Of all the species and subspecies of wolves (ie- C-rufus; red wolf), the gray or timber wolf (canis lupus) is the largest. A fully grown adult male stands 27 inches tall and is two meters (six feet) long, including the tail which makes up less than half of the body length, and weighs around 40kg (90 pounds) Females are slightly smaller and weigh about 35 kg (75 pounds). Some wolves have been weighed in at 180-190 pounds for males, and 150 for females.

Wolves have long legs with wide, five inch paws, which it uses to chase prey across deep snow in the winter. The wolf's fur, which thickens during the winter to protect it from the cold, ranges in colour. The most common colours are gray and white, but wolves can also be jet black, tawny (tan), brown, or red (C-rufus). Wolves have an extraordinary sense of smell, which is equal or better than any dog's. A wolf can detect the faintest smell of deer or caribou up to 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) away.

When hunting, the wolf can run at bursts of speed up to 65 kilometers per hour. They usually run their prey to exhaustion before biting it with their four-centimeter (1.5 inch) fangs.

Wolves have been noted for having the most human-like eyes of any animal. They are usually yellowish, even though they are blue when the wolf is born.

Wolves live in family groups called packs. Packs are lead by the two largest wolves which are called the alpha male and alpha female. An average pack consists of eight to fifteen wolves. The hierarchy of the pack is known to all, and is reinforced by favours, rituals, nips, and fights. They all socialize together, sleep together, and howl together. All pay daily, ritualized allegiance to the pack's leaders.

Wolves usually mate in late winter or early spring. Usually only the alpha pair will mate, due to the order of hierarchy, but other wolves may `get away with it'. Pups are born blind and deaf after 64 days. The female may give birth to seven to thirteen pups in a dug out hole; tree stump, or abandoned beaver lodge, called a den. The pups weigh an average of 1 pound. They open their eyes after 12 days and feed on their mother's milk for about three weeks when they begin to eat solid food. Lower ranking wolves assist in feeding and raising each spring's new batch of pups. Pups leave the den after about two months and often reach adult size at 9 months. They are trained to hunt and kill and begin hunting with the pack.

The entire pack shares in hunting duties. While hunting large prey, the wolf employs a wide variety of group tactics. Lead by the pair of alpha wolves, they communicate through vocalizations, facial expressions, and body movements to the other pack members. Wolves usually eat 3-10 pounds of meat at a time but their large stomachs allow them to eat as much (and some do) as 25 pounds at one sitting. The wolf's favorite prey is ungulates, such as deer, elk, moose, caribou, and mountain sheep. They also eat bison, seals, beaver, muskrat, voles, water fowl, fish, rabbits, berries, garbage, and even road kills. No one has ever accused the wolf of being a picky eater. Unfortunately, the wolf also kills domestic animals such as cattle and sheep. This has earned the wolf so much trouble. But, in a 1981 study in Minnesota, only 110 sheep and 30 cattle were killed in one year out of a state-wide population of livestock numbering 300 000. (so what's the big deal?!!)

The pack also protects its territory from other wolves. The boundaries are fiercely protected by regular, ritual scent markings every 100-200 meters. The total area may encompass 400 square kilometers. Wolves within this area consider local game as 'theirs'. Intruding wolves are attacked and; on occasion, killed.

Wolves once ranged over half. They were located everywhere in the northern hemisphere except Central America, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. They have been killed back to tiny enclaves of wolves in the American south and Mexico and the 1200 or so timber wolves that survived in northern Minnesota. The contiguous 48 states are practically free of wolves even today. Fewer that 100 wolves live in the northern-tier states along the Canadian border. A rough line, drawn east to west through Canada 50 to 100 kilometers north of the U.S. border marks the southern border of the remaining territory of large numbers of wolves in North America. An estimated 60 000 wolves still live in Canada and another 6000 are thought to live in Alaska.

With the arrival of European colonists during the 17th century the extermination of this continents wolves began. The wolf has, in the last 300 years, been eradicated from much of Europe and most of the contiguous 48 American states. This pays a tribute to the power of agricultural societies to conjure up myths and create legislation against the unreal, but imagined, threat of the Big Bad Wolf huffing and puffing at the door. In fact; no animal on earth has been so unfairly maligned or so completely misunderstood.

Wolves can live in almost any climate, but are seldom found in deserts or tropical rain forests. At one time, the wolf occupied most of North America. From Canada's arctic to dry, mountainous ravines of central Mexico. The only area never inhabited by wolves was the southeast corner of the U.S. and coastal California and Mexico. Across this enormous range, the wolf made regional adaptations to climate, terrain, and available prey. Zoologists claim that these variations in appearance and behavior have produced 24 subspecies of wolves in North America. Most wolves live in sparsely populated northern regions. They can be found in Alaska, Minnesota, Canada, China, and Russia. Small numbers still inhabit wilderness areas of Greece, India, Mexico, Spain, and other countries.

Between 1630 and 1960 in North America, the systematic eradication of the wolf population followed the western expansion of the frontier. Where localized hunting didn't remove the wolf governments established bounty systems. In 1909 in British Columbia, trappers were paid $2.50 for each wolf killed. By 1949 the price had risen to $40. During it's peak period in the late 1940's 10 000 wolves per year were being killed in Canada. Bounties and bounty systems were supplemented in many places with mass poisonings of wolves. Ranchers in Texas would lace pieces of meat with cyanide or strychnine. Trappers in the Yukon set out poisoned baits. These methods ceased around 1960. By that time the wolf had become virtually extinct in nearly half of its former territory.

