was not one of the pack.
In December of 2015, another wolf wearing a radio collar entered California from Oregon. This canine known as OR25 was a male with a very dark coat and, was nearly three years old, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
These were reported in the news as the first appearances of wild wolves in California since the 1920s. Not quite.
In 2009, a sheep rancher in northern California contacted a USDA Wildlife Control Specialist for APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) as his livestock were being attacked and killed by an animal that was presumed to be a large coyote.
A large western coyote can weigh thirty pounds. The APHIS trapper put out snares and caught “two animals that weighed over a hundred pounds each that looked like wolves.” A subsequent examination of the animals showed that they were wolf-dog hybrids. The trapper said that during the last ten years he had trapped several dozen similar animals. He said that people who grow marijuana frequently use wolf-dogs as guard dogs for legal and illegal crops. He added that there is also strong evidence that some people in northern California are raising and releasing wolves and wolf-dogs to create a California “wolf” population.
A US Fish and Wildlife Service Special Agent commented, “If they were 100 percent wolves, catching and killing them without a proper permit would have been breaking the law. Since they were wolf-dog hybrids, the trapper was following the local law that says that any dog or coyote attacking livestock can be shot on sight without needing a hunting license.”
This incident foreshadows a problem that in the long run seems inevitable. Wild gray wolves will become ineligible for protection under the Endangered Species Act, regardless of their numbers, because they will breed with other canids, both wild and tame, resulting in the disappearance of purebred wolves.
Tracing the Origins of Canis lupus
According to fossil record, wolf-like canids—wild dogs, or what we now call wolves—began to appear at least three million years ago. Originally, there were three species of canids in North America—the gray wolf, Canis lupus, the dire wolf, Canis dirus (a stocky carnivore with large teeth and jaws for crunching bones of megafauna and nearly twice the body size of the gray wolf) and the coyote, Canis latrans. For reasons we do not understand, the gray wolf, Canis lupus, migrated to Asia over the Bering Straits land bridge and spread throughout Eurasia. Ultimately, they became the most widely distributed predatory mammal on Earth. Later in the Paleolithic, gray wolves migrated back over the land bridge into North America.
The three wild dogs, Canis lupus, Canis dirus, and Canis latrans, lived together for about ten thousand years. The dire wolf ultimately went extinct about ten thousand years ago, seemingly along with the extinction of the megafauna.
After the recession of the Wisconsin Glacier some ten thousand years ago, smaller wild game became plentiful and gray wolves proliferated. There may have been as many as two million gray wolves in North America when the Europeans arrived in the 1500s. The gray wolf numbers were so large because of the abundance of big-game animals, especially the sixty million buffalo.
Lewis and Clark reported large packs of wolves following the buffalo herds of the Great Plains. As Meriwether Lewis wrote in his 1805 journal, “we scarcely see a gang of buffalo without observing a pack of these faithful shepherds on their skirts . . .” They also reported that wolves were relatively unafraid of people, and on occasion wolves attacked members of their expedition.1
As a wave of settlers pressed westward, the buffalo was nearly driven to extinction by market hunters and as a planned mass killing by the military to force Indians onto reservations. The European settlers replaced the dwindling herds of native buffalo, elk, and deer with sheep and cattle. Wolves switched their predation to domestic livestock, which resulted in a campaign to eradicate wolves, ultimately leading to the virtual extinction of wolves in the lower forty-eight states by the 1940s. While the wolves were nearly removed completely, their brother, the coyote, prospered.
Canis latrans, the coyote, which is normally one-third or less the size of an adult gray wolf, was originally found only west of the Rocky Mountains. Despite the eradication campaign that killed off wolves, and equal efforts to control coyotes, the coyotes proliferated, spreading eastward. They are now found in all states but Hawaii, as well as all Canadian provinces. Their population is estimated to be somewhere between ten million and one hundred million, even though as many as four hundred thousand coyotes are shot, trapped, and poisoned every year.
