Save a Wolf .. Get a Donkey
It is well known that donkeys make very effective guards for livestock such as cattle and sheep against canine predators such as the wolf and the jackal.
The rule is to always have at least two donkeys in case of guarding against wolves and a ratio of one donkey to twenty head of cattle.
It is recommended that mammoth donkeys be used against wolf predation as they are stronger and wolves will rather avoid the cattle in the presence of such a donkey.
Donkeys have a natural instinct to attack canine predators with a vicious assault of biting and kicking. They have no fear of wolves.
Donkeys are already being used in this way by various cattle ranchers and sheep farmers all over the world.
Join our campaign in making this known to ranchers and sheep farmers. There is more to a donkey than meets the eye.
They need no training
They eat of the land like the stock they are guarding
They are generally friendly toward humans.
Hunters kill our wildlife and environment
Unlike popular belief perpetuated by the hunting fraternity, it is so that hunting is the singular most destructive killer of our wildlife species.
Hunters do not invest in conservation as they would like to tell you. Hunters invest in their own lust for bloodsport.
They perpetuate the declining of the gene-pool by killing the good specimens first. By eradicating their opposition, the predators they also perpetuate the growth of weak herds of ungulates that devastate the ecological environment that they live in.
In our world the only hunters are the ones with four legs like the one on the left. Let us help them to survive, they are the keepers of our environment
Wolves do eat various plants and fruit.
Yes its true..wolves do.
Wolves are mainly carnivores but also need certain types of green grass to keep their digestive system working hundred percent.
They also eat a variety of berries which help build the immune system.
Interesting facts on The Red Wolf also known as Canis rufus...
Based on fossil and archaeological evidence, the original red wolf range extended throughout the Southeast of the US, from the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, north to the Ohio River Valley and central Pennsylvania, and west to central Texas and southeastern Missouri. Historical habitats included forests, swamps, and coastal prairies.The red wolf became extinct in the wild by 1980. 1987 saw a reintroduction in northeastern North Carolina through a captive breeding program and the current status of the “non-essential/ experimental” population in North Carolina is “endangered” and the population numbers around 100 wild animals.
Red wolves weight ranges from 45 to 80 pounds. Their coat usually has rich chestnut or reddish on the head, back, and legs. Some may even be all black, especially those found in the bottom land forests of the Southeast.
Unlike gray and timber wolves which hunt large prey in packs,
the red wolves are generally more solitary hunters, living off small
prey. Red wolves are capable of taking down deer but more readily hunt
raccoons, opossums, muskrats, rabbits, and ground dwelling birds. When
taking down larger prey, red wolves will team up and hunt in groups.
Hunting in groups enables the predator to take down animals much larger
than itself and beyond the ability of a single individual. Red wolves pair with life long mates and reach breeding maturity, in the wild, at two to three years of age. They breed in February or March and two months later give birth to 2 to 6 pups. Packs usually consist of an adult breeding pair, young of the year, and young of the previous year...
Background on the Mexican wolf and the failing wolf recovery program in Arizona and New Mexico :
Adding to the controversy surrounding the endangered Mexican wolf and the accusation that Fish and Wildlife Services ignored the The Paquet Report for ten years with regards to the scientific management of the Mexican wolf, is the fact that with re-introduction of the Mexican wolf in 1998 the aim was 100 wolves, including 18 breeding pairs, by the end of 2006, but in January 2011 just 50 wolves and two breeding pairs.
All wolves in the western United States, including Mexican wolves in the Southwest, were exterminated from the wild through a federal program of trapping, poisoning and killing pups in their dens between 1915 and 1945. (Continued....)
A few good reasons why we have to ensure that wolves remain in the wild in healthy numbers....
Wolves help keep prey species healthy by preying on less fit animals, the old and the weak ; provide carrion for scavengers such as eagles and bears, and even help the growth of trees through scaring away browsing elk and other ungulates that eat saplings. They also enhance survival of foxes and pronghorn by killing coyotes, which wolves see as competitors. Wolves are essential to bringing and keeping balance in any Eco system and without them wilderness areas will be turned into sterile deserts devoid of animals, insects and plants.
In 1950, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began exporting U.S.-government-produced wolf poison to Mexico (as well as to Canada) and assigned employees to work in Mexico to set up a systematic wolf-poisoning program there. As a result, by the time President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law in 1973, few wolves survived in Mexico. Five wolves were live-caught for emergency captive breeding between 1977 and 1980; three of these were successfully bred, along with four other wolves already in captivity. No wolves have been confirmed alive in the wild in Mexico since 1980.
