By Staff
The other day I was cruising around east of Dowagiac doing nothing in particular, just gawking at the fall scenery. At one point I spotted a big, dog-like creature loping across a roadside field. I was quite sure it wasn't a dog. It had that distinctive coyote gait but it was almost black and seemed considerably bigger than your average coyote. "Looks for all the world like a young wolf," I thought to myself. "Naw, not in these parts. Just a big, dark coyote."
Actually, it's not totally inconceivable that a wild wolf could wander into our area. A few months ago a wolf was found dead in Central Indiana just a few miles from the Ohio border, apparently hit by a car. The tag it was sporting revealed it was born in the wild last year in Northern Wisconsin. That adventuresome youngster had traveled well over 500 miles, somehow skirting suburbia Chicago and Indianapolis and successfully playing car roulette crossing untold numbers of freeways. All that just to get whanged by a car on some rural road in Outer Slobovia, Indiana. Bummer.
Though I'm still going to call my sighting a coyote, that brings us around to wolves. If you haven't heard, the gray wolf is doing quite well in the Lower 48. Last year Michigan met its recovery goal of at least 100 wolves sustained over a five year period and the state status was lowered from endangered to threatened. Last year 278 wolves were documented, all in the U.P. Other areas across the gray wolf's original range are doing equally well and this year the Feds lowered the gray wolf's ranking from endangered to threatened nationwide.
Few of us realize a wolf is not just a wolf. There are actually sixteen different species of wolves in North America. Eight other species have gone extinct within the last 75 years. They vary in size from the diminutive red wolf of our Southwest which weighs little more than my Brittany, to the monstrous, moose chomping Columbia and Mackenzie Valley species of Western Canada and Alaska. Most, though, are subspecies of the mid size gray wolf, including the Eastern timber wolf which is what we have here in Michigan. The wolf species of the far north have faired reasonably well and have been afforded no special protection, it's the gray wolf and its subspecies here in the lower states that are so rare.
You can't talk about wolves for long before the conversation comes around to attacks on people. With the variety of opinions about wolf attacks, or lack thereof, I decided to look into this matter. Many say there are no documented accounts of wolves ever attacking people. That's not entirely true. Back when wolves were common in Europe some attacks over there were quite well documented. India averages several dozen people a year killed by wolves. Just a few years ago one family group of Indian wolves attacked a total of 80 some children, killing and eating almost fifty of them.
Here in North America wolves have also attacked people, though perhaps not in the true sense. In recent times a number of people from Ontario to Alaska have been bitten by wolves. All incidences in North America, however, involve wolves that are used to being around people and are usually being fed. Rarely were these full blown attacks, but rather a case of someone being bitten. Even biologists crawling into dens full of wolf pups have never been attacked.
Farmers and hunters voice the strongest opposition against wolves. While the farmer's visions of wholesale carnage on livestock hasn't occurred, there's no doubt wolves can play a role in deer numbers. As an endangered species a wolf could only be legally killed if a human life was at stake. Under the new threatened status, however, professionals can now partake in wolf control if they pose a real threat to property, effective game management and such. That doesn't mean a farmer can pop any wolf crossing his cattle pasture, though. Control measures are restricted to professional hands and only with just cause. That seems reasonable. Carpe diem.
Larry Lyons writes a weekly outdoor column. Reach him at larrylyons@beanstalk.net