Except for tiny enclaves of wolves in the American south and Mexico, as well as the 1200 or so timber wolves that survived in northern Minnesota, the contiguous 48 states are practically free of wolves. Fewer than 100 wolves live in the northern-tier states along the Canadian border. An estimated 60 000 wolves still live in Canada. Another 6000-8000 are expected to live in Alaska.

Wolves can be kept track of with radio collars; even whole packs. The wolf is first tranquilized. It is then weighed, measured, and fixed with the radio collar. When the wolf wakes up, it will feel the weight of the collar; some even try and succeed in removing it, but are otherwise unhindered by it. Wolves can be tracked from miles away. They can be tracked on the ground or by helicopter.

Last Updated December 1997.

Following is some background information about National Biological Service radioed wolves being followed near Ely, Minnesota. Pack sizes vary as wolves disperse or return sometimes from temporary excursions away from the pack. The "Date Last Radioed" indicates the last date the wolf was captured and had a radio collar attached.

Wolf Number: 75
Sex: M
Approximate Age: 8.5 years
Pack: Kawishiwi Lab Pack
Size: 2
Date Last Radioed: July 1994
Weight: 82 pounds
Current Status: Hit and killed by a vehicle, December 1996

Wolf Number: 141
Sex: M
Approximate Age: 7 years
Pack: Big Lake
Pack Size: 4
Date Last Radioed: July 1993
Weight: 92 pounds

Wolf Number: 253
Sex: M Approximate
Age: 4-7 years
Pack: Bear Island
Pack Size: 2-10
Date Last Radioed: July 1993
Weight: 80 pounds

Wolf Number: 257
Sex: F
Approximate Age: 3-6 years
Pack: Birch Lake
Pack Size: 8-10
Date Last Radioed: July 1994
Weight: 54 pounds

Wolf Number: 317
Date Last Radioed: September 1996
Current Status: Mortality signal. Died between 8/30-9/3/96, cause unknown.

Wolf Number: 333
Date Last Radioed: May 1995
Current Status: Hit and killed by a vehicle.

Wolf Number: 343
Date Last Radioed: January 1995
Current Status: Off the air - collar is no longer transmitting signals.

A lot is being done to keep the wolf around for a while longer. It is now illegal, in Canada, to hunt or shoot wolves. People charged will meet steep fines or even imprisonment. Another way to keep the wolf population steady is to move, or reintroduce, wolves to other parts of the world. In one case, wolves from different parts of Alberta and British Columbia were moved to Yellowstone National Park.

In one case, the movement to restore wolves to the southern Rocky Mountains scored a significant victory in late July of 1996 when the three member San Miguel County Commission (Colorado) voted to endorse the concept of restoring wolves to the wilds of San Miguel county with the assistance of an organization known as Sinapu. The endorsement-- the third by a local government on the western slope of Colorado's Rocky Mountains-- specified that any reintroduction within the county be conducted as part of a larger reintroduction program involving the entire Western Slope.

While certainly a blow to the few ranchers in the county who voiced their opposition to the proposal, the decision marked the culmination of nearly six months of careful deliberation by the commissioners.

For the many residents of the county who understand the importance of restoring wolves to the deer-rich canyons of the Dolores River and the elk-rich San Juan Mountains, the commissioners did the right thing. Indeed, their deliberation tactics used to define the debate spoke volumes about power politics, the media, and ultimately, the need for county residents to come together as a community.

Some people believe that they will reintroduce wolves to Colorado by breeding a litter of pups in a pen, raising them and training them to hunt, then bringing them to the forest and saying `good bye' and `good luck'. In fact, however, wolf reintroduction is both more complicated and at the same time simpler than that. More complicated because most of the effort involves not wolves, but a far more mysterious species: human beings. And simpler, because actually we don't have to teach them how to hunt or anything else; we just have to let them be wolves and give them a little space.

Obviously, the whole process would involve some very scary elements for a wild wolf in southern Canada to be brought to a new home in Colorado. Ultimately, however, wolves might be safer in Colorado after a decision on reintroduction has been made, than in a country (Canada) without an endangered species act, where wolves are routinely shot, trapped, and poisoned, and where their remaining habitat is steadily disappearing. It's tough being a wolf in today's world, and relocations for new reintroduction programs cannot be a pleasant affair. The challenge for Sinapu and for its members is to make the first step in the reintroduction process--the dealing with human beings and the government--a process that will ensure wolves maximum safety and room to roam after the scary relocation process is but a distant memory in the wolf's mind.

There many other groups trying to save the wolves through the same or different means. These include The Defenders of Wildlife; Washington, Wolf Awareness; Canada, Egholn Wolf Center; Denmark, European Wolf Network; Denmark, The Born Free Foundation; UK, and the North American Wolf Society; Alaska.

Books

Carbyn, Ludwig N. Wolves in Canada and Alaska. Ottawa, Canada: Printing and Publishing, Supply and Services Canada, 1983

Wood, Daniel. Wolves. Toronto, Ontario: Smithbooks, Whitecap Books Ltd., 1994

Evolution chart of wolves (not in essay, used for teaching poster):
Lawrence, R.D. Trail Of The Wolf. Toronto, Ontario. Key Porter Books Limited, 1997

Internet

The International Wolf Center: http://www.wolf.org

Wolf Report: Defenders Of Wildlife comments on draft Wyoming wolf plan: http://www.poky.srv.net/~jjmrm/defender.htm

Encyclopedia

Mech, David. "Wolf" The World Book Multimedia Encyclopedia, (1997)

"Wolf" Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia (1994)

"Wolf" Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (1996)

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