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A Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf runs in the snow. This public domain photo can be found at http://bit.ly/1M6jZ8g.
Park Service employees have been wandering the North Rim of the Grand Canyon searching for wolf scat. A large gray canine was spotted wandering the area and debate ensued about whether the beast was a coyote, wolf or wolf/dog hybrid. Once a scat sample was obtained it was determined that the creature was indeed a wild wolf, the first wild wolf spotted at the Grand Canyon in more than 70 years. Government extermination programs had made wolves extinct in Arizona by the 1940s.
Arizona’s program for reintroducing the Mexican Gray Wolf has long been controversial. This new wolf is not part of that process. She is a volunteer who made the long migration from the Idaho/Canadian border region on her own, reintroducing herself rather than waiting for a government invitation. This new wolf is not a Mexican Gray Wolf but a Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf.
At first it was speculated that this new arrival may have been the wolf that was seen roaming the Uinta mountain range of southern Utah in late August to mid September. Wildlife biologist Brian Maxfield exchanged howls with the wolf in late September and received a radio signal that revealed the Uinta wolf to be a male. The Grand Canyon wolf is a female. The radio signal also revealed that the male wolf had travelled over 850 miles before stopping in Utah. This was good news for the Utah wolf conservation proponents who can now cite wolves residing in Utah and other wolves who are using Utah as a travel corridor.
On Nov. 2, one lucky government employee successfully collected wolf poop along the north rim of the Grand Canyon. The sample was sent to a lab in Idaho whose DNA testing showed that this particular wolf travelled over 450 miles from the northern Rocky Mountains to reach Arizona. This wolf is wearing a radio collar so she must have been captured before but after the long migration the collar is no longer functional.
Once it was confirmed that wolves really had returned to the Grand Canyon, a world wide contest was held to name her. Ten-year-old Zachary Tanner from Milwaukie, Oregon won with his entry “Echo.” Zachary chose the name Echo, “because she came back to the Grand Canyon like an echo does.” The most common contest suggestion, especially among school children was “Esperanza” the Spanish word for hope or simply the name “Hope” itself because as one Flagstaff child put it, “now the ecosystem has hope.” After the contest winner was announced, Maggie Howell of the Wolf Conservation Center said, “She came, she saw, she made history, and now she has a name!”
Local business woman Ellen Winchester, whose family has owned and lived at the Kaibab Lodge five miles north of the Grand Canyon North Rim for the past 10 years, said: “This is our home and business and we who live in the forest have a healthy respect for the animals. The Kaibab National Forest, The Grand Canyon North Rim and the animals that live there are a legacy for our children and our children’s children. I was thrilled to hear a wolf song. I welcome Echo to the Grand Canyon, which is my back yard. There is plenty of room for all to live together safely.”
Young wolves are known to be quite nomadic and will travel considerable distances searching for a new home. Earlier this year a wolf who has come to be named “Journey” (OR -7) migrated south from Oregon and became the first wolf to live in California in almost 90 years. The possibility of established wolf populations spreading to unexpected locations has environmentalists gushing about the future.
In October 2011, five captive bred wolves were released by the Mexican government in the San Luis Mountains just south of the American border. The Mexican wolf reintroduction program has been over 20 years in the making. With multiple breeding facilities they now have over 60 captive bred wolves south of the border and plan many more releases in the near future. The American and Mexican wildlife management bureaucracies are not known for their cooperation. In fact, American officials were only alerted to the wolf release by coverage of a Mexican press conference when the Mexican government announced that they had released the wolves into the wilds of the San Luis Mountains a month or two before – a sharp contrast to the heated public debate and frequent lawsuits associated with the American wolf reintroduction program.
Aldo Leopold, author of The Sand County Almanac wrote about Arizona wolves in his seminal book of environmental literature. “In those days we never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf… We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and the mountain. I was young then and full of trigger itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would be a hunter’s paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view… Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among the mountains, but seldom perceived among men.”
A beautiful female wolf named Echo returned to the Grand Canyon, the first confirmed wolf sighting at the park since 1939, but on Dec. 29 2014 a hunter near Beaver, Utah shot what he thought was a coyote but realized after the animal was dead that he had killed a radio collared gray wolf. Although many are speculating that this is the tragic end of Echo we will not know for certain until tests are conclusive. We can only hope this is not the case but regardless, this is a tragedy for those who care about wolf conservation.
Gary Every is an award winning author who has won consecutive Arizona Newspaper Awards for best lifestyle feature for pieces “The Apache Naichee Ceremony” and “Losing Geronimo’s Language”. The best of the first decade of his newspaper columns for The Oracle newspaper were compiled by Ellie Mattausch into a book titled Shadow of the OhshaD. Mr. Every has also been a four time finalist for the Rhysling Award for years best science fiction poetry. Mr. Every is the author of ten books and his books such as Shadow of the Ohshad or the steampunk thriller The Saint and The Robot are available either through Amazon or www.garyevery.com.
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