Word: wolfs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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People around Yellowstone National Park have been agitated by some strange sights lately, and not just the usual glimpses of Elvis and UFOs. The new apparition is the wolf, the magnificent predator that disappeared from the American West more than 60 years ago -- killed off by relentless bounty hunters and government agents. Over the past decade, a few wolves have moved from Canada back into northern Montana and Idaho, but most experts thought it would take many years before they spread out and found ways to cross interstate highways and hostile ranchland to reach Yellowstone...
...first credible claim that the wolf had arrived in the park came in August, when a filmmaker recorded a large wolflike animal feasting on a bison carcass in Yellowstone's Hayden Valley. Not all biologists were convinced, since the animal appeared to have some doglike features. But more and more sightings took place. Rangers and visitors reported seeing paw prints and even groups of wolves. Then on Sept. 30, a hunter's smoking gun left the most compelling evidence thus far: the body of a gray-black 42-kg (92-lb.) male that was shot while supposedly traveling with...
Conservationists have long bemoaned the absence of the wolf in the otherwise complete Yellowstone ecosystem. Extending from northwestern Wyoming into southern Montana and Idaho, it is the largest expanse of virtually unspoiled wilderness in the Lower 48 states. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 requires the U.S. government to take steps to bring back the wolf, but a succession of plans to reintroduce the animal to Yellowstone and other parts of the West have become mired in controversy. Even though a majority of Westerners favor the return of wolves, formidable opposition comes from local ranchers and hunting outfitters who fear...
Surprisingly, even some wolf supporters were taken aback at the possibility that the animal is engineering its own comeback. They are reacting as if werewolves, not gray wolves, have suddenly appeared. Officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for example, fear that their long-discussed plans to reintroduce wolves to Yellowstone could become sidetracked. The Endangered Species Act would require the Federal Government to protect wild wolves from hunters and ranchers, and could prohibit the reintroduction of other wolves. Conservationists are worried that there will be too few immigrant animals to start a thriving population, and that a complacent...
...confirm or refute the evidence of the wolves' return. So the painstaking examination of the animal killed last month is beginning to resemble the autopsy of a slain President. Forensic tests to examine wear of the beast's paws and teeth support the notion that it is a wild wolf. Preliminary analysis of the skull is inconclusive. Now researchers are trying to match the animal's genetic material with that of known populations of wolves...