by SAMER ELATRASH

When Charles Hammond, a dairy farmer in the northern Vermont town of Troy, near the Canadian border, shot what looked like a coyote last month, he had no way of knowing that he might have killed the first wolf in Vermont since the late 1800s. On inspecting the animal that had been lurking around his farm, he found it was almost double the size of a coyote, weighing 90 pounds. “I had two agents from the wildlife department in Maine come down here and make me sign a two-page affidavit saying I didn’t know it was a wolf,” he says over the phone.

Hammond would have faced a stiff fine if he knowingly shot a wolf, which is listed as an endangered species in Vermont (listed as such even though they are effectively extinct in the region).

Vermont’s Department of Fish and Wildlife (VDFW) confiscated the carcass and sent DNA samples to three labs, including one in Ontario, for testing. Brent Patterson, a leading wolf researcher with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, is waiting to receive the DNA samples but says that, based on pictures he has seen, the canine appears to be a wild wolf, rather than a wolf raised in captivity.

“There’s no reason to believe it had a domestic origin,” he says. “It looks typical of a wild wolf, probably a hybrid of Grey and Eastern wolf.” Over the past 20 years, at least two wolves originating in Quebec were killed in Maine and New York.

It may take months to have the DNA results, but the mysterious creature has already rekindled the debate on introducing wolves in New England. Hammond says most farmers and hunters are opposed to introducing wolves. “When you have cattle, you don’t want a thing like that running around,” he says. The Vermont Farm Bureau (VFB), the state’s largest farmer association, has a clause in its bylaws opposing the introduction of wolves in Vermont.

“They’re predators, and they haven’t been around here for a long time,” says VFB president Jackie Folsom. In New Hampshire, the state senate passed a law in 2001 against introducing wolves.

Southward bound

Peggy Struhsacker, head of National Wildlife Federation (NWF)’s wolf team, says the canine shot in Troy may in fact have been a wolf/dog hybrid. But reports of wolves dispersing from Quebec into New Hampshire and Maine suggest that wolves, which can travel long distances in search of new grounds, might naturally recover their former haunts, she says. “In New Hampshire and Maine, there are 13 million acres of viable habitat. Northern New England has no top predator. Wolves would restore the biodiversity.”

One obstacle to wolves finding their way to the forests of New England is the gauntlet of traps and snares set by hunters in this province. The Quebec government allows trapping and hunting of wolves for four months a year, and hunters have no bag limits and are not required to record their kills. The toll, critics say, threatens the stability of wolf populations in Quebec.

There are an estimated 50,000 wolves in Canada, and 7,000 in Labrador and Quebec, where they live north of the St. Lawrence river. Two packs of the rare Eastern wolf (a pack has about seven wolves) live in the Maurice national park, which covers 536 square kilometres between Quebec City and Montreal. The wolves, which are listed as a “species of concern” by the provincial government, often leave the park limits, falling prey to hunters and trappers. Roughly half of the wolves are killed every year, says park warden Mario Villemure.

“There is a lot of pressure from trapping, but for now it looks like the population is stable,” he says. “What is helping is that wolves are dispersing here from the north, where there is less trapping.” Most of the wolves caught in traps or snared are puppies, he says. “They are less experienced. But if reproducing adults get killed, or there is a disease, we might have a big problem.”

Benoît Ayotte, founder of Quebec wolf conservation group Clan des loups d’Amérique du Nord, says the government should ban trapping and hunting in nature reserves, which it began allowing in 1984. The only places in Quebec where wolves are protected are federal and provincial parks. “We can’t protect wolves without stopping trapping in the reserves,” he says. “Right now, wolves are only protected in about 1.2 per cent of Quebec where the provincial and federal parks are.”

Getting the guns out

There are other threats to the wolf population’s recovery in New England than hunting and trapping in Quebec. A big one is organized local resistance. Wolves are listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973, requiring the federal government to promote the recovery of wolf populations in their former habitats. In 1995, the government transferred packs of wolves from Alberta to Yellowstone Park in Montana and forests in Idaho and Wyoming, and within 10 years the wolves flourished, with their population now estimated at over 1,000.

But the successful reintroduction caused resentment by local ranchers and hunters, who say the wolves have devastated elk herds and killed livestock. The federal government prepared to unlist wolves as an endangered species and to transfer management of the wolves to state authorities, but the transfer was stalled when the federal government refused to accept Wyoming’s management plan, which proposed to list wolves as “predators” and allow hunters to freely kill them. In Idaho, the state government passed a non-binding motion in 2003 calling for the extermination of wolves “by whatever means necessary.”

Ron Gillet, who rents cabins to hunters in Stanley, Idaho, was one of the chief lobbyists behind the motion and heads the Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition. He says the “wolves were dumped” in Idaho.

“They’re land piranhas, and the bottom line is that Canadian wolves have to go.” Similar sentiments are evident in Wyoming, where a popular bumper sticker reads, “Wolves, smoke a pack a day.”

An expert on wildlife in Idaho says hunters are mistaken in claiming that wolves are killing off elk populations. “That’s just not the case, as our years of research shows,” says Jim Akenson, head of University of Idaho’s Taylor Ranch Field Station. “The effect of depredation on ungulates is constant.” The only impact wolves have made is replacing cougars as the region’s top predators.

The local opposition to wolves in the west seems to have lessened chances of managed wolf restoration in New England. “It’s nothing we’ve been promoting as a priority,” says Ron Regan, director of wildlife at VDFW, adding that the decision should be left to local jurisdictions.

Un-cuddly canines

Struhsacker, with the NWF, agrees. “What we’re hoping to see is natural recovery,” she says, adding that it would be more acceptable to opponents of wolf recovery. Struhsacker says natural recovery isn’t likely without the cooperation of the Quebec government on regulating trapping. To date, there is no existing agreement between Quebec and the New England states on wolf repopulation.

“We have to come to an agreement with the Quebec government on reducing snaring,” says Struhsacker. “We’re depending on that population of wolves across the St. Lawrence for natural recolonization.”

Reports of increased wolf attacks in Canada might also affect the debate in the U.S. Although historically reviled as rapacious killers, wolves rarely attack humans, with one case of an unprovoked attack reported in North America between 1900 and 1969, according to a research paper by Alaskan wolf biologist Mark McNay. But over the past three decades there has been an increase in attacks.

“Either there are more attacks or people are getting better at reporting it,” says Patterson, the Ontario wolf researcher. Last year, a 22-year-old Ontario man was killed near a mining community in Saskatchewan, apparently by a pack of wolves. In September, a black wolf bearing an old gunshot wound attacked beachgoers near Lake Superior in Ontario. There is no one reason why a wolf might attack, says Patterson, but, “If you want a stereotype, I’d have to say it’s when wolves become habituated to humans.”