Green Group discussion

http://www.defendersblog.org/2012/12/...

New science study on how grey wolves evolved in Yukon.

Highlights
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Stable isotopes and dental microwear reveal diets of ancient and modern gray wolves.

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Yukon gray wolves remained large ungulate specialists from Pleistocene to present.

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Yukon gray wolves have remained primarily flesh-consumers.

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Yukon gray wolves transitioned from diets mostly composed of horse to cervids.

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Conservation efforts in the Yukon should focus on ungulate populations.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...

In other words, in Beringia as the Ice Age was ending, wolves picked on small horses - presumably because mammoths were big and had tusks, and caribou had horns.
Wolves would of course eat anything they could get.
When horses went extinct in North America - thankfully, not before they had crossed the landbridge to Asia - the wolves adapted to hunting moose and caribou in the new-grown trees.

Here is the simper version to read.
https://phys.org/news/2021-04-shift-d...

We have also discussed wolves in the Rewilding topics.

The wolf cam. On the wolf's collar, it records 30 seconds an hour, during daylight.

Great stuff. This wolf caught lots of fish!

https://gizmodo.com/see-the-first-cam...

"Ecologist Rolf Peterson remembers driving remote stretches of road in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and seeing areas strewn with deer carcasses. But that changed after gray wolves arrived in the region from Canada and Minnesota.
...
"Recently, another team of scientists has gathered data about road collisions and wolf movements in Wisconsin to quantify how the arrival wolves there affected the frequency of deer-auto collisions. They found it created what scientists call "a landscape of fear."

"In a pretty short period of time, once wolves colonize a county, deer vehicle collisions go down about 24%," said Dominic Parker, a natural resources economist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and co-author of their new study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Both thinning of the deer population by wolves and behavior changes in fearful deer are factors in the drop-off, Parker said.

"When you have a major predator around, it impacts how the prey behave," he said. "Wolves use linear features of a landscape as travel corridors, like roads, pipelines and stream beds. Deer learn this and can adapt by staying away.""

https://phys.org/news/2021-05-wolves-...

More information: Jennifer L. Raynor et al, Wolves make roadways safer, generating large economic returns to predator conservation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2023251118
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Something cheerful.
In the YT short compilation is a group of people helping a trapped wolf. Other animals being helped are shown. Great start to your day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuqBl...

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-indian-...

"The study indicates that Indian wolves could represent the most ancient surviving lineage of wolves.

The Indian wolf is restricted to lowland India and Pakistan, where its grassland habitat is threatened primarily by human encroachment and land conversion.

"Wolves are one of the last remaining large carnivores in Pakistan, and many of India's large carnivores are endangered," said lead author Lauren Hennelly, a doctoral student with the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine's Mammalian Ecology Conservation Unit. "I hope that knowing they are so unique and found only there will inspire local people and scientists to learn more about conserving these wolves and grassland habitats."

'A game-changer'

The authors sequenced genomes of four Indian and two Tibetan wolves and included 31 additional canid genomes to resolve their evolutionary and phylogenomic history. They found that Tibetan and Indian wolves are distinct from each other and from other wolf populations.
...

"Recent genomic studies confirmed that the Tibetan wolf is an ancient and distinct evolutionary lineage. However, until this study, what was known about the evolutionary history of Indian wolves was based on mitochondrial DNA evidence, which is inherited only from the mother. That evidence suggested that the Indian wolf diverged more recently than the Tibetan wolf.

In contrast, this study used the entire genome—the nuclear DNA containing nearly all of the genes reflecting the wolf's evolutionary history. It showed that the Indian wolf was likely even more divergent than the Tibetan wolf.
...

"A separate study led by Sacks about endangered red wolves appears on the cover of the same Molecular Ecology issue in September. Addressing a 30-year-long controversy, that study shows that red wolves are not a colonial-era hybrid between gray wolves and coyotes, as some have argued, but the descendant of a pre-historic North American wolf that diverged from coyotes over 20,000 years ago. Both studies have substantial implications for wolf conservation."

More information: Lauren M. Hennelly et al, Ancient divergence of Indian and Tibetan wolves revealed by recombination‐aware phylogenomics, Molecular Ecology (2021). DOI: 10.1111/mec.16127
Journal information: Molecular Ecology

The red wolf study:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/a...