As a number of chapters have described, when wolves meet coyotes, or dogs, one of two things normally happens. The wolves attack the coyotes and wolves and drive them away, or they kill them. However, some wolves, especially beta wolves without mates, will breed with coyotes creating “coy-wolves,” or dogs, resulting in “wolf-dogs” and quite possibly “wolf-coyote-dogs.”
The word Canis means “dog” in Latin. As gray wolf populations are being restored in the Northern Rockies, Pacific Northwest, Great Lakes Area, New England, Southeast, and Southwest, this generation of wolves is encountering unprecedented numbers of coyotes as well as tens of millions of domestic dogs, tens of thousands that are feral. Interbreeding and hybridization will become the norm for wild canids.2
There are somewhere between seventy and eighty million domestic dogs in the United States; 39 percent of the households own at least one. The Canis genus contains seven to ten living species, including dogs, wolves, coyotes, and jackals, and many debatable subspecies. They are all capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring.
Never before in the United States have wolves had access to so many canids other than their own species to mate with, and that spells trouble for preserving wolves as a distinct species as well as problems for people trying to live with wolves.
The Evolution of Dogs from Wolves
The wolf has seventy-eight pairs of chromosomes, but there can be millions of variations. There is not a standard allele. Normally, through successive generations of breeding, mutations occur, which combined with adaptations for changing environmental conditions, result in new self-replicating species or sub-species forming. In contrast to earlier times, within the genus Canis, hybridization today is occurring very rapidly, especially in the Lower 48.
Domestic dogs are descended from wild wolves, Canis lupus. The Latin name for the dog is Canis lupus familiaris. The domestication process began somewhere between 60,000 and 135,000 years ago. Humans first used wolves for food and fur. Domestication most likely began when humans raised very young wolf puppies. Some animals were friendlier than others were, and could be tamed. This resulted in them performing tasks such as hauling loads, serving as watchdogs, and becoming hunting allies. Animals with desirable behavioral and morphological traits were bred with others with similar traits to create new unique breeds. This process of selective breeding has been demonstrated by Russian scientist Dmitry Belyaev in experiments to breed foxes in Siberia to form a new subspecies.3
Just what constitutes a “species” is hotly debated in scientific circles. John Wilkins has listed twenty-six different “species concepts” that scientists may use to determine what is a species of animal or plant.4 Originally morphology, or the physical structure, was the key, but now with DNA analysis one must also look at genetics, and geneticists cannot agree on species identification either. The problem with canid species ID is that all canines can interbreed with other species of canines. Thus, the concept of preserving a “species” becomes difficult when one cannot agree on what it is, and its genetics are constantly changing from hybridization (this will be described in more detail in the following chapter by Dr. Matt Cronin).
The US Fish and Wildlife Service is currently monitoring several sub-species of gray wolves, Canis lupus, in a number of locations under the Endangered Species Act: Canis lupus lycaon (eastern timber wolf), Canis lupus irremotus (northern Rockies subspecies of gray wolf), Canis lupus baileyi (Mexican wolf), Canis lupus monstrabilis (Texas gray wolf), and the red wolf (Canis rufus or Canis lupus rufus), also known as the Florida wolf or Mississippi Valley wolf, which is found in the southeastern United States.
Some of these populations are breeding more successfully than others, especially the eastern timber wolf and the Northern Rockies wolf. There are also reports of Mexican wolves and Northern Rockies wolves connecting, as well as Mexican wolves breeding with dogs and coyotes. In the not-too-distant future, it seems very likely that there will be one genetic pool for all wild Canis species and subspecies, which will include genes from dogs, feral dogs, wolf-dogs, and coyotes as all members of Canis species can interbreed. There is also some evidence that wolves and foxes may interbreed in the United States as has been shown in Russia.
In 1978, USFWS classified the gray wolf as an endangered population at the species level (Canis lupus) throughout the lower forty-eight states and Mexico, except for the Minnesota gray wolf population, which was classified as threatened.5 This classification based on location, not populations in the wild, has some real problems.
