The Wolves of Shelburne
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 5th, 2008
The Boston Globe
Rare gray wolf, thought extinct in area, appears in western Mass.By Stephanie Reitz
Associated Press Writer / March 4, 2008
SPRINGFIELD, Mass.—When more than a dozen lambs and sheep were slaughtered on a Shelburne farm last fall, wildlife officials suspected either a wolf that had escaped from captivity or a rogue mutt on a hungry rampage.But after the culprit animal was killed and examined, they found themselves with a bigger mystery: How did a wild eastern gray wolf, an endangered species absent from the state for more than a century, find its way to western Massachusetts?
Thomas J. Healy, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Northeast regional office, said Tuesday recent DNA tests at the agency’s Oregon labs confirmed it is the first gray wolf found in New England since a 1993 case in upstate Maine.
The discovery of the 85-pound male wolf may help solidify experts’ theories that the endangered species has been migrating south from Canada and repopulating rural parts of New England.
This wolf, though, was found farther south than any other reported spottings, and nothing indicates it had escaped or been set free by someone keeping it as a pet, authorities said.
“This posed more questions than it answered,” Healy said. “The only thing we were able to answer was that it was an eastern gray wolf. The history of where it came from and how it got here, we may never know.”
According to the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, the wild gray wolf was considered extinct in Massachusetts by about 1840. One was recorded in Berkshire County in 1918, but was believed to have escaped from domestic captivity.
A handful of confirmed spottings have been reported over the past decade of wolves being found in parts of Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire, but determining if they were wild or had been kept as illegal pets was difficult.
New England’s large stretches of interconnected woods, mountainous regions and rural farmland offer good north-south corridors for wolves on the move.
Shelburne, about 8 miles west of Greenfield in Franklin County, is one such area. It is surrounded by miles of state forests, ski areas and open acreage.
The wolves disappeared from much of the northeastern United States by the late 19th century, but ideal habitat for the animals remains in remote parts of Maine, New Hampshire and New York’s Adirondack mountains.
Wolves can travel hundreds of miles as they wander from where they were born, seeking food, mates and new territory.
If this wolf originated in Canada, the experts say, it likely crossed the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, went through Maine, then navigated hundreds of miles of roads, rivers and communities before reaching Shelburne.
“I’m a little bit flabbergasted, but that being said, when it comes to wolves, never say never,” said Peggy Strusacker, a Vermont-based wolf expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“Wolves always make us eat our words, wild wolves particularly.”
Massachusetts state biologists visited Shelburne last October to check the sheep farmer’s reports, which came a few weeks after another nearby farmer reported losing sheep and rams to an unknown predator.
Healy said the farmer did not kill the wolf, but that someone else — whom Healy would not identify — shot it one day after the biologists visited. Then, local wildlife officials examined it and turned it over to federal authorities.
Gray wolves usually eat deer and moose, but will adapt to eat other animals if necessary. Indeed, bits of lamb, bone fragments and tufts of wool were discovered in the Shelburne wolf’s stomach after it was killed.
Todd K. Fuller, a professor of wildlife conservation at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, was among the experts who examined the carcass.
He said the wolf was large for its species and probably was young because it had no obvious signs of disease, hair loss, tooth damage or other age-related problems.
“I think once they get to Maine, it wouldn’t be that unusual,” he said of the lengthy migration, “but do I think it’s a very rare occurrence.”
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Interesting story. I would be all for it if there were wolves expanding their range and repopulating the state, if they haven’t been lurking there all along. It’s too bad they shot this one. Not only do I think it was a waste, but it would have been interesting to tag this one and see what it got up to.
Shows how much we know.
I’ve said it before here: our actual footprint on the ground in North America – to say nothing of our actual surveillance of that area, much less the places we aren’t – is far, far smaller than most people, even a lot of professionals, believe it is.
Every state in New England could be supporting at least one wolf pack right now without science knowing about it. I’d almost be willing to bet on it, what with this incident.
What we think should and should not be in a place is information that is being pretty much continuously outdated.