Tibetan Wolf :
The Tibetan wolf (Canis lupus chanco), also known as the woolly wolf/Steppe Wolf, is a subspecies of grey wolf native to central China, the Manschurai, Mongolia, North Sikkim, Tibet, south-western Russia, the Himalayan regions of India, Nepal and Bhutan. They also occur in the Korean peninsula.
For a long time, the Tibetan wolf and the Himalayan wolf were recognized as one and the same. However, recent genetic studies suggest the Himalayan wolf to be a distinct species, the Canis himalayensis ,as we reported in our post last week about the Himalayan wolf.
The Tibetan wolf is thought by some scientists to be the most likely ancestor of the domestic dog, on account of its small size and mandible morphology, noting that the uppermost part of the lower jaw is turned back on both the Tibetan wolf and the dog, though not so in other grey wolf subspecies .
The size of the Tibetan wolves can vary from 58 to 65 inches (from nose to end of tail) and from 27 to 30 inches high, weighing from 65 to 70 pounds. Compared to the common European wolf, they are slightly larger, with shorter legs. Their skull is similar with a longer thinner muzzle. They have a long shaggy coat which seasonally varies in color, usually a blend of white, yellow, brown, grey, and black.
Breeding season usually occurs in the Spring. To maintain strength of the pack, only the dominant male and female breed.
In the wild, they live anywhere from six to ten years. They can long as twenty years in captivity.
Tibetan wolves do not form large packs, and typically travel in pairs or threes. They feed largely on hares throughout the year, marmots in summer, and large numbers of deer and blue sheep in winter, when deep snow impedes the latter's mobility.
In Tibet, wolves are not legally protected, and there is no count of how many of these wolves are killed by farmers and hunters every year.
Their protection status is stated as endangered and they are also threatened by global warming and changing climate-the melting glaciers and increasing temperature. The remote wilderness of their habitat is disturbed by human activities and pollution.
The Italian Wolf
The Italian Wolf (Canis lupus italicus) also known as the Apennine Wolf, is a subspecies of the Grey Wolf found in the Apennine Mountains in Italy.
It was first described in 1921 and recognised as a distinct subspecies in 1999. Recently due to an increase in population, the subspecies has also been spotted in areas of Switzerland.
The wolves in Italy are thriving and protected by law since 1971 when there were only 100 wolves.
New estimates revealed that the wolf populations had exponentially doubled in recent years, with some wolves taking residence in the Alps, a region not inhabited by wolves for nearly a century. Current estimates indicate that there are 500 - 600 Italian wolves living in the wild. Italian Wolf populations are said to be growing at a rate of 7% annually.
Apart from the wolves in the wild great efforts is made to have them increase their numbers in specific conservation areas too:
-Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga National Park- the wolf population in the park territory is estimated at 65-80 wolves.
- Monti Sibillini National Park-The information available up to now suggests a strong growth of the population: in fact, the number of registered packs has increased from 3 in 2003 to 5 or 6 in 2008.This species is regularly distributed over the park territory, and additional packs seem to be present in neighbouring areas.
-Appennino tosco-emiliano National Park-4 wolf packs with an average of 3 individuals per pack.They are evenly distributed across the park and it seems as though the population is increasing.
During recent years, Italian wolves have also established themselves in Southern France, particularly in the Parc National du Mercantour.
Why do wolves howl :
The center of a wolf's universe is its pack, and howling is the glue that keeps the pack together.Of all their calls, howling is the only one that works over great distances. Unique features of each individual's howl allow wolves to identify each other. Howling is a long distance contact and reunion call.
When a wolf howls, not only can its pack mates hear it, but so can any other wolf within range. These other wolves may be members of hostile adjacent packs that are competitors for territory and prey.Consequently, wolves are careful about where and when they howl, and to whom they howl. It also helps to maintain spacing between rival packs. When one pack howls, others nearby may reply. Very quickly, all the wolves know each other's location. By advertising their presence, packs can keep their neighbors at bay and avoid accidentally running into them.
A pack sitting on a fresh prey kill is very likely to stake its claim and howl, particularly if a stranger howls nearby. As time passes and the kill is consumed, the wolves become less invested in the site and are less likely to reply.
Indiscriminate howling is usually not a dangerous proposition for young pups, since they tend to be stuck at a rendezvous site that is relatively far from the neighbors, who likely have pups of their own to raise. More importantly, replying to an adult that howls often leads to a meal, since pack mates returning with food frequently howl as they near the home site.By six months of age, pups have become as selective as adult wolves about where, when and to whom they howl.
