Was the Minnesota Zoo justified in its decision to shoot this escaped wolf? Please read the following article written by Maricella Miranda of Twin Cities Pioneer Press and comment!
“Last year when a Mexican gray wolf ran loose in the north metro, officials waited days for the right moment to capture it.
The Wildlife Science Center assured police the wolf didn’t pose a public threat, said Peggy Callahan, the center’s executive director.
Police listened and helped tranquilize the wolf in New Brighton.
A Mexican wolf on the run Wednesday met a different fate at the Minnesota Zoo. The escaped wolf became a danger when it found its way onto a public path with children and other visitors. To assure public safety, zoo staff shot and killed the animal.
“We did our job, and we did it according to preapproved policies,” said Tony Fisher, the zoo’s animal collection manager.
On Friday – three days after the escape – the Apple Valley zoo continued answering emails asking why the 8-year-old male wolf was shot and killed instead of tranquilized.
Callahan also questions why the animal needed to be euthanized. If staff had moved all visitors into buildings, the wolf could have been cornered and tranquilized, she said.
“I think we handled it better than they did,” Callahan said.
Because the wolf was on a public path on the Northern Trail “near a large number of guests,” tranquilizers were not a safe option, according to the zoo, because they work slowly and are imprecise.
Tranquilizers can take up to 15 minutes to work, can make an animal aggressive when shot and might not fully release while an animal is moving, the zoo said.
Schmidt, wolf curator at the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minn., agrees tranquilizers are not always the answer, especially when public safety is involved.
“Drugging is not an exact science,” she said.
Schmidt wouldn’t say if she supported the zoo’s actions, but she said the situation would have posed a greater threat to all wolves if the escaped animal had attacked a human.
“The negativity that is created by a wolf fight with a human is significant,” she said.
Schmidt manages a facility housing five wolves, and she makes sure the animals can’t dig, wiggle or jump out of their enclosures, she said. That becomes tricky when something – such as an animal carcass or another wolf pack – attracts them.
The wolf at the Minnesota Zoo likely was enticed to escape.
Zoo staff suspect the wolf was pursuing two wolves brought in from the flooded Dakota Zoo in Bismarck, N.D. Chasing them likely motivated the wolf, which was off-exhibit, to slip through a gap in a holding-area fence into a secondary enclosure.
Zoo staff planned to tranquilize the wolf there, but the animal jumped an 8-foot fence into the public area, Fisher said. Staff then resorted to shooting the wolf.
“We don’t want to create the impression that all wolves are bad, and all wolves need to be shot,” Fisher said. “We’re a conservation organization – and that’s not the message that we want to get out there. This wasn’t a wild wolf. This was a captive wolf.”
Unlike wolves raised in the wild, captive wolves are not as afraid of people, Fisher said. They are more likely to get closer to people, but could quickly become aggressive if cornered.
The escaped wolf looked scared more than anything, Callahan said.
She hasn’t spoken with the Minnesota Zoo about Wednesday’s escape and has never worked with this particular wolf, Callahan said. But her 25 years of experience with wolves and seeing published photographs of the animal during its escape led her to believe it was afraid, she said.
When a wolf ran from her Columbus-based nonprofit center Feb. 14, 2010, it was scared, Callahan said.
She said vandals, who were never caught, set three wolves free at her wildlife facility. Two were quickly recovered, but the third was loose for four days until wildlife center staff and police helped corner it near Long Lake Road and Interstate 694.
Police never felt that the public was in danger, said New Brighton Police Director Bob Jacobson.
Callahan said she worries that killing the endangered animal could further threaten its species. An estimated 50 Mexican gray wolves live in the wild today and about 300 in captivity.
“There are so few of them,” she said.
Maricella Miranda can be reached at 651-228-5421 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 651-228-5421 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
FYI
Although Mexican gray wolves are rare, there are other wolf subspecies in North America. If you were to encounter a wolf, the International Wolf Center suggests the following actions:
– Raise and wave your arms in the air to look bigger
– Face the wolf while backing away slowly
– Make noise
– Throw objects at the wolf
– Report the sighting to local authorities”
The Wolf Preservation Blog 
I’ve really wondered about this situation. This strikes me as a combination of impulsive and misguided…even if it was well intended, as “protecting the public,” it makes the zoo look like they have no concept of how to handle their animals. If the wolf was in an active attack, then I’d be more willing to consider this as a sad but unavoidable event. However, there’s no indication that the wolf was in attack mode. There should have been at least a better attempt at containment…using the excuse that a tranquilizer would take too long is pathetic and doesn’t say much for their animal welfare management methods. I’m not convinced this was intended as a “malicious” response, but I definitely think it reflects poorly on the zoo staff.
