Maine’s wolf history is still a hot topic

By V. Paul Reynolds

As anyone who spends any time in the Maine woods knows, our coyote populations are plentiful and thriving despite recreational and programmed efforts to control these highly efficient predators. And interestingly, there were no coyotes in Maine at one time. But what about wolves in Maine?

Retired U.S Fish and Wildlife biologist Mark McCollough, a Hampden resident, was very close to this issue, having spent many hours professionally helping USFWS answer the question: Are there wolves in Maine today?

McCollough writes, “Two wolves were killed in Maine in the 1990s, but they likely spent some time in captivity. An 86-pound wild wolf was killed in northern New Brunswick in 2013.

In the fall of 2003, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wanted to definitively answer this question before proposing to remove the wolf from the Federal Endangered Species list in the Northeast. I was tasked to work with National Wildlife Federation, Defenders of Wildlife, and Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to answer that seemingly simple question. It is still unsettled.”

DNA testing revealed that these Maine wolves had been on a diet of commercial dog food and were most likely domesticated wolves before they were released. McCollough says that the New Brunswick wolf, on the other hand, was the real deal.

Wolves were commonplace when settlers first came to Maine. Naturalists assert that there were two species of wolves, the smaller “deer wolf” that preyed on deer in coastal Maine and a larger species of gray wolf that preyed on moose and caribou in northern Maine.

When these wolves were killed off around the turn of the century a “predator void” was left. In time, our present day coyote migrated eastward and filled the niche. Our coyotes, unlike the smaller Western “coydog,” are more genetically complicated. McCollough writes, “The wolf question is elusive, complex, and hinges on our understanding of what canid lived here historically, and the latest genetic understanding of canids in eastern North America.”

Scientists and biologists believe that our Maine coyote got to Maine via Ontario and came to us “hybridized” with the smaller Eastern wolf. And this is the case today. The Maine coyote is a genetic mix, part coyote and part wolf, which explains why they are generally larger than the Western coydog.

And what about repeated efforts by activists to get gray wolves introduced to Maine, as they were in the West? McCollough says that in the West a wolf is a wolf and a coyote is a coyote. There is no hybridization. Wolves will not tolerate coyotes and will frequently kill them. Maine, with its genetically unique coyotes, is a different situation altogether.

If a Canadian Eastern wolf, or even a bigger gray wolf, migrates to Maine through St. Pamphile or wherever, or if the USFWS introduced gray wolves to Maine, McCollough says that the evidence suggests that “if an eastern wolf from Ontario or Quebec finds its way to northern New York, Maine, or New Brunswick it will find itself in a sea of eastern coyotes. Any dispersing Eastern wolf would readily hybridize with eastern coyotes, and the offspring would be assimilated into an eastern coyote population that already has a genetic legacy of wolf genes.”

McCollough’s logic, as well as his credentials, make for a compelling thesis, which seems to say that a wolf  introduction initiative in Maine just wouldn’t work, even if it were desirable.

John Glowa, spokesmen for the Maine Wolf Coalition, has, along with his group, lobbied intensely for a wolf reintroduction program for Maine. He says, “The main issue is that wolves were here before and deserve to be here again.”

However sincere and well intentioned Glowa and his organization may be, and no matter what the wolf deserves, the science suggests that the pure genetic strain of gray wolf that once inhabited Maine’s north woods is all part of history, not to return.

The author is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide and host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network. He has authored three books. Online purchase information is available at www.sportingjournal.com, Outdoor Books.