So wolves howl to find their companions and keep their neighbors at bay. Popular imagination has long held that they also howl at the moon, but there is no evidence that this is so. Wolves may be more active on moonlit nights, when they can see better, or we may hear them more often on such nights, because we feel more comfortable tramping about in the light of a full moon, but a wolf howling at the moon would be wasting its breath.
* Credit for extracts : Fred Harrington- Professor of Ethology. Mt Saint Vincent University Nova Scotia *
Non lethal ways to combat wolf predation on livestock
More ways to combat wolf predation on livestock effectively without resorting to killing.
Some interesting myths, legends and other trivia that followed the history of wolves and men through the ages.
A small insight into the fears created many years ago because of ignorance and superstitions.. some of them who is still haunting the lives of both wolves and men.
10 interesting facts about wolves :
1.Wolves run on their toes like all canids do. It enables them to run fast and turn at high speeds.
2.Wolves have about 200 million scent cells. Humans have only about 5 million. Wolves can smell other animals more than one mile (1.6 kilometers) away.
3.A wolf pup’s eyes are blue at birth. Their eyes turn yellow by the time they are eight months old.
4.Under certain conditions, wolves can hear as far as six miles away in the forest and ten miles on the open tundra.
5.Immense power is concentrated in a wolf’s jaw. It has arguably the most powerful jaws of all canids and of the most powerful of most other predators including lion and hyena. The jaws themselves are massive, bearing 42 teeth specialized for stabbing, shearing, and crunching bones. Their jaws also open farther than those of a dog.
A Rubens painting depicting a wolf hunt.
Wolves were hated and feared in those days and equated with a beast from Satan
The hunting of Wolves is not something new...
Unlike North American wolf hunts which were partaken by ordinary civilians, Eurasian wolf hunts were an activity usually reserved for the nobility. In Scotland, Mary, Queen of Scots hunted wolves in the forest of Atholl in 1563, while in Czarist Russia, before the Emancipation reform of 1861, wolf hunting was done solely by authorized firearm holders, usually police, soldiers, rich landowners or nobles. A notable exception was Sweden, where the Swedish kings Magnus Eriksson and Christopher of Bavaria decreed wolf hunting a civic duty, with only priests, parish clerks and landless women exempted. Under penalty of a fine, every wolf hunter had to own a wolf net at least four fathoms long and to take part in general wolf hunts whenever called upon.
European wolves were commonly hunted with wolfhounds[disambiguation needed], which varied in appearance and use according to country. Irish wolfhounds were bred as far back as 3 BC, and were bred to kill wolves single handedly. In France, mixed teams of bloodhounds, sighthounds and mastiffs were used. In both Czarist and Soviet Russia, landowners and Cossacks hunted wolves with borzois, deerhounds, staghounds and Siberian wolfhounds, as well as smaller greyhounds and foxhounds.
The use of decoys was popularly used in 19th-century Russia and Scandinavia; a pig was used as a decoy and was transported in a strong canvas sack on a horse drawn sleigh. The pig, kept in the canvas bag, was made to squeal in order to attract the wolves. Hunters would wait at a distance to shoot the wolves when they came out after the pig. Once the wolves arrived, the hunters would either shoot them or retrieve the pig and canvas bag. In the latter case, they took off down the road, luring the wolves behind. The wolves would be lead to a palisade, where they would be trapped and shot.
In Lapland, wolves were occasionally hunted by the Lapps on skis. They would be armed with stout, 6-foot-long (1.8 m) poles tipped with a pike which was used both as propulsion and as a weapon. A skidor hunt was usually undertaken by multiple hunters over a course of a few days. The kill itself was usually made at a slope or hillside.
It all seems still very familiar even in 2011....
6.A hungry wolf can eat 20 pounds of meat in a single meal, which is akin to a human eating one hundred hamburgers.
7.Wolves can swim distances of up to 8 miles (13 kilometers) aided by small webs between their toes
8.A wolf can run about 20 miles (32 km) per hour, and up to 40 miles (56 km) per hour when necessary, but only for a minute or two. They can “dog trot” around 5 miles (8km) per hour and can travel all day at this speed. Some wolves have unofficially been measured to run up to 50 miles(80km) per hour.
9.A light-reflecting layer on a wolf’s eye called the tapetum lucidum (Latin for “bright tapestry”) causes a wolf’s eyes to glow in the dark and may also facilitate night vision. While a wolf’s color perception and visual acuity maybe be inferior to a human’s, a wolf’s eyes are extremely sensitive to movement.
10.Unlike other animals, wolves have a variety of distinctive facial expressions they use to communicate and maintain pack unity. Recent research suggest that wolves also communicate with their eyes.
The Himalayan Wolf
Click on image to read about the Himalayan wolf