Yes, I couldn’t agree more Richard; Implusive and misguided are accurate descriptions. “Incompetent” also comes to mind. Since this wolf was clearly afraid and no active threat to others, zoo officials clearly displayed poor decision making. In a different area, a similar incident occurred and the wolf was tranquilized after The Wildlife Science Center assured police it didn’t pose a public threat. I hope the Minnesota Zoo continues to receive public scrutiny until they take responsibility for an avoidable situation and prove better containtment methods.
This makes me sick. This poor little animal was more scared than people could ever be. This definitely could have been taken care of differently. The wolf still could have been tranquilized, and it really wouldn’t take that long for the drug to kick in. These idiots were afraid for the adults and children????? Didn’t they bother to consider that children could be more traumatized by someone shooting a real gun and killing something in front of them? At least if they had used the tranquilizer gun, they could tell the children that they gave the wolf something to make him sleep until they got him back to the zoo. Makes me feel sorry for the other animals that they have in their zoo. Are they really being taken care of? They are suppose to protect all of the wild animals, not kill them.
Don’t be killin the woilves…good grief, they are being handed up as a scape goat to keep the eye off our real ecological disaster of too many cows and sheep in the west! Please don’t kill them!
Humans always find “good” reasons to fill, that is the problem! and the “good” reason in this case is old superstitions!!
Why do humans need to use their intelligence to become murderers ???
Humans always find “good” reasons to kill, that is the problem! and the “good” reason in this case is old superstitions!!
Why do humans need to use their intelligence to become murderers ???
Wolves are noble and sacred animals
(especially to our Native American sisters and brothers)
and they should NEVER be killed in the first place.
Leave the wolves alone OR ELSE..
~May An Evil Genie Stuff A Thousand Cobras In Your Pants~
I personally see at least two problems. The first problem lies not with how they handled the animal once it escaped, but the fact that they housed (what sounds like an obvious) the animal in a compromised enclosure. It seems that this only set this poor animal up for failure. Why was this “gap” in the fence left and not addressed when this problem was found? Obviously the zoo is having issues properly housing their animals. The article states that “tranquilizers” could not be used due to public safety. I cannot comprehend how it would be unsafe to use a remote drug delivery system (such as a dart gun) due to the animal’s proximity to people and the worry that the animal will not go “down” quick enough. But yet you can fire a live round next to the public. It just seems illogical. Now I do agree that drugging is not an exact science. First of all it states many times that the zoo opted to not use “tranquilizers”. I would hope not, that would not anesthetize the animal and would only create a tranquilized animal (groggy, still conscious, more scared, lower bite inhibition). The zoo hopefully recognizes the difference between anesthetics, tranquilizers, sedatives. At that point if you “darted” that animal with a higher dose of an anesthetic it would bring him\her down much quicker than 15min. It might possibly kill them but at least you would be giving that animal a chance, the bullet sure won’t. The average induction period for some of those drugs is 7-10min. If an oversized dose of anesthetic wouldn’t produce an unconscious animal it sure would slow them down enough to get your hands on them, and restrain them. The wolf would have lived, people would have been safe, and the zoo wouldn’t have made a mistake, and be facing public scrutiny. I am not trying to just spit out knowledge just to sound intelligent that would dishonor this poor animal’s death. There is a lesson to be learned here. I just hope that the zoo and their staff will learn from this tragedy and not brush it off as “well we did the best we could for this animal”. We can always learn from these animals if we allow our selves to. Now it is easy to say, I would do this or that looking in at a problem from a 3rd person perspective. I wasn’t their but I know that life is so precious that too take the easiest way and label it a doing what is best for public safety is wrong.
The zoo was definitely not justified in this killing. It’s a place I can honestly say I would never take my children, or anyone else. It also tells me that no one on staff had any clue as to the behaviors of wolves, or they would have known what the wolf’s behavior denoted. If a domestic had gotten loose and was running away, I ‘m fairly certain it would not have been shot, but instead tranquilized and returned to it’s prison for people to stare and point at, and the zoo to make money. That may sound cold but I know I wouldn’t want to be locked away alone for another species entertainment, and I’m sure that’s why the wolf was escaping. They are pack animals, very family orientated and live with at least one other, not alone. I also say it’s complete fabrication to say you don’t know if it’s going to attack, ( you can tell if a domestic dog is ) when it’s running away. Just another excuse to kill as far as I’m concerned.