In northern Canada and Alaska, wolves are common. If the definition of what is “endangered” varies by region, and not the total actual size of the population of an animal, then could one claim that wolves should be “endangered species” in regions where they are not found, such as New York City, Los Angeles, or Washington, DC, except in zoos? Coyotes have already settled into parks in Chicago and Los Angeles, and have been sighted in Central Park in New York in 2015. Should coyotes be considered “endangered” in Central Park?
Species Conservation and the Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) is the third in a series of acts designed to preserve wildlife species in danger of extinction.6 The predecessors were the 1966 Endangered Species Preservation Act and the 1969 Endangered Species Conservation Act.
Richard Nixon signed the ESA into law on December 28, 1973. Its stated purpose is to protect species and “the ecosystems upon which they depend.” ESA’s primary goal is to prevent the extinction of imperiled plant and animal life, and to recover and maintain those populations by removing or lessening threats to their survival.7
According to ESA, “The term ‘species’ includes any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment of any species or vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when mature.” The term “species” as used in the ESA has “vernacular, legal, and biological meanings.”8 The law defines species vaguely: “Species: includes any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment of any species of vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when mature . . . based solely on the best scientific and commercial data available.”9
As per 16 USC. § 1532, an “endangered” species is one that is “in danger of extinction” throughout all or a significant portion of its range. A “threatened” species is one that is “likely to become endangered” within the foreseeable future.
To be considered for listing, the species must meet one of five criteria (section 4(a),
1. There is the present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range.
2. An over-utilization for commercial, recreational, scientific, or educational purposes.
3. The species is declining due to disease or predation.
4. There is an inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms.
5. There are other natural or man-made factors affecting its continued existence.
The law now reads: “The Secretary may treat an unlisted species as listed if: it so closely resembles a listed species that enforcement personnel would have substantial difficulty in attempting to differentiate between the species; the effect of this difficulty is an additional threat to the listed species; this treatment will substantially facilitate enforcement and further the Act’s policy. Regulations must be issued to provide for the conservation of threatened species.”
One of the chief concerns of species preservation is whether the population number is too small, which will result in in-breeding, and lead to loss of health and ultimately extinction of the species. The gray wolf was placed on the Endangered Species List in 1974, and aside from a brief delisting in 2009 in Montana and Idaho, it remained there until delisting was done by amending the Endangered Species Act in 2011, despite numerous efforts to oppose delisting.
This concern is currently very much related to the red wolf, found in the wild only in North Carolina, where there are forty-five to sixty red wolves, and to the Mexican wolf, found only in the wild in Arizona and New Mexico, where there are about one hundred in the wild. (There are several hundred red wolves and Mexico wolves in captivity.)
Some wolf advocates worry about species extinction due to wolves being killed or dying from disease. The current North Rockies gray wolf population is at least five and a half times higher than the minimum population recovery goal and about three and a half times higher than the breeding pair recovery goal; and the eastern timber wolf population is no longer listed, according to the USFWS.10 In reality, the greatest long-term threat to the preservation of the gray wolf may be hybridization.
Canid Hybridization—Wolf-Dogs
A Google search for “Wolves for Sale” in September of 2016 list, around 3,550,000 results. There are an estimated three hundred to five hundred thousand wolf-dogs in the United States in captivity, either as pets or in educational centers and sanctuaries. Adding wolf-coyote-dogs with wolves and wolf-dogs not in the wild, results in at least half a million canines in North America that have at least some wolf blood.
Anything less than a 100 percent wolf is considered a wolf-dog.11 Currently there are only two states that have no laws regarding the ownership of a wolf or wolf hybrid, twenty-one states do not allow any ownership of a wolf or hybrid, and the remaining twenty-seven states require owners to obtain varying degrees of permits for the ownership of a wolf or hybrid.12
These restrictions are due to the hybrids being considered dangerous. They have the size and strength of wolves, seem to have less wild instinct, but are unpredictable. A number have been released into the wild by people who find that after two or three years the animal cannot be controlled.
According to Richard Polsky, a dog bite and wolf hybrid expert: “Wolf hybrids retain many wolf like characteristics which make their behavior unpredictable in the human setting. As a result, attacks upon humans likely happen at disproportionately high rates, and there are documented accounts of fatal attacks by wolf hybrids on people in the United States.”
