extirpation and recovery | attitudes | ecological role | northeast habitat | genetics debate

Extirpation and Recovery

The wolf once roamed from the Hudson Bay to the Mid-Atlantic states and westward. At the time of European settlement, there were an estimated 400,000 wolves in North America.

Although wolves were respected by Native Americans, the Massachusetts Bay Colony imposed the first bounty on the animal in 1630. During the next few centuries, both government extermination programs and hunting and trapping by individuals became widespread. By the early 1900s, the wolf had been virtually eliminated from the continental United States, with only a small population remaining in northern Minnesota.

In the past several centuries, much of the wolf’s historic home range has been converted to cities, suburbs, and farms. Many other areas are now dominated by ranching, logging, and energy industry activities. Although wolves can live in diverse types of habitat, every spot where they can safely breed, hunt, and migrate is very precious.

Fortunately, in the last several decades, a new appreciation of wildlife and public and private efforts to restore species have benefited the wolf:

• In the late 1980s, red wolves were reintroduced in North Carolina; there are about 100 today.
• In the late 1990s, Mexican wolves were brought back to Arizona and New Mexico, and currently number about 50.
• In the mid-1990s, gray wolves were released in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. As a result of this effort and natural migration from Canada, more than 800 wolves now roam the Northern Rockies.

Thanks to protections under the federal Endangered Species Act, the population of gray wolves in the Great Lakes region ( Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) has grown to about 3700 today. An estimated 7–10,000 wolves also live in Alaska. Occasionally a wolf is spotted or killed in other regions, including the Northeast. However, there is currently no established population of wolves in the Northeast.

If successfully recovered in the Northeast, the wolf would join a long list of species that have come back to the region after being eliminated. Many have returned on their own as forests have regenerated following centuries of agriculture and logging. Deliberate reintroduction efforts have also been used to bring back certain species to different parts of the Northeast, such as the white-tailed deer, beaver, fisher, wild turkey, and falcon.