Wolf project piquing interest in NH forests
By LORNA COLQUHOUN
Union Leader Correspondent
PITTSBURG – With the capture of a wolf within the past year not far over
the Canadian border from here, biologists are watching closely a study
that will get under way later this month by the National Wildlife
Federation.
“It was 20 miles or so . . . there was an adult (wolf) that close to New
Hampshire,” said Fish and Game biologist Eric Orff. “It’s piqued a lot of
interest.”
Peggy Strusacker, a wolf project coordinator with the National Wildlife
Federation in Montpelier, Vt., has assembled a field team, which will fan
out this winter across the northern reaches of the northeast, including
New Hampshire, in search of signs that the wolves have returned to the
region.
The last confirmed reports of wolves in the Granite State date back to
1895, according to Helenette Silver’s definitive “New Hampshire Game and
Furbearers: A History.”
Most all of the state’s counties had bounties on wolves; in 1816, the town
of Conway was paying $20 a head. In Warren, according to Silver, while the
men were off fighting in the Revolutionary War, “wolves prowled about the
houses at night, sometimes standing with their paws on the window sills to
peer inside.”
“There’s a substantial population not far from here,” Orff said. “In
Quebec, they trap 3,000 to 5,000 a year across the St. Lawrence.”
While there have been no confirmed sightings of wolves in northern New
Hampshire, now and then people do report seeing them. Strusacker said
there has not been the manpower available to investigate the claims.
But the federation has now earmarked money for an investigation into the
possibility that wolves are heading back to the region.
Orff said that since 83 percent of the area is forest and there are the
highest levels of moose population there have been in years, “it’s time to
set the table” and prepare for their return. “It’s something I expect to
see in my lifetime,” he said.
Strusacker is preparing to head to northern Maine this month. “The
emphasis is in very far northern Maine because that is where there have
been legitimate sightings that have come in and have not been followed
up,” she said.
It’s important to follow up sightings now, she said, since the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service is reviewing possible changes to the Endangered
Species Act, which protects gray wolves. Populations are increasing in the
Great Lakes region, as well as in Yellowstone, where they were
reintroduced in the last decade.
If wolves are taken off the Endangered Species list and classified as
threatened, it will become the responsibility of individual states to
protect them. Four years ago, the New Hampshire Legislature passed a
resolution that would prohibit any effort to reintroduce wolves in the
Granite State. Strusacker said Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont have
nothing on the books to protect the animals, if and when they come to the
region on their own.
“We’re concerned about that,” she said.
So she and other biologists are planning to head up to northern Maine in
the next couple of weeks, looking for signs of wolves.
“The types of areas we’ll go to are places where moose and deer hang out,”
she said. “If someone feels they’ve found a great track, we would like to
hear from them.”
Those in the northern part of New Hampshire who think they may have seen
some signs of wolves can report them to the Region 1 office of Fish and
Game in Lancaster.
“It may seem like it’s looking for a needle in a haystack, but (wolves)
leave plenty of signs,” Orff said.