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Beyond 2000:
Realities of Global Wolf Restoration
23-26 February 2000
Duluth, Minnesota USA
Kishan Singh Rajpurohit, Wildlife Institute of India, Chandrabani,
PO Box 18, Dehradun - 248001, India
Currently, wolf (Canis lupus pallipes) in India ranges
from the dry Thar desert to the wet deciduous forests of the Chotanagpur
plateau of south Bihar and Orissa. Around 4000-5000 wolves have
survived in India. In the recent past wolves have become a threat
to human life in a few areas. During last two decades around 425
non-lethal and lethal attacks particularly on children have been
made by wolves in four different parts of India, i.e. Hazaribagh-Koderma
in Bihar, Jaunpur-Pratapgarh Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh, Tumkur
in karnataka and Ananatpur in Andhra Pradesh. In this context it
was a necessity to evolve a mechanism for the identification of
child-lifting species, and how it behaves in order to have immediate
control on problem animal. In order to establish the identity that
wolf is responsible for the child-lifting, information such as description
of killer wolf, site of the attack, size of pug-marks, the mode
of attack, collection and identification of predator's hair, identity
of predator by canine puncture marks on child's body, identity of
wolf by place and distance of feeding, the time of attack, the season
of attack, and age of victim will help a great deal to the wildlife
managers in order to control the problem.
In order to evaluate the causes responsible for the change in
the behaviour from their dependence on natural prey to children;
factors such as paucity of wild prey, pressing demand for pack during
weaning season, behavioural change due to wolf-dog hybrids and rabies
have also have been examined.
To have the effective control on the child-lifting wolves to resolve
the human-wolf conflict, measures such as, training of wildlife
staff to identity the predators through direct and indirect methods,
to survey wolf habitat and to monitor problem wolves, elimination
of problem wolves by capture/hunting, identification of wolf-dog
hybrids, anti-rabies immunization and mediacal attention for surviving
wolf victims, paying compensation for the loss of life and livestock
and better information is required on the circumstances that lead
to child-lifting by wolves.
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