Polsky goes on to say that between 1979 and 1998 the top five dog breeds that were involved in dog bite-related fatalities were pit bulls, Rottweilers, German shepherds, Siberian huskies, and wolf-dogs. By compiling US and Canadian press accounts between 1982 and 2011, Animal People listed the following breeds and associated outcomes for dog bites. The combination of pit bulls, Rottweilers, their close mixes, and wolf hybrids yielded the following results: 77 percent of attacks that induce bodily harm; 73 percent of attacks to children; 81 percent of attacks to adults; 68 percent of attacks that result in fatalities; and 76 percent that result in maiming. Wolf-dogs topped the dog bite–related fatality list for the known crossbred dogs.13
An example of the dangers of wolf-dogs, the Wolf Hybrid Attack and Bite Statistics from 1982 through 2013 are as follows: bodily harm, eighty-five attacks; child victims, seventy attacks; adult victims, five attacks; deaths, nineteen deaths caused by a wolf hybrid; and maimings, forty-nine.14
Examples of some of these attacks include:
• June 29, 2015—Fredericksburg, Virginia—a four-month-old boy was bitten by wolf-dog hybrid. The child suffered “17 punctures to his rear abdomen and three to the front abdomen” plus “an abdominal evisceration,” a medical term for disemboweling, according to the Inova Fairfax Hospital.15
• July 2010—Lincoln Park, Illinois—Five-year-old Kyle Holland was attacked while he slept by a German shepherd-wolf–hybrid. The boy died after he was “partially eaten” by the hybrid. The Wayne county prosecutor’s office charged the dog’s owner with manslaughter under “gross negligence theory,” because he knew the dog was dangerous and could harm Kyle.16
• July 23, 2009—Lexington, Kentucky—A wolf-dog hybrid, Dakota, badly injured three-day-old Alexander James Smith. Michael Smith, Alexander’s father, said Dakota was “a Native American Indian” breed and said the breeder told him the dog was “90 percent wolf.” Ray Coppinger, a professor at Hampshire College who studies canine behavior, said, “Dogs like Dakota don’t recognize infants as people. It’s no more of an act of violence on the dog’s part, than you eating a steak.”17
• September 1, 2006—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—Wolf-dogs killed owner Sandra L. Piovesan who bled to death after being mauled by a pack of nine wolf-dogs that she had raised as pets. She did not have the required license from the Pennsylvania Game Commission required to own, breed, and sell wolves and wolf-dog hybrids.18
• April 2003—Boise Idaho—Child killed by wolf-dog hybrid. A thirteen-month-old boy died after a wolf-dog hybrid bit him and tore the baby’s jugular vein at a Boise home. Andre Angel Thomas was bitten by the animal “hundreds” of times at the Frederic Street home, said Boise Police Detective Dale Rogers.19
• October 21, 2000—Cincinnati, Ohio—A five-year-old Cincinnati boy was killed Saturday morning when his grandmother’s pet wolf hybrid attacked him at her home here. The animal was shot and killed after the attack.20
• August 21, 1999—Muskegon, Michigan—Four-year-old Cody Tyler Fairfield was playing in the backyard of his home in. Also occupying the yard was the Fairfield family’s German shepherd–wolf hybrid, tethered to a chain. Left alone for a moment, Cody approached the family pet. Within minutes, the child was dead, his throat crushed, his trachea punctured.21
• September 18, 1991—Spokane, Washington—For the second time in a year, a five-year-old girl is attacked by a wolf–dog hybrid. The first attack required forty stitches to close the wounds in the upper chest and back. The second attack required eighty stitches to close all wounds to head, face, and back.22
Despite the warnings, some wolf advocates who own pet wolves and wolf-dogs will extoll about how wonderful their pets are. Recognizing the inherent dangers, some of our experts were contacted and they suggested the following books about how to live with socialized wolves based on solid scientific work including:
• Wolf Park Guidelines for Keeping Wolves and Wolf-Hybrids Hary Frank (ed.) 1987.
