The coyote is a species of canine native to North America. It is smaller than its close relative, the wolf, and slightly smaller than the closely related eastern wolf and red wolf. It fills much of the same ecological niche as the golden jackal does in Eurasia. The coyote is larger and more predatory and was once referred to as the American jackal by a behavioral ecologist. Other historical names for the species include the prairie wolf and the brush wolf.
The wolf, also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of Canis lupus have been recognized, including the dog and dingo, though gray wolves, as popularly understood, only comprise naturally-occurring wild subspecies. The wolf is the largest extant member of the family Canidae, and is further distinguished from other Canis species by its less pointed ears and muzzle, as well as a shorter torso and a longer tail. The wolf is nonetheless related closely enough to smaller Canis species, such as the coyote and the golden jackal, to produce fertile hybrids with them. The wolf's fur is usually mottled white, brown, gray, and black, although subspecies in the arctic region may be nearly all white.
A wolfdog is a canine produced by the mating of a domestic dog with a gray wolf, eastern wolf, red wolf, or Ethiopian wolf to produce a hybrid.
The International Wolf Center (IWC) is a research and educational organization based near Ely, Minnesota, United States, that, in its own words, "advances the survival of wolf populations by teaching about wolves, their relationship to wildlands and the human role in their future." The Wolf Center operates an interpretive center in Ely open to the public, where visitors can view captive "ambassador wolves" in natural surroundings through large windows, and can learn about wolves through a variety of exhibits and programs. This organization lies within Superior National Forest. It also sponsors research symposia and offsite educational programs, publishes International Wolf magazine, and provides information about wolves via its website.
A pack is a social group of conspecific canines. The number of members in a pack and their social behavior varies from species to species. Social structure is very important in a pack. Canine packs are led by a breeding pair, consisting of the alpha male and alpha female.
The Mexican wolf, also known as the lobo, is a subspecies of gray wolf native to southeastern Arizona and southern New Mexico in the United States, and northern Mexico. It once also ranged into western Texas. It is the smallest of North America's gray wolves, and is similar to the Great Plains wolf, though it is distinguished by its smaller, narrower skull and its darker pelt, which is yellowish-gray and heavily clouded with black over the back and tail. Its ancestors were likely the first gray wolves to enter North America after the extinction of the Beringian wolf, as indicated by its southern range and basal physical and genetic characteristics.
Balto II: Wolf Quest is a 2002 American animated adventure film produced and directed by Phil Weinstein. It is the sequel to Universal Pictures/Amblin Entertainment's 1995 Northern animated film Balto.
Wolf reintroduction involves the reintroduction of a portion of grey wolves in areas where native wolves have been extirpated. More than 30 subspecies of Canis lupus have been recognized, and grey wolves, as colloquially understood, comprise nondomestic/feral subspecies. Reintroduction is only considered where large tracts of suitable wilderness still exist and where certain prey species are abundant enough to support a predetermined wolf population.
Shaun Ellis is a British animal researcher who lived among wolves, and adopted a pack of abandoned North American timber wolf pups. He is the founder of Wolf Pack Management and is involved in a number of research projects in Poland and at Yellowstone National Park in the United States.
The Legend of Lobo is a 1962 American animal-adventure film that follows the life and adventures of Lobo, a wolf born and raised in southwestern North America. Based upon "Lobo the King of Currumpaw" by Ernest Thompson Seton from the author's 1898 book titled Wild Animals I Have Known, neither the time period nor the precise location are specified in the film; in part because the story is told as much from a wolf's point of view as from a human's. There is no dialogue in the film, with the only interpretation presented through the use of story-song composed and sung by the Sons of the Pioneers and the Sherman Brothers, and narration by Rex Allen. Based on the non-fiction account by Seton, Lobo is an 1890s wolf from an account by Seton who was a naturalist, and was a bounty hunter in the real-life story. Filming took place in Sedona, Arizona.
Wolf: The Journey Home, originally titled Hungry for Home: A Wolf Odyssey, is a 1997 American young adult novel written by 'Asta Bowen. Originally published by Simon & Schuster with line drawings by Jane Hart Meyer, it was retitled and reprinted without illustrations in 2006 by Bloomsbury Publishing. Based on true accounts of the Pleasant Valley, Montana, wolf pack, the novel traces the life of a female alpha wolf named Marta after the forced relocation of her pack in 1989 to an unfamiliar territory. Terrified, Marta abandons her pack and begins a journey in search of her home; she eventually arrives in Ninemile Valley, where she finds a new mate with whom she starts a new pack.
