Noah Graham, 16, of Solway, Minn., demonstrates how he reached back and fought off a wolf that had clamped down on his head at a campground near Lake Winnibigoshish. (Photo credit:  Monte Draper, Bemidji Pioneer via AP)

“Tests results show that a wolf that bit a 16-year-old boy’s head at a northern Minnesota campground had severe deformities as well as brain damage, which likely explains the reason for the “unprecedented” freak attack, wildlife specialists said Thursday.

DNA tests results also confirmed that the gray wolf that was trapped and killed two days after the late-night attack is in fact the same wolf that bit the teen. The wolf tested negative for rabies.

All of that is a relief for the family of Noah Graham, the Solway, Minn., teen who was bit last month while lying on the ground, but not inside a tent, at a Chippewa National Forest campground near Lake Winnibigoshish. “We all felt 98 percent sure that was the animal,” Noah’s father, Scott Graham, said Thursday after Department of Natural Resources officials called him with the test results. “My concern was that the wolf was diseased and Noah could contract something. But that wasn’t the case.”

The rare encounter last month was Minnesota’s first documented wild wolf attack on a human that resulted in a significant injury.

The day before the attack, the wolf had been seen in and around the campground, said Dan Stark, the DNR’s large carnivore specialist. “It bit into a tent. Punctured an air mattress. It was standing on a picnic table — things you wouldn’t expect a wild wolf to do. He was never aggressive, and he never approached anybody.

“So why did it bite somebody? Whether it actually knew what it was biting into is probably unlikely. It was biting something on the ground, and it happened to bite into somebody’s head,” Stark said.

Results from the wolf necropsy conducted by the University of Minnesota Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory show the wolf, estimated to be 1½ years old, suffered from a severe facial deformity, dental abnormalities and brain damage caused by infection. Anibal Armien, university pathologist and veterinarian, said it’s likely the wolf experienced a traumatic injury as a pup and those injuries developed into abnormalities that caused the brain damage.

Those deformities and abnormalities likely hampered its ability to effectively capture wild prey, said Michelle Carstensen, DNR wildlife health program supervisor. The wolf’s stomach contained only fish spines and scales.

The wolf’s problems also likely predisposed it to be less wary of people and human activities than what’s normally observed in healthy wild wolves, Carstensen said.

That “strongly explains” why the animal was behaving the way it was and why it was searching for food around the campground, Stark said. “It’s surprising that a wolf in this condition survived to this point given its reduced ability to survive in the wild.”

Attacking a human is “definitely abnormal and unusual,” Stark said. “Occasionally … we get nuisance complaints of wolves in people’s yards and interactions with pets, but rarely is there any aggression toward people. This kind of thing is unprecedented.”

Stark said there have been two other attacks by wolves in Minnesota but neither resulted in injury. One happened to a logger in the 1970s, and the other was to a rabbit hunter a decade later.

The Solway teen suffered multiple puncture wounds and a laceration to his head that required staples. He also received rabies shots.

“He’s pretty healed up,” his father said while walking through the woods partridge hunting with his two young daughters. “I don’t think [the attack] is going to curb any of our camping or hunting.”

But Noah Graham may find himself looking over his shoulder every now and then when he walks in the woods, his father said.

The teen often walked through the woods in the early morning darkness to his deer stand. “He never used a flashlight,” his father said. “But I don’t think he’ll do that anymore. He’ll probably use a flashlight.”

** Special thanks to Mary Lynn Smith, Star Tribune, for providing this information! (http://www.startribune.com/local/225392642.html)

“There’s something rotten in Michigan — and the stench is coming from one rogue farm in the western portion of the Upper Peninsula. Based on state documents obtained through Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and an analysis of those documents conducted by the National WolfWatcher Coalition and Keep Michigan Wolves Protected, four-fifths of the livestock killed by wolves in the western management unit (96 animals out of 120) come from this one farm. The documents make plain that the owner of this farm is engaging in unsound, sloppy — and perhaps even criminally inhumane — practices.

The story told in the FOIA documents broke late last month in the Marquette Mining Journal and on Michigan Public Radio. Even though state law already allows the killing of individual wolves threatening livestock or pets, the state senator from this region has shepherded two bills through the Michigan legislature to allow trophy hunting of gray wolves — right after they were Gray Wolf May Lose Endangered Species Status . There are only about 650 wolves in the entire state, and that number is down from the wolf census two years ago.