• Man and Wolf. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
• Raymond Coppinger and Lorna Coppinger 2001, Dogs, Scribner, New York. See Part I dealing with a contrast of wolf and dog characteristics.
• Jerome H. Woolpy and Benson E. Ginsburg. 1967. “Wolf Socialization. A study of Temperament in a Wild Species.” American Zoologist 7:357–363.
When Wolf-Dogs Become Feral
Feral dogs of all types are a growing problem in many areas of the United States. When domestic dogs become wild, they lose their domestic behavior, form packs, and become secretive, surviving as opportunistic predators as well as scavengers, much like habituated wolves and coyotes.23 They can be a danger to livestock and people.
In February of 2012, a rancher in Valencia County, New Mexico, reported that he and his employees have killed more than three hundred dogs over the past eighteen months. The feral dogs were attacking young calves and weak cattle for sport.24
The New Mexico rancher is not alone. In 1999, the National Agricultural Statistics Service reported that feral dogs were partly responsible for killing cows, sheep, and goats worth about thirty-seven million dollars a year.25
In 1997, the State of Colorado was faced with the task of how to handle a growing number of wolf-dogs in the state. The state veterinarian convened a special committee to study the problem and come up with suggestions. Based on advice from Dr. Ray Pierotti, a geneticist at University of Kansas, Dr. Nick Federoff, wildlife biologist, and Dr. Erick Klinghammer, ethologist from Wolf Park in Indiana, the report concluded: “All forms of wolf-dog identification are problematic. There is no genotype (the genetic constitution of an animal) or phenotype (the observable appearance of an animal) to distinguish between a dog, a wolf-dog cross, or a wolf. All DNA tests to differentiate wolf hybrids from domestic dogs are subject to challenge. There are no known DNA markers uniquely distinguishable in wolves that are not present in dogs. Blood tests, skull measurements, and skeletal measurements all have some merit but have not withstood legal challenge.”26
Many wildlife forensic scientists agree that morphology alone cannot be used to determine whether an animal is a purebred or a hybrid. The only way that one can tell the species of an animal is with DNA analysis, which today has become sophisticated, but as the Colorado report states, with that complexity comes disagreement among scientists about what is a species.27
It has been known for well over two decades that Rocky Mountain gray wolves have interbred with domestic and wild dogs.28 The DNA of Rocky Mountain gray wolves is currently being tested, and the scientific community is very aware that hybridization has biological, forensic, legal, and social implications.29
Genetic research from Stanford University and UCLA has already revealed that wolves with black pelts owe their distinctive coloration to a mutation that occurred through wolf-dog hybridization.30
Wolves normally will kill coyotes, but they also can breed with them, creating a coy-wolf. Geneticists say that eastern timber wolves, found in Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia, are primarily coy-wolves, so just what you call these animals is a matter of choice.31
The reality, of course, is that the “eastern coyote” of New England and south-eastern Canada contains the DNA of western coyotes and eastern wolves, so you call it either an “eastern wolf” or an “eastern coyote.” According to researchers Way, Rutledge, Wheeldon, and White, the “eastern coyote” should be called a “coy-wolf” as eastern wolves have at least 25 percent coyote genes.32
Several facts that further bolster this chapter’s thesis:
• Some “wolves” in Oregon also have been found to be hybrids with coyotes and dogs.33
• The “red wolf” of the Southeast, Canis rufus, is already thought to be a coy-wolf by many scientists.34
• Similar research also finds hybridization taking place in the Northern Rockies.35
• Hybridization of wolves and dogs is also found in Europe.36
• It seems inevitable that in time the wolf species we know today will disappear into a hybridized gene pool that might best be simply called “wild canid hybrid.”
“Wolves” and the Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act is meant to protect species that can self-replicate. When one species breeds with another species, the resulting hybrid becomes problematic for Endangered Species Act protections. This is called the “hybrid policy,” originally a rigid standard that states, “Protection of hybrids would not serve to recover listed species and would likely jeopardize that species’ continued existence.”37 As DNA analysis has become more sophisticated, and species identification has become more complex, the US Fish and Wildlife Service have rescinded this position.
