The Wolf Preservation Blog

“ANCHORAGE,  Alaska (AP) — A second interior Alaska wolf has tested positive for rabies, the  Alaska  Department of Fish and Game announced Thursday.

A  trapper captured the wolf March 15 near Chandalar Lake near the foothills of the  Brooks range about 185 miles north of Fairbanks, the same general location as a  rabid wolf shot last month. The trapper killed the wolf, skinned it and fed raw  meat from the carcass to his dog team, said spokeswoman Cathie  Harms. The five dogs are in quarantine in Fairbanks.

The  dogs had been vaccinated for rabies but will be given booster shots, the  department said.

Rabies,  according to the Centers  for Disease Control and Prevention, is a viral disease that can infect  mammals, including humans. It’s usually transmitted through bites but can also  spread by coming into contact with infected nerve tissue such as brains or  spinal cords.

The  rabies virus infects the central nervous system and can cause death, according  to the CDC.

Rabies  is regularly detected in Arctic foxes along Alaska’s west and north coasts but  had not been found south of the Brooks Range since statehood in 1959, the  department said.

“We’re  still trying to get a clearer picture of the current situation, especially in  wolves in the Chandalar Lake area,” Dr. Kimberlee Beckmen, a department  veterinarian, said in the announcement. “We’d really like to hear from the  people who have seen wolves or other wildlife acting abnormally in that area.  Abnormal behavior can also be caused by diseases other than rabies, such as  distemper, so a test of brain tissue is required for a definitive diagnosis of  the disease.”

Both  rabid wolves exhibited abnormal behavior when they were killed.

Wolves  normally are shy, but a trapper who shot the wolf last month said the animal had  closely approached him.

The  trapper, a man who lives near Palmer, took the animal home with him and cut  himself while skinning it. Worried that the animal may have been infected, he  sent the head in for testing and discarded the rest of the carcass in a  wooded area.

When  the department confirmed rabies, which can be spread to other animals that eat  nerve tissue such as brains or spinal cords, the carcass was retrieved. The  carcass had been scavenged, but the spinal cord had not been disturbed,  officials said.

The  wolf caught in a leg trap March 15 was alive when the trapper approached but  appeared dull and unaware, the department said.

The  trapper killed the animal, skinned it and fed the raw meat to his dogs.

Beckman  said they should not have been fed the carcass.

“It’s  very dangerous to feed raw carcasses of wildlife, especially carnivores, to  pets,” Beckmen said. “Pets can not only become infected, they can then transmit  diseases and parasites to their owners, rabies, tularemia and echinococcus being  the most serious.”

Echinococcus  is a bacterial infection, Harms said.

Rabies  had not been diagnosed in the region in 54 years of statehood, but archived  territorial reports document cases of rabies in fox and dogs in interior Alaska,  the department said.

Beckmen  said she’s looking for more samples from the heads of wolves, wolverines, foxes  or coyotes killed near the Chandalar Lakes or Fortymile River areas.

Rabies  has been detected over the winter along the north and west coasts and more cases  are expected in the arctic fox and red fox populations. Village dogs, the  department said, are vulnerable to infection from foxes.

Alaska  health officials warn trappers and hunters to wear gloves when skinning animals,  wash wounds with soap and water, wash knives after cutting off heads and avoid  cutting into brains or spinal cords.”

Special thanks to DAN JOLING, Associated Press, for providing the information in this post! 

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Takepart.com – Tue, Apr 23, 2013

“Of the top reasons tourists travel thousands of miles for a 12-hour round-trip bus ride into Denali National Park, wolves rank right up there with grizzly bears and the sight of 20,320-foot Mount McKinley on a rare bluebird day. To the few who know, members of Denali’s wolf population are also some of the longest, continuously studied animal groups in the world, besting even Jane Goodall’s chimps. But in recent years, wolf numbers in the 7,370-square-mile park have decreased even faster than the TV audience of Sarah Palin’s Alaska on TLC. In 2007, Denali Park biologists counted 147 wolves in nine groups that roamed the 93-year-old park. But in their most recent count, taken last autumn, numbers had declined to 54, the lowest since 1986.

Some, like the Alaska Board of Game, blame this die-off on natural causes—wolves killing wolves and low sheep populations. But others, including private citizens, park biologists, and members of the environmental advocacy group the Alaska Wildife Alliance (AWA), believe there are more sinister reasons. According to some AWA members, the recent, radical decline of the park’s most visible wolves—called the Grant Creek group—is the result of three main factors: the dissolution of Denali’s protective buffer zone, the Palin-appointed Alaska Board of Game, and the acute, ethically questionable actions of a small handful of local trappers, including a man named Coke Wallace.

 We’ll start with the protective buffer zone. Between 1966 and 2009, celebrated wolf biologist Gorden Haber studied wolves, on the ground, in Denali, hundreds of hours each year. During his extensive observation, Haber witnessed wolves wandering just outside the park and trappers laying their snares along the park’s boundary to kill these wolves. Thanks to his studies, Haber was able, in 2000, to convince the then-Board of Game to establish a protective buffer along the outside edge of the park, within a finger of state land, where wolf trapping was otherwise legal. Tragically, Haber died in a plane crash while observing wolves in late 2009. And the following March, the Board of Game rescinded the protective area.

Trappers once again position their snares along the park boundary, killing not only adult wolves, but pups. And last May, in an act that infuriated both wolf advocates and the usually detached Denali Park Service, the local trapper, Coke Wallace, hitched a dead horse to his four-wheeler, dragged it to the park boundary, and used it to lure and snare the pregnant alpha female of the park’s wolf group, Grant Creek.

