In responce to the article in the "information on north american animals" area. The Wolf was never eradicated from Northen Minnesota,and now there are thousands. The only other state with more wolves is Alaska.It is very difficult not to hear wolves howling if one spends a few nights in the Northwoods of Minnesota. I have heard them howling within yards of me.If interested in wolves a great place to visit is the Wolf Center in Ely Minnesota.

As a sidebar, the 50 or so wolves living on Isle Royal eat moose as their main source of food. At the Wolf center they have a nice arial shot of a pack of wolves stalking a Moose.

Yes, I know Isle Royal is in Michigan, but it is closer to the shores of Minnesota

The first wolf I saw in the wild was north of Ely in the boundary waters.

Where are you talking about that there are 1,000's of wolves? Would you mind posting your source for the following quote, "now there are thousands?"

I am interested in the statistics and the methodology used to make that determination.

Last year the State of Alaska killed 500 wolves here in Alaska to thin them down because we had way too many. I don't know how many wolves Alaska has but there are 5 packs on the Kenai Peninsula with 5-11 wolves per pack.

Below is a web page from the International wolf center in Ely, This will take you to the estimated numbers around the country, you will see that there are more than 3000 wolves in northern Minnesota. There is also allot of other interesting information throughout the website.

http://www.wolf.org/wolves/learn/basic/populations/uspop.asp

Wow, those numbers are incredible. It is strange that Minn. as half as many wolves as all of alaska, and 7-8 times more than it's neighbor state. . . and all of canada is said to have only 40-50k. . .

Wounder what makes that very small portion of minnesota so able to support that many wolves. The elk herds that once numberd in the 10's of thousands, in and near yellowstond, are being decimated by just a few packs. Makes me wounder about all the numbers. . .

Thanks for the post. . .

Hey Phil,

Thank you very much for the feedback. The material on the Wolves section dates specifically to the early 1900s. You are right that Northern Minnesota appears to be the one place that the gray wolf seemed to survive in the Lower 48. However, there were reportedly only a few hundred as recently as 1965.

How do you think we should update the material on the site? When I initially posted the information about wildlife, I had all intentions of updating it. It has not happened with regularity and should happen.

Cheers!
James

James,
I can send you some info on Grizzly bears and moose that will update your info. I can also send you a few links from Alaska Fish & Game on bear safety.

There are an estimate of 7700 to 11,200 wolves in Alaska. Wolves

Check this out
http://www.admin.mtu.edu/urel/news/media_relations/442/

A researcher at Michigan Tech wrote this, He explains that the decline in Elk herds has more to do with draught and Humans hunting them, than wolf predication. Cattle and sheep ranchers’ understandably would like people to believe wolves are to blame, because wolves will take domestic animals on rare occations.

Thanks, I don't do allot of posting to forums, but I have a particular interest in wolves. There is quite a bit of incorrect information about wolves out there, and since I like sitting in the woods and listening to them howl,and wanting to see and hear them for years to come, I would do anything I could to help people understand them better, and for me to gain a better understanding of them. Not that your article was incorrect, but since I have a place in the arrowhead of Minnesota, I wanted to claim bragging rights on the wolf population question. Your article was accurate in every way, except for the exsitance of wolves in Minnesota.

I believe the Wolves were able to survive up here because the landscape is wet, very heavy vegetation, and in the arrowhead very rugged, and for those reasons, not only would it be difficult to hunt under those conditions, it is also difficult to farm, so I don’t think there was any reason to completely eliminate them from the area.

One last thing for Final shot, The deer population in northern Minnesota is excellent, and the Moose population is good in the arrowhead, therefore there is plenty of large prey for the packs to take, and as James wrote in his article, they also eat mice, rabbits, beaver, and other small animals they come across, since there are many lone wolves, and others traveling in pairs within the total population, this will be the only food they will have available to them other than carrion.