Dr. Valerius Geist, Will Graves and Dr. Charles Kay are at least three people who warned that forcing wolves into human populated areas was a terrible idea and that attempting to do so would produce countless problems. One of those problems was the uncontrollable threat of cross breeding or hybridization of wolves with other canines, i.e. other hybrids, domestic dogs and yes coyotes.
I’ve been reporting lately of incidences in Europe where wild canine hybrids, labeled as wolves, are being protected by the government. Even an untrained eye can examine photographs of many of these “wolves” and quite easily tell the differences between pure wolves and mutts. Those in Europe are mostly mutts. The truth is there is really no way of stopping it.
Closer to home, wildlife officials in Washington state, had to locate one of their collared laboratory wolves that had gone on a wild fling with a domestic male sheep dog. A report from NBC News said a sheep dog scaled a 7-foot fence to find love in the afternoon.
Biologists learned that a sheep dog climbed a 7-foot-tall fence from its yard near Ione and disappeared with the two female wolves in January and February, when wolves go into heat.
According to reports, officials used a helicopter and tranquilizer guns to drug two female wolves. One wolf had become pregnant from the sheep dog (at least they assume it was the sheep dog. I don’t know if any paternity tests were done.) and the fetuses were aborted. Both wolves were released.
In another report in the Spokesman Review, an official was quoted as saying:
“Our goal is the restoration of a native wolf population, not producing a generation of hybrids we’d have to take care of in another way later.”
And how is it that this “restoration of a native wolf population” is going to not become hybridized? The same officials states:
“If there had been a male wolf in the group, the dog would have been killed instantly.”
Perhaps so, but according to this same official, the two females were alone and thus copulation commenced…..willingly, according to the official. I won’t ask how he knew that.
But consider this. This dog, that evidently caught wind of at least one of those two female wolves in estrus (in heat), climbed a 7-foot tall fence to get in on some action. After all, a dog is a dog is a dog when it comes to breeding in times of estrus. So, if one dog climbed a 7-foot fence how many other dogs not behind fences or chained up are going to sniff opportunity in the wind and successfully mate with other female wolves in estrus with no male wolf to “kill them instantly?”
But let’s turn the role playing around. What is going to happen when a male wolf, not satisfied with the harem he must attend to in the bush, gets wind of Muffy Flanagan’s poodle, Fluffy, going into estrus? If uncaught the offspring becomes wolf hybrid dogs and then what happens?
Geist, Graves and Kay warned hearing impaired officials that trying to reproduce a “native wolf population” near human inhabited areas wasn’t going to work.
As pertains to this story, today Dr. Geist made the following comment:
Well, well, well…What do you know. Ghosts of predictions past! My wife had to quickly slip inside our house when the male wolf confronted her over our German Longhair pointer estrus state. Several male dogs in the neighborhood showed up, but the wolf was the boldest!
How long before we are going to have a forest full of angry and hungry mongrel dogs that some people are still going to demand need protecting? If we follow the lead of what’s happening in Europe, it shouldn’t be too long.
Hang on!
