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Now you can read sections of International Wolf exactly as they appear in our printed magazine. Click on the featured links below to view PDF files of the stories.

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The 2005 Wolf Conference
by Steve Grooms and Naomi Huig
Once every five years, the International Wolf Center organizes an international wolf conference. In early October 2005, approximately 450 people from 18 nations met in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for the fourth such wolf conference: "Frontiers of Wolf Recovery." A wolf conference is a bit like a class reunion, a bit like a fair, a bit like a celebration and a lot like an advanced college seminar in wolf research. In short, a wolf conference is pretty special.

The End of an Era - The Last Days of Wolf 21
by Rick McIntyre
June 11, 2004, seemed like a typical day in Lamar Valley. We found the Druid wolves feeding on a freshly killed elk just after first light. Word spread quickly through the valley, and soon scores of park visitors were watching the pack. As always, one member of the pack stood out due to his size and charismaÑ21, the Druid dominant male. Most of the wolf watchers there that morning knew about 21 and his history before they came to the park. To see him, just 400 yards away, was like seeing their favorite rock star in person.

Gray Wolf Reclassification Derailed, Delisting in Eastern United States Delayed
by Ron Refsnider
On January 31, 2005, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Jones delivered an important ruling against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). The ruling wasn't just a surprise to me-it was a shock! I had been the leader of a team of USFWS endangered species biologists that had crafted the gray wolf reclassification overturned by the ruling. With the help of several career Endangered Species Act (ESA) attorneys for the Department of the Interior, we had spent nearly three years developing the initial proposal, held 14 public hearings across the nation, and analyzed comments from 43,000 individuals and organizations interested in the changes we had proposed. We spent an additional three years carefully making changes based on those comments and to comply with the legal requirements of the ESA. We were convinced that we had followed the law and had used the best scientific data in making the final decision that we announced in April 2003. So you might understand why we were shocked when Judge Jones ruled that we had misinterpreted and improperly applied the ESA, and that he was vacating-overruling-our gray wolf reclassification final rule and the three Distinct Population Segments (DPS) that it had established.

As a Matter of Fact

What is RLU?

From the Executive Director

by Walter Medwid


After spending hours watching the pack, we had many questions on our minds, one of which was, where was the sixth adult? The previous day all members of the packÑthe six adults and three pupsÑwere settled into their rendezvous site. The pups spent most of the day sleeping, interspersed with moments of activity to adjust positions, often staying in the same place, just pointed in a different direction. It was as if they were fluffing up the pillows provided by the Arctic hummocks.

This pack was on the western coast of Ellesmere Island, well north of the Arctic Circle, thus allowing us to observe the wolves anytime of the day. I had the great fortune of accompanying Dave Mech on his twentieth year of wolf research in the remote location. I had joined Dave in 2001, but we saw no wolves that year.

International Wolf Center Notes From Home

Tracking the Pack

A World Run by Wolf Rules
by Lori Schmidt, Wolf Curator, International Wolf Center
On the morning of May 11, 2005, the wolf care staff encountered a day like no other. Upon arrival, staff member Jen Westlund prepared for the morning wolf check. She noticed that Nyssa, who was lying upright in a wooded area of the enclosure, wouldn't come to the fence. We put the other members of the pack into an adjacent holding area, and Jen and I went into the enclosure. It was immediately evident that Nyssa had suffered trauma; we crated her and transported her to the vet clinic. After a thorough examination, the veterinarian determined that her wounds were beyond repair and the damage left no options but euthanasia.

Wolves of the World

SWITZERLAND AND THE WOLF
Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?
by Mark Schulman
Looking for wolves in Switzerland is a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. Perhaps even harder as there are only a handful of them roaming throughout the country's vast mountain ranges and alpine meadows made famous by the 19th-century children's classic, and later the popular television series, Heidi. But for many living in the Swiss Alps, this is a handful too many.

Book Review

The Lost Wolves of Japan
by Brett Walker
University of Washington Press, 2005

Review by Jim Williams, Assistant Director for Education, International Wolf Center
The islands of the Japanese archipelago were once home to two unique subspecies of the gray wolf: the Japanese wolf (Canis lupus hodophilax) and the Hokkaido wolf (C. l. hattai). The LostWolves of Japan, an important new book by historian Brett Walker, reveals how Japan's adoption of Western cultural values in the 18th and 19th centuries abruptly reversed thousands of years of Japanese reverence for the wolf and ultimately led to the extinction of both subspecies by 1905.

News and Notes

Personal Encounter

They Are Always There
by David Radaich


The wolves were on our farm all winter. We knew it would just be a matter of time before they struck... and in early April 2005, they did. We called the Wildlife Service trappers, John Hart and Bill Paul, hoping they would come to help us out again.

I'm a beef farmer in Goodland, Minnesota. On our farm of 1,200 acres we run about 250 beef cows and a small flock of sheep. My wife, Robbie, and our three children are all involved with the farm. Our oldest son is in the farm partnership, and he has his own herd of cows. Our daughter owns the sheep, and the youngest, our 17-year-old son, has his own small herd of cows. It's a family affair.

Wild Kids

Dinner Is Served - Carnivore Style!
Does everyone in your house help out at mealtime? A whole wolf pack usually gets involved with big meals, too. Most of the time, the meal wolves eat is meat. Wolves are called carnivores, because they eat meat such as deer or moose. A predator must hunt for its food, which is called prey - so when a wolf goes out hunting, that's its way of preparing for a meal.

A Look Beyond

Home
by Bruce Weide and Pat Tucker
Home is where you live, the place you know and feel comfortable to move around in. Most humans understand the rules of home ownership. We'd be shocked, incensed, and probably a little more than righteously indignant to find a stranger clear-cutting the backyard trees or bulldozing the family garden to make way for a tennis court. But when we buy a piece of vacant land and build a house, we often overlook the fact that tenants already live there. They didn't pay for the land or possess a title, but from their point of view it's theirs, and we're the intruders.