There are only about 650 wolves in the entire state, and that number is down from the wolf census two years ago.

There were 11 farms that reported wolf problems in the western region of the Upper Peninsula, with most of them having only a single incident. In an investigation conducted this past winter, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) found that the owner of that one farm, John Koski, did not live on the farm and did not provide proper care for his cattle, failing even to remove dead animals — allowing their carcasses to attract predators. The state provided three “guard” donkeys to him for free, yet DNR officials found two of them dead, and the third one was in poor condition. Koski also failed to use fencing as a protective mechanism, even though the state also provided that to him at no cost.

Koski was even paid for the livestock “losses” he sustained, pocketing $33,000 of the $40,000 paid out by the wildlife management unit.

It doesn’t take too much deductive reasoning to figure out what’s at work here: proponents of hunting and trapping wolves for trophies and for their pelts used Koski as a poster child for their hunt, citing enormous losses from wolves. What they didn’t tell people was that the vast majority of all incidents involving wolves occurred on one farm, which was clearly exhibiting the worst management practices and inviting predators or other animals onto the farm by leaving rotting animal carcasses around. It essentially amounts to a wolf-baiting situation, and then crying crocodile tears when the wolves show up for a free meal.

The people who want to kill wolves don’t want to admit that their agenda is driven by an irrational hatred and a lack of understanding of wolves. They try to dress up their policy goal of wolf-killing in socially beneficial terms. Specifically, they say the hunt will protect farmers.

The fact is, the state already allows the killing of problem wolves. And the state provides free tools to farmers having wolf conflicts and compensates them for the very infrequent losses that occur. Random killing of wolves in the forests and wilderness won’t do a thing to further mitigate the remote likelihood of a wolf incident. Sound animal husbandry practices are the solution.

Wolves are an economic and ecological boon to the state, driving wildlife-oriented tourism and keeping prey populations in balance, thereby reducing crop losses and automobile collisions involving deer. That’s why The HSUS urges all Michiganders to support two referenda — one to nullify the wolf trophy hunting season set to start in November, and the other to restore the rights of voters to have a say on wildlife management policies and deny the unelected political appointees at the Natural Resources Commission from having all authority to open new hunting and trapping seasons on protected species. To get involved, visit www.keepwolvesprotected.com.”

Pacelle’s most recent Op-Ed was “Sharks Gain Protections in India, Will U.S. Follow Suit?” This article was adapted from “‘Crying Wolf and Pocketing the Cash,” which first appeared as on the HSUS blog A Humane Nation. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on LiveScience.

Colorado, Pacific Northwest public sessions terminated!!

“A decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to halt public wolf hearings in Colorado, Oregon and Montana  has met with criticism from environmental advocates such as the Defenders of Wildlife.

“We are very disappointed to see the Obama Administration and the Fish and Wildlife Service ignoring wolf supporters in some of the nation’s best remaining, unoccupied wolf habitat,” says Jamie Rappaport Clark, Defenders president.

The federal government is turning its back on Americans who want to see thriving wolf populations restored, adds Clark. “Those who oppose the Service’s premature and short-sighted delisting proposal deserve a chance to voice their concerns. By excluding their voices, the Fish and Wildlife Service is effectively cutting off public debate about the future of wolves in Colorado and the Pacific Northwest,” he argues.

The proposal to strip federal protection of the wolves across most of the U.S. has led to vocal dissent from environmentalists, but ranchers who have sustained  substantial economic losses due to wolf kills – many done as random acts of pack aggression not related to feeding needs – find some relief in the fed’s decision.

On June 6, 2013, FWS proposed to strip the federal protection for gray wolves. If approved, the delisting proposal could preclude any further wolf recovery in Colorado, Utah and other states, Clark believes.

He also predicts that nascent wolf populations in Oregon and Washington would be managed totally by state rather than federal government agencies with “no federal backdrop to prevent state wildlife agencies from significantly reducing wolf numbers in the future.”

He cites a poll taken in Colorado this year showing “very strong support” for wolf restoration in that state. Additional polling is underway to gauge support for wolf recovery in other parts of the West, including Oregon and Washington.”

**Special thanks to T.J. Burnham, “Indiana Prairie Farmer,” for providing this information!