Archive for July, 2022

DNA analysis of an 85 pound canid shot by a New York hunter in December 2021, has verified the animal to have been a wolf.  The animal was killed in central New York and the hunter posted photos of the animal on social media.  At the time that it was killed, wolves had been removed from the federal Endangered Species list.  They have since been reinstated to the list after a successful lawsuit by wildlife advocates.

In a collaborative effort between the Northeast Ecological Recovery Society (NERS) and the Maine Wolf Coalition (MWC), the hunter graciously provided tissue samples of the animal for DNA analysis, some of which were sent by NERS at considerable expense to the Natural Resources DNA Profiling and Forensic Centre at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.  We thank the hunter for his cooperation, without which we would not have gotten samples for analysis.  The findings concluded that the animal was effectively 100% wolf with DNA from Great Lakes wolves, Northwest Territories gray wolves and Eastern wolves, in decreasing order of DNA percentage.  The complex nature and purity of the wolf DNA may be consistent with a wild wolf that dispersed from Canada where various wolf populations are known to intermingle. Read the rest of this entry »