"Our findings broadly support this model, in which red wolves ranged the width of the American continent prior to arrival of the grey wolf to the mid-continent 60–80 ka; red wolves subsequently disappeared from the mid-continent, relegated to California and the eastern forests, which ushered in emergence of the coyote in their place (50–30 ka); by the early Holocene (12–10 ka), coyotes had expanded into California, where they admixed with and phenotypically replaced western red wolves in a process analogous to the 20th century coyote invasion of the eastern forests.
Findings indicate that the red wolf pre-dated not only European colonization but human, and possibly coyote, presence in North America. These findings highlight the urgency of expanding conservation efforts for the red wolf."

"There' s no longer any doubt—the wolves found in Norway and Sweden today are actually Finnish, according to extensive studies done on their genetic makeup. Humans wiped out Norway's original wolf population in the wild around 1970.
...

"In addition to the wolf samples, the research group included genetic samples from 56 different dog breeds to investigate whether any features of dogs were to be found in the Norwegian-Swedish wolf population. Dogs and wolves are so closely related that they can interbreed and have offspring together.
But the wolves in Norway and Sweden show scarcely any traces of dogs.

"The wolves in this country are among the ones that have the least amount of dog in the whole world, maybe even the very fewest dog traits," says Stenøien.


The Norwegian-Swedish wolves might be both inbred and Finnish, but at least they're real wolves."

https://phys.org/news/2021-12-norwegi...

Explore further

Origin of Scandinavian wolves clarified
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-scandin...
Provided by Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Wolves which specialise in killing beavers have a disproportionate effect on wetland landscape architecture.

https://phys.org/news/2022-06-wolf-pe...

"Observations from the field indicated that some wolves were much better at ambushing and killing beavers and, in turn, altered more wetlands than other wolves. The researchers suspected that individual wolf personalities were responsible for this pattern.

"Most dog owners are convinced their dogs have personalities. We suspected wolves have personalities as well and that this difference can be seen in differences in predation and hunting behavior," said co-author Tom Gable, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher and project leader with the Voyageurs Wolf Project.

"A successful ambushing personality requires that wolves wait at ponds or along beaver feeding trails. Certain individual wolves wait more often and much longer than other wolves, even from the same pack," said lead author Joseph Bump, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology at the University of Minnesota."


More information: Joseph Bump et al, Predator personalities alter ecosystem services, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (2022). DOI: 10.1002/fee.2512
Provided by University of Minnesota


More of that study and camera trap footage:

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-uncover...

Ice Age wolves are contributing preserved DNA to the exploration of where and when wolves became dogs.

https://phys.org/news/2022-06-ice-age...

https://phys.org/news/2023-01-wolves-...

"Wolves on an Alaskan island caused a deer population to plumet and switched to primarily eating sea otters in just a few years, a finding scientists at Oregon State University and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game believe is the first case of sea otters becoming the primary food source for a land-based predator."

More information: Roffler, Gretchen H. et al, Recovery of a marine keystone predator transforms terrestrial predator–prey dynamics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2209037120. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2209037120

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Provided by Oregon State University

The Isle Royale wolves.
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-lone-im...

"In 1997, a lone wolf crossed an ice bridge that briefly connected Canada with the remote Isle Royale, which lies off the coast of Michigan in Lake Superior and is renowned for its rich biodiversity.

His arrival revived the flagging fortunes of the wider wolf population, which had been hit by disease and inbreeding, and triggered cascading effects that improved the health of the overall forest ecosystem, a study in Science Advances showed Wednesday."

Winter Study

Clare wrote: "The Isle Royale wolves.
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-lone-im...

"In 1997, a lone wolf crossed an ic..."

We were lucky enough to visit Isle Royale a few years back (pre-COVID). We didn't see any wolves, but we saw plenty of moose. It's an incredibly beautiful island with lots of unspoiled scenery and diverse wildlife (and no internet)!!!

I'd love to visit, but not during winter.

Excellent article looking at European wolves, specifically in Germany. But as it's a continent, wolves trot across borders.

Be aware that the article starts with the death of a pony.

https://www.theguardian.com/environme...