Said another way: if you’re not looking for it, you might not see it.
And of course this has implications for a species we talk about here that might be a weetad smarter, warier and more asocial than Canis lupus.
Just tossing that in. 😉
I agree with DWA.
Our standard awareness would allow for unknown wolf packs–not super numerous, but some–existing.
This also aids in the argument for large, bipedal humanoid critters in the heavy forests of New England as well. As in a native population, perhaps.
I long for the day when both gray wolves and red wolves repopulate their former ranges because they will keep the darned coyotes in check.
kittenz: Or mate with them.
As the red wolf pretty durn near drove itself into extinction by doing. And as the easten “coyote” may already, at some point, have done.
[sigh] canids…
When red wolves became very scarce as they neared extinction, they did hybridize intensively with coyotes along the western part of their range, while people busily exterminated them in the eastern regions. Coyotes also mate with dogs surprisingly often. It’s not too uncommon to see coyotes – ever the opportunists – running with feral dogs.
But gray wolves … not so much. Certainly wolves and coyotes can mate and produce viable, usually fertile pups. But, especially given the very large area where coyote and gray wolf populations overlap, instances of them hybridizing are extremely rare. Instead, where gray wolf populations are healthy, they tend to keep the numbers of coyotes down (compared to areas where there are no gray wolves). Even when gray wolf populations crash, they are more likely to just quietly go extinct in a given area than to hybridize with coyotes. That’s not to say that it never happens, but it is very rare. I’m not sure why that would be; I’ve puzzled over it many times. I think that maybe it has to do with gray wolves being animals that like to live in such structured packs. In the wild, very few gray wolves breed outside of packs. Red wolves, on the other hand, tend not to have such highly structured packs; often they hunt in pairs or small family groups, much as do coyotes themselves. Red wolves’ breeding season may be more compatible with that of coyotes too; I do not know.
Coyotes also tend to grow larger in the East than in the West. There are several reasons for this: there is more cover in the East, and a more reliable year-round food supply. Also, at the present, there is very little competition from other wild predators, although that will change as pumas and wolves gradually rebound.
Coyotes are beautiful, graceful animals. I just wish that they were not such enthusiastic procreators :). They are becoming far too numerous.
Even though wildlife officials say that there are no wolves in Maine, I know of many first hand sightings! They are awesome creatures, my favorite (already discovered) animal!
kittenz: yet another theory I have heard for the size of the eastern coyote is: possible intermixture of genes with the gray wolf. (A companion theory is that the eastern coyote has always been in the Northeast, and is the source of the “brush wolf” of northern New England.)
I would agree with you that it’s unlikely under any normal circumstances. The wild red wolf’s social structure was pretty much destroyed, it’s fair to guess, by the time interbreeding with coyotes began. The gray wolf, on the other hand, has always had a strong presence in eastern Canada.
But it’s still something to think about.
[sigh] canids.
I have always thought that the extermination of wolves in the eastern US was one of the great tragedies of our history, certainly where wildlife is concerned. Wolves are one of the most intelligent animals and while they do kill livestock and pets, they generally know better than to attack people. Wild wolves rarely (if ever) have attacked humans in the US. I always enjoy the rare occasions when I get to drive through North Carolina’s Green Swamp as I know to be on the lookout for two elusive creatures – red wolves and bigfoot.
I grew up in Connecticut near a town that was named after the man who supposedly killed the last breeding wolf in that state. This story gives me hope that just perhaps he might have failed : ) I agree with DWA that it wouldn’t be too difficult for a few small packs of wolves to survive “under the radar” in these states.
This is cool… wolves was one the first animal that fascinated me…I think the government should look into assisting farmers with guard dogs…
I seen an episode a while back on PBS or something and it was about some big stocky dogs that were part wolf… the dogs were kept with the sheep from the time they were puppies and thus they developed a very protective attitude towards the sheep, and were big enough to stand there ground to wolves..
I think ideas like this would help both sides of the argument…
(Farmers verse Environmentalist)