Except from Vanishing Wildlife of North America by Thomas B. Allen, published by the National Geographic Society, copyright 1974:

Favorable publicity comes late to the wolf, long an object of fear and hatred, now an animal with active sponsors. On tour to win friends, Jethro, an amiable Canadian timber wolf [subspecies of the gray wolf], visits a school in Virginia with a spokesman—John Harris, president of the North American Association for the Preservation of Predatory Animals (NAAPPA). Students respectively keep pace, or peer into a van to watch Jethro and another NAAPPA wolf, Clem.

On the Capitol steps, Jethro demonstrates a wolf's muzzle-to-muzzle greeting with a Virginia Congressman G. William Whitehurst, whose wife Janie, holds the chain collar. Mr. Whitehurst has introduced legislation to protect the wolf. Later in 1973, five months after this trip, a NAAPPA staff man found Jethro and Clem victims of deliberate poisoning in their van. Now Jethro's nephew Rocky, 19 months old, continues NAAPPA's educational programs.

Though this story refers to a subspecies of the group, the same story can be told a thousand times over about all species of gray wolves. People's fear of these predators is a big reason this species is currently on the endangered species list, and must remain there. A lot of progress has been made since the gray wolves were first considered an endangered species back in March of 1967; however, now in 2003, there is serious talk about taking these wolves off the list, and letting them fend for themselves, without federal protection. The population of the wolves has increased to a manageable level since 1967; however, if left by themselves and at the mercy of hunters and farmers, history will repeat itself again, and we will have to fight to keep the wolves in this world.

Gray wolves currently can be found in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Rocky Mountains of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Occasionally wolves have been sighted in Washington state, North Dakota, South Dakota, and they are now being reintroduced in Arizona and New Mexico. At one time, these wolves could be found throughout the contiguous 48 states of the United States, but by the early 20th century, they were nearly extinct. Wolves were being killed off in record numbers as settlers came from the east to settle the west. They were killed to protect people against attacks, to protect livestock, and they died as the woods in the rest of the country were being torn down for farms and development. Now with federal protection, they are not as threatened by these kinds of attacks, but farmers still fear for the livestock that might be eaten by hungry wolves.

In reality, there has never been one reported killing of a human by a wolf, usually around humans, wolves are very timid and shy. Unfortunately, there have been records of wolves killing livestock. The problem is that the wolves are carnivores, and will eat any available meat. Primarily wolves prefer to eat moose, elk, bison, musk ox, and deer; however, they will only go after large prey like this when they are hunting in a pack. When a wolf hunts by itself, it will usually go after prey such as beavers and rabbits. There are times when the wolves will hunt prey on their own or just steal another animal's food, and occasionally they will even eat carrion. Basically, the gray wolf will eat whatever food is available to them. This wouldn't have been a problem, but as their natural food sources were being killed off as the U.S. was being settled, the wolves had to look elsewhere for food.

Unfortunately, since the wolf will eat whatever food is available, this lead to a lot of problems with humans. As a pack, the wolves would take down livestock from farmers which made them a prime target. Once farmers were able to identify the threat to their livestock, they used any means possible to rid themselves of what they called a "pest" animal. Bounty programs were started in the 1800's and continued throughout the U.S. until 1965.

These programs offered hunters $20-50 per wolf that they would bring in. Wolves were trapped, shot from planes and snowmobiles, dug from their dens, hunted by domestic dogs, and animal carcasses were salted with strychnine and left out for the wolves to eat. This practice of salting the carcasses with strychnine had a cascading effect hurting other species such as the eagle, raven, foxes, and bears.

Aside from the threat from farmers, wolves also have to contend with their image as the "big, bad wolf" that has existed from the time when Red Riding Hood was first written. A lot of people fear wolves because they see these animals as ferocious beasts, and support killing them to rid themselves of the danger. In reality, wolves are not much of a threat to humans, all they really want is to be left alone to hunt, raise their young, and live out their lives. Actually, wolves are not that much different than humans, they are social animals and spend most of their time with their pack.

Packs usually consist of two adult wolves (the male being the alpha), and their family. Breeding for the wolf occurs in January through April, with the northern population breeding later in the year than the southern. Wolves also choose lifetime mates (again, like humans do), and will stay with their mate ruling over the pack until their death. After mating occurs, the female wolf will dig a den to raise the young in and after about 60-63 days, a litter of about 1-14 pups is born. The average litter size for the gray wolf is roughly six to seven pups. When they are born, the pups are both blind and deaf, and weigh only 1.10 lbs. Once grown up, the pups will weigh about 50-176 lbs., and will stand on average 2 ˝ feet tall.

The pups will remain in the den with their mother until they are about 8-10 weeks old, and then they will be cared for by the entire pack. Until the pups are around 45 days old, they are fed regurgitated food from the rest of the pack, but after that, they will join the rest of their family in eating food that is brought in by the older members of the pack. Pups will usually strike out on their own to find a mate, and form their own pack at one to two years of age.

Currently, there are approximately 2,200 wolves living in the wild in Minnesota, and 120 in Michigan and Wisconsin, and an additional 240 in the northern Rocky Mountains. Since these numbers are so high, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to delist the gray wolf. What the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service want to do under this proposal is to focus future gray wolf recovery efforts only in certain portions of the species' historic range, recognize recovery progress, and adjust the degree of protection under the Endangered Species Act, thus eliminating the protections of the act in the remaining portions of the wolves' range where recovery actions are not necessary or feasible.

Despite the protests of many environmental groups and other politicians, with the new Republican regime currently residing on Capitol Hill, the chances for continuing protection of the wolf looks slim. We can only hope that now with the public education and interaction people have had with wolves such as Jethro and Clem, that the fear people have will be replaced with respect. All these animals need from us humans is room to hunt and play, respect from farmers and others they come in contact with, and basically just to be left alone.