"The Kenners recently visited farmers in northern Italy, where wolves have never been driven to extinction, and there is more acceptance of the predator. In mountainous areas that can’t be fenced, actual shepherding has to return, or protection dogs are stationed to stop wolves predating livestock. “They are really astonished that the Germans feed their wolves on sheep,” says Barbara."

With the Yellowstone model, researchers suggest reintroducing wolves to Scotland would reduce the red deer population and allow forest regeneration.

https://phys.org/news/2025-02-reintro...

"The researchers recognize that the debate around the reintroduction of wolves to the Scottish Highlands will not be without controversy, particularly among livestock farmers and deer stalkers.

However, they argue that the benefits of reintroducing wolves need to be considered. The financial benefits associated with carbon uptake and storage would be in addition to the other well documented economic and ecological impacts of wolf reintroduction, including ecotourism, a reduction in deer-related road traffic accidents, a reduction in Lyme disease associated with deer and a reduction in the cost of deer culls."

More information: Wolf reintroduction to Scotland could support substantial native woodland expansion and associated carbon sequestration, Ecological Solutions and Evidence (2025).
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wil...
Provided by University of Leeds

Sara Blackard tells me in her newsletter about a wolf which met a sticky end, so the tender or nervous shouldn't read further in this item.
Wolves are large animals, and hungry, and as wolves get old and lose teeth, the big ungulates start to be too difficult to catch, so a smaller animal will do. During summer they could probably cope, but winter means hardship.

Sara Blackard


"Walking the dog most places isn't a life or death event.

But Alaska isn't most places.

This past week my friend who lives right up the street from us had a harrowing experience.

She was walking her dogs on a trail that leaves from her house and heads into the wilderness. (We have a similar trail, and our two trails actually connect.) This is a walk she does most days with her dogs, not thinking much of it.

But, we've never had wolf problems like we've had this winter.

Normally, wolves don't venture too close to town. We're more likely to have bears in our yards than wolves. But the last few winters have been really hard on caribou and moose, and the rise in wolf populations have all but tanked the amount of prey animals available.

Which means wolves have had to widen their hunting grounds.

And Tok is the target.

While my friend was on her normal walk, a wolf stalked them. Coming out of the trees and getting as close as three feet from her dogs. The wolf would nip at the dog's heel, then dart back into the woods.

My friend fast-tracked it back to the house, with nothing but her voice and a stick to protect them.

Later that day, her husband flew over the trail and found that the wolf had a path it had worn through the woods that paralleled my friend's path.

She'd been stalked...for days.

They set up game cameras and a trap. If this wolf was desperate enough to stalk her, there wasn't anything stopping it from coming into their yard and getting their kids or dogs.

They were able to get the wolf. It was old and missing several teeth, but the last picture shows just how big it was.

Even handicapped, the wolf is large and strong enough to take my friend down.

In Alaska, we always keep our heads on a swivel, because a simple dog walk is never simple or safe."


The photo shows a grey wolf, held upright, as tall as a person from nose to tail.

Before there were wolves, there were bigger wolves. Ice Age animals were bigger, partly to contain heat better, partly to survive the harsh environment, predators and prey alike.

https://phys.org/news/2025-06-famous-...

"New analysis of the remains of two 'puppies' dating back more than 14,000 years ago has shown that they are most likely wolves, and not related to domestic dogs, as previously suggested.

The genetic analysis also proved that the cubs were sisters at the age of around two months, and, like modern day wolves, had a mixed diet of meat and plants. Researchers, however, were surprised to see evidence of a woolly rhinoceros as part of their last meals, as this would have been a considerably large animal for a wolf to hunt.
...
"It is thought that the woolly rhinoceros may have been a young calf, rather than a fully grown adult, and likely hunted by the adult pack and fed to the cubs, but even if this was the case, a young woolly rhinoceros would have been considerably bigger than prey modern-day wolves typically hunt.

This has led researchers to think that these Pleistocene wolves may have been somewhat bigger than the wolves of today. Previous DNA testing suggests that the cubs most likely belonged to a wolf population that eventually died out and didn't lead to today's domestic dogs.
...
"The original hypothesis that the Tumat Puppies were dogs is also based on their black fur color, which was believed to have been a mutation only present in dogs, but the Tumat Puppies challenge that hypothesis as they are not related to modern dogs."

More information: Quaternary Research (2025)

Provided by University of York