There is currently no official US policy to provide guidance for dealing with hybrids.38 The questions of what a wolf really is can only be determined by a DNA analysis, and DNA analysis finds that 100 percent purebred wolves are growing increasingly rare due to hybridization.
A harbinger of the future, hybrid wild canids in general seem to be growing in size and number. In 2004, a wolf-dog was killed in Pennsylvania that weighed 105 pounds.39 In 1996, an eighty-six-pound male wolf-like canid was killed in Maine that was later confirmed to be a wolf-coyote hybrid. In 1997, a seventy-two-pound coy-wolf was killed in Vermont.40 And in 2010, a 104-pound “coyote” was killed in Missouri.41
As wolves co-exist with millions of dogs and coyotes, as they do today throughout North America, inter-species breeding will inevitably occur, and so hybridization of wolves will most certainly increase. It seems practical to not list wolves as an endangered species, for the only way to tell what is a wolf requires an expensive and time-consuming DNA analysis that can only be done when the animal is dead or captured. The number of “questionable wolves” being sent to the US Fish and Wildlife Service Forensic Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon, is growing. And as the Colorado report concluded, even with the best methods and equipment, the test may not always be completely conclusive.
A recent breakthrough in genetics, however, sheds light on the DNA makeup of wolves. An extensive investigation of the genetics of wolves was reported in the journal Science, in July 2016, that involved nine different scientists at nine different universities and research centers in the United States, China, and Israel. The researchers conclude that two endemic species of canids, the coyote and the American wolf, are pure species, both abundant in the United States and Canada, but the eastern wolf (found originally in the eastern United States and Canada) and the red wolf (found in the southeastern United States) are hybrids of coyote and wolf. Both species are smaller than true wolves and larger than coyotes. This genetic evidence has been confirmed by interspecies breeding in research facilities.
Additionally, it is the contention of the researchers, supported by research on the genetics of Great Lakes and western gray wolves, as well as Mexican wolves and coyotes, using five distinctly different methods, that there are few truly pure wolves in the wild today in the lower forty-eight states, and as existing wild wolf populations spread out throughout the United States, these animals will intermingle with feral dogs, domesticated dogs, and coyotes, resulting in what could be called “canis stew;” this is the genetic makeup of at least two, three, or four canid species. Such hybridization was also found to occur in Eurasia between the Eurasian gray wolf and dogs, and in Africa between wolves, dogs, and jackals. They also report finding that coyotes in several regions in the United States have gray wolf DNA. They also found that all North American wolves and coyotes have significant amounts of coyote ancestry.
Since the Endangered Species Act does not cover hybrids, these two hybrid subspecies of canids cannot be protected as Endangered Species, and there is doubt as to how many wild canids are truly purebred.
It seems inevitable that the “pure wolf” will become increasingly rare, especially as it spreads throughout the Lower 48, and management ultimately will shift from protecting “endangered species wolves” to controlling wolf-like apex predator hybrid wild dogs. Currently such hybrids can be shot on sight if they are chasing wildlife, threatening human safety, and preying on domestic livestock.
If purebred wolves do exist, and some scientists question their existence, it seems that the only way to preserve the genome of Canis lupus is to impede the contact of purebred wolves with dogs and coyotes, which is probably impossible. In his previous chapter, Dr. Valerius Geist suggests that perhaps the best way to preserve purebred wolves is to keep them on special enclosed areas, like fenced military reserves, or at special sanctuaries with strong fences and enough room to allow for natural predatory behavior on wildlife to take place.
As stated in previous chapters, if zoos and other small enclosures are used to preserve purebred wolf breeding stock, it is not likely that these wolves could be released into the wild, as they would be habituated. Their capacity to survive without preying on livestock and interacting with ranches and farms and their dogs, as well as with feral dogs, is questionable. In the spring of 2016, the USFWS took two newborn Mexican wolf puppies born in captivity and released in western New Mexico into a den with wolf pups—an effort that was opposed by New Mexico Game and Fish.42 New Mexico Game and Fish has sued USFWS in response.43
The only way to know for certain if an animal is a pure wolf is through DNA analysis, and it seems only reasonable to expect that purebred wolves will soon, if not already, only exist in very remote regions of the far north or in enclosures that prevent interaction with all other canids.
