European Wolf (Canus lupus lupus)

Howling wolves

Background Wolves generally live in packs. The number of wolves that may live in a pack varies greatly because of the birth of pups and mortality. Many wolf packs contain four to seven wolves. Wolves can be territorial, and the size of a wolf pack's territory may vary from 60 square kilometres (25 square miles) to 1300 square kilometres (500 square miles), depending on the availability of prey. Wolves are carnivores. Wolves tend not to be picky eaters and use many different food sources. When hunting in a pack, wolves often try to capture and kill deer, moose, caribou, bison, wild sheep, wild goats or musk oxen, and these large ungulates (hoofed animals) make up most of a wolf's diet.  Although wolves hunting in packs tend to capture such large prey items, lone wolves will on occasion bring down a large hoofed animal. During spring, wolves often prey upon juvenile ungulates. Most often, the animals that wolves kill are not healthy, adult animals. During spring or fall, wolves most often live off of deer fawns or moose or caribou calves whose mothers were not able to defend them. When there are no supply of young prey animals, the wolves often kill old, diseased animals that do not have the speed or strength to ward them off. Wolves sometimes do kill many animals that are healthy, however. Wolves can live in most places and are found in habitats as diverse as farmland and the Arctic. They can also live close to people, for example: Living on farmland in Spain. They crossed motorways using bridges built for traffic. Living on the outskirts of an east European city. At night they went into town searching for food; people thought they were stray dogs so did not molest them. Living on a military range in India. After dark they scavenged along the lamp-lit streets of the nearby town. Therefore wolves are highly adaptable. They do not necessarily need wilderness or forests to live in, as once thought. They can even live close to people, although they seldom do so because people kill them. Being able to live close to people is good for the wolf's survival in crowded places like Europe and India. History of the Wolf in the UK The last wolf in the UK was killed in 1743, wolves were killed of mainly because of competition with humans, wolfs kill livestock as they would any other prey species and thus were undesirable. There were also a lot of superstitions involved with wolves that enabled a general mistrust by the general population, which in turn enabled their systematic extermination. Wolf Reintroduction in Yellowstone USFWS and Canadian wildlife biologists captured wolves in Canada and released them in both recovery areas in 1995 and 1996. As planned, wolves of dispersal age (1-2 years old) were released in Idaho, while Yellowstone released pups of the year (7+ months old), together with one or more of the alpha pair (breeding adults). Young pups weigh about 75 lbs. and are less likely to have established a home range. The goal was to have 5-7 wolves from one social group together in each release pen. Although concern was expressed about the wolves becoming habituated to humans or to the captive conditions, the temporary holding period was not long in the life of a wolf. In Alaska and Canada, wolves are seldom known to develop the habituated behaviors seen more commonly in grizzly bears. Wolves, while social among their own kind, typically avoid human contact. They are highly efficient predators with well-developed predatory instincts. Their social structure and pack behavior minimizes their need to scavenge food or garbage available from human sources. Compared to bears, whose diet is predominantly vegetarian, wolves have less specific habitat requirements. The wolves' primary need is for prey, which is most likely to be elk, deer, and other ungulates in these recovery areas. In 1995, fourteen wolves were released into Yellowstone National Park. In 1996, seventeen more wolves were brought from Canada and released. After release, several thousand visitors were lucky to view wolves chasing and killing elk or interacting with bears during spring. A park ranger and a group of visitors watched a most exciting encounter between two packs which likely resulted in one young wolf's death. This was not the first fatal encounter between wolves, although human-caused mortalities still outnumber inter-pack strife as a cause of wolf deaths. Yellowstone's first fourteen wolves bore two litters totalling nine pups. In 1996, four packs produced fourteen pups. After the wolves’ release in 1996, plans to transplant additional wolves were terminated due to reduced funding and due to the wolves' unexpected early reproductive success. However there has been much controversy about the reintroduction, particularly from ranchers and farmers with stock that has been taken, this has required the need for compensation and many controls to be in place.