Jonathan Parsons
Further testing to be done on the animal
Wildlife biologists from Corner Brook are aiming to do testing on a wolf that was shot near Port Blandford yesterday.
David Hann had been cutting wood near the railway trestle near the town on Feb. 5 when he killed the animal.
“I had my dog chained on, and he came after my dog. I had the powersaw going too, full-board, and he (wolf) still kept on coming . . . same as I wasn’t there.”
Hann told The Packet Thursday, the wolf had been hanging around the Port Blandford area for the last couple of months.
“He’s been out around people’s doors; they won’t let their children out and they wouldn’t let their dogs out. He came out after a fellow’s dog three or four days ago and he had to run.”
Hann says the animal was dangerous and he thinks it may have had to do with the wolf’s age.
“It’s an old one and he’s hungry.”
Biologists from Corner Brook contacted Hann and told him they would like to come test the animal for rabies and to determine if it had been bred with coyotes.
Hann says that he is sure the animals is a wolf because he is familiar with wolves from when he used to work in Churchill-Falls, Labrador.
However, he was not aware it was a wolf until after he had shot it. There are a lot of coyotes in the Port Blandford area, but this is the only wolf he has seen.
Wolves have been practically non-existent on the island of Newfoundland since the 1920s.
However, there have been sightings in recent years.
In 2012, an 82-pound wolf was shot on the Bonavista peninsula by Spillar’s Cove resident Joe Fleming.
It was initially thought to have been an unusually large coyote but further testing by Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Idaho confirmed the animal was a wolf.
John Blake, Director of Wildlife for the Department of Environment and Conservation, told The Packet there is initially a lot of information to take into account.
In addition to determining the animal’s circumstances pertaining to behaviour and the manner of the incident, “an assessment is done as to whether it’s a potential risk from a rabies perspective.”
What comes next is genetic testing.
“We’ll farm it out to genetic specialists (for) genetic testing and compare it to what we know the genetic makeup of coyotes, dogs, wolves that currently exist here in the province.
“We’ll also do body measurements, morphometric measurements, sex it, age it, do stomach content analysis so there’s a whole host of things that are undertaken.”
Blake said that it is too early to make judgment whether it is a wolf transplanted from Labrador or Quebec, a wolf that comes from a Newfoundland breeding population or that it is a wolf at all. That is the purpose of the tests and procedure.
Blake says that wolves have not been a native species of Newfoundland since approximately the 1920s when they were extripated.