Wolves Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Wolves (Canis lupus ) are mammals of the order Carnivora and belong to the same family (Canidae) of carnivores as coyotes, doges, foxes and jackals. They are digitigrades like other Canidae family members. Wolves are social animals that live in packs with a dominance hierarchy. The members of the pack include wolf pups, several nonbreeding adults, the dominant male (alpha) and his mate (fae). They mate in January and usually have five or six pups about six weeks later. The pups are fed by the pack until they become young adults.

Wolves are keystone predators. What they leave behind feeds other animals such as scavengers. They also keep the populations of ungulates such as bison, caribou, Dall sheep, elk, moose, mountain goats, and musk-oxen at healthy levels. However, many ranchers and sports hunters view the wolf as a menace that should be exterminated.

The gray wolf (timber wolf) is found across the Northern Hemispheres in North America, Europe, and Asia. There were five subspecies, but several have become extinct because of habitat destruction and hunting encouraged by fear of wolves. The Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) is a subspecies hunted to near extinction in the last 50 years. The South American maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) resembles a dog with reddish fur.

Called a lobo in Spanish and Portuguese, it is not actually a wolf. It lives in Paraguay, Southern Brazil, and Bolivia east of the Andes.

The Arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) is a subspecies of the gray wolf. Also called the white wolf or the polar wolf, they range across the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. They are different from the tundra wolf (Canis lupus albus) that ranges across the tundra of the northern European and Asian Arctic.

The largest subspecies of the gray wolf is the Russian wolf (Canis lupis communis). Its range is northcentral Russia where it is hunted legally. In Europe wolves have been nearly driven to extinction. Small numbers exist in the mountains of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Larger numbers survive in the Carpathian Mountains.

Africa’s only species of wolf is the Ethiopian wolf (Canis simenis). Only a few hundred individuals survive in the alpine ecosystem of the Ethiopian highlands. The Arabian wolf (Canis lupus Arabia) is a subspecies of the gray wolf. Numbers have increased in the United Arab Emirates since hunting was banned. The dire wolf was common in North America during the Pleistocene era but is now extinct. It disappeared with other mega-fauna at the end of the last ice age. Specimens have been found in tar pits and fossil beds. The North American red wolf (Canis rufus) may have been a descendant of the dire wolf. It was hunted nearly to extinction and was declared biologically extinct in the wild in 1980, but it has since been reintroduced to the wild in the southern Appalachian Mountains.

Bibliography:

John Elder, The Return of the Wolf: Reflections on the Future of Wolves in the Northeast (Middlebury College Press, 2000);
Thomas McNamee, The Return of the Wolf to Yellowstone (Owl Books, 1998);
Chris Whit, Wolves: Life in the Pack (Main Street Press, 2004); Daniel Wood, Wolves (Whitecap Books, 2005).