It seems very clear that wolf politics and wolf biology do not hybridize very well. The next chapter describes the genetics of wild canines in more detail, again raising the question of what is a real wolf and how this in turn influences management of all canines in the wild, including which deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act.
“The wolf is neither a saint nor a sinner except to those who want to make it so.”44
—David Mech
Endnotes:
1. http://fwp.mt.gov/mtoutdoors/HTML/articles/2006/LCmisadventures.htm
2. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/08/0821_030821_straydogs.html
3. http://www.abc.net.au/animals/program1/factsheet5.htm
4. http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2006/10/a_list_of_26_species_concepts.php
5. http://ecos.fws.gov/speciesProfile/profile/speciesProfile.action?spcode=A00D
6. http://www.fws.gov/endangered/laws-policies/index.html
7. http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/laws/esa_section3.pdf
8. Natural Research Council. “Science and the Endangered Species Act.” National Academy Press, 1995:5.
9. http://wildlifelaw.unm.edu/fedbook/esa.html%205-YR%t20review%20PDF.pdf
10. http://ecos.fws.gov/docs/five_year_review/doc3978.%20lupus%205-YR%20review%20PDF.pdf
11. http://www.wolf-dogalliance.org/legislation/statelaws.html
12. http://www.bornfreeusa.org/b4a2_exotic_animals_summary.php
13. http://www.bradfordlicensing.com/documents/pets-fact-sheet.pdf; and https://www.dogexpert.com/wolf-hybrid-aggression-behavior/ and Sacks, J. Breeds of dog involved in fatal human attacks in the United States between 1979–1998. J. American Veterinary Medical Association, 2000, Vol. 217, 836–840.
14. https://pethelpful.com/dogs/Most-Dangerous-Dog-Breeds
15. http://www.fredericksburg.com/news/local/culpeper-baby-bitten-by-wolf-dog-hybrid-is-out-of/article_830b258a-1ea8-11e5-ac3e-6733f7144833.html
16. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2009147/Kyle-Holland-5-died-partially-eaten-wolf-dog-Lincoln-Park.html
17. http://www.seattletimes.com/life/lifestyle/wolf-hybrids-scrutinized-after-pet-takes-baby-from-crib/
18. http://www.post-gazette.com/local/westmoreland/2006/07/19/Wolf-dogs-killed-owner-autopsy-determines/stories/200607190197
19. http://www.wolf-to-wolf-dog.org/boise.htm
20. http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2000/10/22/loc_wolf_hybrid_kills.html
21. https://www.petfinder.com/pet-adoption/exotic-pets/case-against-hybrids/
22. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1314&dat=19910918&id=I1tWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=5-8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=2839,5322564
23. http://icwdm.org/handbook/carnivor/FeralDog.asp
24. http://www.cattlenetwork.com/cattle-news/New-Mexico-ranchers-protect-cattle-from-wild-dogs-139392968.html
25. http://icwdm.org/handbook/carnivor/FeralDog.asp
26. http://www.naiaonline.org/articles/archives/coloradotask.htm
27. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1523–1739.1992.06040559.x/abstract http://www.springerlink.com/content/kw1132542l0p2mgn/
28. http://www.rmrs.nau.edu/publications/pilgrim_et_al_1998/pilgrim_et_al_1998.pdf
29. http://www.jstor.org/pss/3783983
30. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/science/06wolves.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
31. Kyle, CJ. AR Johnson. BR Patterson. PJ Wilson. K Shami. SK Grewal. And BN White “Genetic Nature of Eastern Wolves: Past Present and Future.” Conservation Genetics, 7: 273–287.
32. http://easterncoyoteresearch.com/downloads/GeneticsOfEasternCoywolfFinalInPrint.pdf and http://www.livescience.com/55586-wolves-only-one-species.html
33. http://www.defenders.org/publications/northern_californiasouthwestern_oregon_gray_wolf_dps.pdf
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