While sleeping in the winter, wolves use their tails to help keep their faces warm.įrequently Asked Questions about Wolves in WashingtonĪdapted from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) website,.Howling is an important form of communication for wolves and can be used to find the pack, warn other packs to stay away, and to reinforce bonds with other pack members.Wolves have been known to "wolf" down their food and can eat up to 20 pounds of meat in one sitting.
at the top of the chain) and help create balance in their ecosystems by mainly eating old, sick, or weak prey. Critical to the food chain, wolves are apex predators (i.e.Wolves have a very powerful sense of smell that is 100 times stronger than a human's.Read more about how IFAW is working to find coexistence in a human-dominated world. Animals such as coyotes, wolves, bears, and beavers are considered “nuisances” and are treated as something to be controlled. IFAW’s mentality is that coexistence is better than conflict, though people’s relationship with native wildlife is often that of conflict. In the U.S., wolves were reintroduced into the lower 48 states in the 1990s after being wiped out during the preceding century, and have since reprised their role as an integral part of their ecosystems, including the landscapes in and around Yellowstone National Park. Populations in both North America and Europe, though recovering, will need ongoing protection before they-and the ecological services that they provide-are truly sustainable. In contrast, wolves are strictly protected in the EU, and packs have started to repopulate certain parts of their historic range and have established themselves in parts of Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland. In Europe, the focus of our work has been raising public awareness, monitoring the wolf repopulation, and enabling the coexistence of wolves and livestock farmers. We support the implementation of livestock protection measures such as wolf-safe fencing, livestock protection dogs, and researching of wolf deterrent mechanisms that would prevent attacks on farmed animals. In addition to being cruel, ecologically disruptive, and unjustifiably dangerous to the public, research shows that killing wolves is ineffective as a long-term means of reducing wolf-livestock conflict. In both Canada and the U.S., IFAW is supporting legislation and regulations that would stop the use of the poisons such as sodium cyanide, strychnine, and Compound 1080 to kill wolves and other species. The use of these poisons is inhumane and unethical, as they cause intense suffering and a prolonged, excruciatingly painful death. Aerial shooting is also used to haphazardly kill these iconic animals, as is the practice of radio tracking wolves to find and exterminate entire packs. Such taxpayer-funded extermination programs may involve the use of indiscriminate, toxicant-laced baits, which are left on wildlands to poison any species that may be attracted to the bait.
Wolves continue to be the target of government-sponsored killing in many countries across the globe. In Canada, wolves are not only trapped and killed for recreational and commercial purposes, they are also the target of government-led slaughters in British Columbia, Alberta and the Northwest Territories that are designed to inflate populations of prey species like woodland caribou (though evidence shows no benefit to those prey species). In parts of Canada and the U.S., deadly poisons-which threaten non-target wildlife, as well as pets and even people-are also used to kill wolves in a misguided effort to prevent predation on farmed animals. Habitat destruction and intentional killing-including with cruel traps and deadly poisons-are the top threats to gray wolves. These animals are mostly found in wild landscapes and, as remote areas become developed and fragmented, vital habitat is lost. This ecologically essential species is still found on most continents, but larger populations of wolves are mostly restricted to remote or wilderness areas.
Once the most widely spread mammal in the world, centuries of the one-two punch of habitat loss and direct persecution by governments, private hunters and trappers has reduced gray wolves’ range and population size.
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