AWA member Marybeth Holleman studied these ongoing events as she wrote her forthcoming book, Among Wolves, a profile of the late biologist Gordon Haber. She says that Denali Park biologist Tom Meier (also recently deceased) reported that he and other park biologists believed declining wolf populations weren’t the result of declining prey. Nor did they blame habitat, which is abundant in the 6.3 million-acre park. That, Meier said, left two causes: trapping on park borders and the vigorous predator-control program against bears and wolves currently under way in areas adjacent to the park. “What Tom told me is that when game officials do intensive predator control, it creates a vacuum,” says Holleman. “He believed that Denali wolves may have expanded their territory to fill it.”

Holleman, along with several wolf advocacy groups, have petitioned the Board of Game to “reinstate the protective buffer.” But in about six attempts, between 2010 and present, the Board refused and created a potentially illegal eight-year “moratorium” on even discussing the buffer zone. At its January meeting, the Board also discussed the petition “behind closed doors,” possibly violating the Alaska Open Meetings Act. The AWA has filed a lawsuit contesting the Board’s conduct with that meeting, results withstanding.

Another petition to reinstate the buffer will be discussed at the next meeting of the Board of Game, this May.”

*Special thanks to http://news.yahoo.com/secret-reasons-wolves-dying-denali-212011543.html?bcmt=1366763539830-6fe0d306-033a-4655-b7a9-42b6a9d169c4_00002s000000000000000000000000-82acbcc7-8567-4b35-ad73-3b7c4a4277d6&bcmt_s=e#mediacommentsugc_container, for providing this information!

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“During the 15 months the wolf known as OR7 has crisscrossed the Oregon-California border, the news from his birthplace back in Eastern Oregon has shaken the boots off some of those holding most tightly to deeply rooted misperceptions about the ability of wolves to coexist on the landscape with the rest of us.

In the two years since a lawsuit stopped the state of Oregon from killing wolves, the state’s fledgling wolf population has doubled to nearly 50. Yet in Wallowa County, where the majority of Oregon’s wolf-livestock conflicts are reported each year, fatal wolf attacks on livestock have fallen by 60 percent as ranchers and agencies were forced to rely on nonlethal conflict-prevention methods.

At the same time in neighboring Idaho, where over the last two years hunters, trappers and state agents have killed more than 700 wolves, the number of sheep and cattle killed by wolves increased by more than 75 percent.

In fact, those trends reflect exactly what biologists and wolf experts have been telling anyone who would listen since wolves became one of the first animals to be protected by the Endangered Species Act when it was passed, 40 years ago: Tried-and-true, centuries-old nonlethal wolf management techniques such as range-riding, livestock-guarding dogs and appropriate fencing greatly reduce predation by wolves on livestock.

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“HAMILTON – There were at least 625 wolves in 147 packs with 37 breeding pairs roaming Montana’s wild lands at the end of 2012, according to figures released Thursday.

That’s the number of wolves that state wildlife managers were able to verify for certain for the federally required annual wolf conservation and management report.

The state’s annual minimum wolf count dropped by 4 percent in 2012. It was the first time that has happened since 2004.

The count doesn’t include 95 wolves killed statewide by hunters and trappers from Jan. 1 to Feb. 28 this year.

While the overall wolf count dropped statewide, the number of packs and breeding pairs increased slightly.

That’s what FWP wolf specialist Liz Bradley documented this year in the Bitterroot area as well.

“The overall numbers are down slightly from last year in the Bitterroot, but we are seeing a few more packs,” she said. “The pack sizes are smaller, which is what you might expect with hunting and trapping.”

The numbers in this report are a minimum count and don’t take into account all the wolves on the landscape, Bradley said.

“You should look at it for a trend,” she said. “It gives us an idea of what’s going on out there.”

Bradley documented 13 packs in the Bitterroot in 2012. That was up from 11 the year before.

At the same time, the annual minimum count dropped from 68 in 2011 to 59 in 2012.

Part of the decline in overall numbers could come from the loss of the Welcome Creek Pack in the northern reaches of the Bitterroot.

“It’s no longer there,” she said. “It got old and died and dispersed.”

Wolf numbers continue to hold steady in the East and West Fork areas, Bradley said.

***

This was the first year that Montana allowed people to trap wolves, which increased the annual harvest. Hunters took 128 wolves statewide and trappers killed another 97.

In Ravalli County, trappers took eight of the 14 wolves killed during the season that ended on Feb. 28.

“We’re making some progress,” said FWP Director Jeff Hagener. “Confirmed livestock loss has been on a general downward trend since 2009, and we have more tools now for affecting wolf populations.”

“In some areas, where hunting, trapping and livestock-depredation removals have been effective, it looks like the wolf population’s growth has been curbed this year,” he said. “In other areas, the population may be leveling off, but we have more work to do. There are still places where we need to manage for a better balance among other Montana wildlife and with Montana’s livestock populations.”

A total of 108 wolves were removed through agency control efforts in 2012 to prevent livestock loss. In 2011, 64 wolves were killed in similar actions.

Cattle losses from wolves were the lowest they’ve been in six years. Confirmed livestock depredations due to wolves were 67 cattle, 37 sheep, one dog, two horses and one llama in 2012.

The minimum federal recovery goals for wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains was set at a minimum of 30 breeding pairs and minimum of 300 wolves for three consecutive years. That goal was met in 2002.

The 2012 wolf population estimate for the Northern Rockies – which includes Wyoming, Idaho and Yellowstone Park – is expected to be available the second week of April from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at westerngraywolf.fws.gov.”

**Special thanks to Missoulian for providing this information!

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