The history of wolves in Yellowstone includes the extirpation, absence and reintroduction of wild populations of the gray wolf to Yellowstone National Park and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. When the park was created in 1872, wolf populations were already in decline in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The creation of the national park did not provide protection for wolves or other predators, and government predator control programs in the first decades of the 1900s essentially helped eliminate the gray wolf from Yellowstone. The last wolves were killed in Yellowstone in 1926. After that, sporadic reports of wolves still occurred, but scientists confirmed that sustainable wolf populations had been extirpated and were absent from Yellowstone during the mid-1900s.
The ecology of the Rocky Mountains is diverse due to the effects of a variety of environmental factors. The Rocky Mountains are the major mountain range in western North America, running from the far north of British Columbia in Canada to New Mexico in the southwestern United States, climbing from the Great Plains at or below 1,800 feet (550 m) to peaks of over 14,000 feet (4,300 m). Temperature and rainfall varies greatly also and thus the Rockies are home to a mixture of habitats including the alpine, subalpine and boreal habitats of the Northern Rocky Mountains in British Columbia and Alberta, the coniferous forests of Montana and Idaho, the wetlands and prairie where the Rockies meet the plains, a different mix of conifers on the Yellowstone Plateau in Wyoming, the montane forests of Utah, and in the high Rockies of Colorado and New Mexico, and finally the alpine tundra of the highest elevations.
OR-7, also known as Journey, was a male gray wolf that was electronically tracked as he migrated from the Wallowa Mountains in the northeastern corner of the U.S. state of Oregon to the southern Cascade Range. After the wolf dispersed from his natal pack in 2011, he wandered generally southwest for more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) through Oregon and northern California. He was the first confirmed wild wolf in western Oregon since 1947 and the first in California since 1924.
Single wolves or mated pairs typically have higher success rates in hunting than do large packs; single wolves have occasionally been observed to kill large prey such as moose, bison and muskoxen unaided. This contrasts with the commonly held belief that larger packs benefit from cooperative hunting to bring down large game. The size of a wolf hunting pack is related to the number of pups that survived the previous winter, adult survival, and the rate of dispersing wolves leaving the pack. The optimal pack size for hunting elk is four wolves, and for bison a large pack size is more successful.
In late December 2011, OR-7, a male gray wolf from Oregon, became the first confirmed wild wolf in California since 1924, when wolves were considered extirpated from the state. The first resident wolf pack was confirmed in 2015, after two adults migrated from Oregon and had five pups. Additional wolves have been tracked during their natural expansion into state, as the Cascade Range, which wolves have repopulated in Oregon, extends south into northern California. In 2021, the state had at least two wolf packs with pups for the first time in over a hundred years. It is likely that other uncollared wolves are dispersing through portions of their historic habitat in California.
926F (Spitfire) (April 2011 – November 2018) was a wild wolf popular with visitors of Yellowstone National Park. She was killed about a mile outside the park boundary by a hunter when she crossed from the park into Montana, where the hunting of wolves was legal.
O-Six (2006–2012), also known as 832F or "The 06 Female", was a female gray wolf, whose death by hunting just outside the protected area of Yellowstone National Park stirred debate about the hunting and protection of wolves in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. The bestselling book American Wolf focused on O-Six's life and on conservation policies in the Yellowstone region.
In the 1940s, the gray wolf was nearly eradicated from the Southern Rockies. The species naturally expanded into habitats in Colorado they occupied prior to its near extirpation from the conterminous United States. Wolves were reintroduced in the northern Rocky Mountains in the 1990s and since at least 2014, solitary wolves have entered Colorado. A resident group in northwestern Colorado was confirmed in early 2020. In June 2021, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) reported that the first litter of wolf pups had been born in the state since the 1940s. With a November 2020 ballot measure, voters directed the commission that oversees CPW to develop a plan to begin to restore wolves by the end of 2023, somewhere on the Western Slope. The wolves would be managed and designated as a non-game species, meaning they cannot be hunted, with fair compensation being offered for any livestock killed by the predators Wolves were protected as they are listed as endangered under federal and state law. As part of the reintroduction effort, the federal government in 2023 granted Colorado the authority to manage and kill wolves in specific circumstances. Colorado wildlife officials released 10 gray wolves from Oregon into a remote forest in Grand and Summit counties in late December 2023 as they set in motion the reintroduction effort.
