Alaska to ship a wolf hybrid to Canadian sanctuary
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – A wolf-dog cross held by Anchorage animal control officials over the past month and almost certainly destined to be killed under Alaska’s strict wolf hybrid rules will go to a sanctuary in Canada.
The plight of the animal, named Sasha, had drawn hundreds of e-mail messages and phone calls to state officials. In the end, Anchorage wildlife activist Karen Deatherage persuaded state officials to issue a permit allowing the shy, wolfish canine to be sent out of state.
“It’s not her fault that she got into this situation,” Deatherage said. “And if there’s an opportunity to get her placed into a sanctuary where she can be with other animals of her kind, then that’s the best thing to do.”
The animal’s former owner, Aimee Cozad, did not return messages asking for comment.
Cozad had helped pick up the animal from the animal shelter Friday morning, Deatherage said. The two women took it to a veterinarian to be spayed and to receive a microchip under the skin for the national registration required by law for hybrids, Deatherage said.
She planned to put the animal on a flight Sunday to Toronto where it would be met by a veterinarian and a representative from the Kerwood Wolf Education Centre.
“This animal was not receiving the care that it needed, and it is going to a place where it can be cared for,” she said.
Sasha had been in municipal custody since early January, when she escaped her pen in a Jewel Lake neighbourhood and was darted by state wildlife biologist Rick Sinnott.
Cozad told wildlife officials at the scene that she had always thought the animal was a shepherd-husky cross, according to Sinnott. But the animal clearly had the appearance and behaviour of a wolf, and it was turned over to animal control authorities, Sinnott said.
The animal has a wolf’s narrow chest, long legs, big feet, flatter head, broad jaw and yellow eyes, Deatherage said. “You’d be hard-pressed to tell a difference between her and a wolf in the wild.”
Wildlife officials worry that escaped hybrids could introduce disease or interbreed with wild wolves.
To eliminate hybrids from Alaska, the Board of Game in 2002 made it illegal to own, breed or sell wolf hybrids. Existing hybrids could remain alive if their owners got them neutered or spayed, implanted with a microchip, licensed and vaccinated.