
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 8, 1995                   TAG: 9501100018
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FEARS RETURN WITH WOLVES

Given half a chance, wolves prove resilient in reclaiming old territories. Also quick to reappear, though, are the human fears that helped drive them out in the first place.

A look at the nation's main wolf populations and the accompanying controversies:

MINNESOTA: With 2,000 wolves, this is the only state outside Alaska where wolves are not endangered. They're considered threatened, a less dire category under the 1973 Endangered Species Act. Despite vigorous eradication efforts, wolves were never eliminated from northern Minnesota. Since 1974, they have more than doubled their population and spread into Michigan and Wisconsin.

But the wolf's spread has some farmers grumbling about increased danger to livestock. And its image wasn't helped by a recent incident at a zoo in Wisconsin where a 2-year-old boy who wanted to ``pet the dogs'' stuck his arm through a chain-link fence and had it chewed off by a captive wolf.

Biologists say there have been no verified cases of serious injury from a healthy, wild wolf in North America.

NORTH CAR-OLINA: The red wolf, a smaller cousin of the gray wolf, was eradicated across almost all its range in the Southeast by 1980, but a captive breeding program has brought it back from the brink of extinction. Fifty to 80 red wolves now roam the wilds of North Carolina, with 220 more in captivity.

Two were shot illegally in the past two months, a crime punishable by up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

ARIZONA: There are nearly 100 Mexican gray wolves in captivity, and federal biologists want to restore the species to the Southwest. Plans to release wolves into the hills of eastern Arizona have drawn opposition from ranchers.

ALASKA: Home to 6,000 gray wolves, this is the only state with a healthy wolf population. It's also the only state with a government-run wolf-killing program, designed to reduce predation of moose and caribou for the benefit of hunters.

Drawing mixed reviews in Alaska and resounding opposition elsewhere, the on-again, off-again wolf kill was called off again in December after a trapped wolf, its snared leg gnawed to a bloody stump, was shown on national television.

by CNB