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Mange threatening wolves
By MIKE STARK
Of The Gazette Staff
The war on wolves took a strange twist in the winter of 1905.
After two decades of paying bounties for thousands of dead wolves in Montana, the Legislature approved a new law - "to provide for the extermination of wolves and coyotes" - dabbling in the emerging practice of biological warfare.
The idea was simple and cheap: capture wolves and coyotes, infect them with mange and send them back into the wild.
Eventually, the theory went, the animals would return to their packs and spread the highly contagious and sometimes fatal disease, which causes animals to itch so feverishly they lose hair. The disease, caused by a tiny skin-burrowing mite, can leave wolves emaciated, staggering and susceptible to hypothermia, infections and other health problems.
Eastern Montana saw "unqualifiedly splendid results" and reports of hundreds of dead and diseased wolves, said Morton E. Knowles, state veterinarian at the time of the program.
>Now, 102 years after the Montana law was passed, the same disease is threatening wolves in the country's signature population in Yellowstone National Park.
Earlier this winter, wolf biologists found the aging alpha male of Mollie's pack stricken with mange. About 40 percent of his body hair was gone. The 9-year-old wolf hasn't been seen for weeks and may already have died, park officials said.
It's unclear exactly how he got it but, now that it's arrived in Yellowstone, there's a concern that it could take hold in the park population where wolves intermix regularly, said Doug Smith, leader of the Yellowstone wolf project.
Full story:
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/03/02/news/state/25-century.txt#rating
By MIKE STARK
Of The Gazette Staff
The war on wolves took a strange twist in the winter of 1905.
After two decades of paying bounties for thousands of dead wolves in Montana, the Legislature approved a new law - "to provide for the extermination of wolves and coyotes" - dabbling in the emerging practice of biological warfare.
The idea was simple and cheap: capture wolves and coyotes, infect them with mange and send them back into the wild.
Eventually, the theory went, the animals would return to their packs and spread the highly contagious and sometimes fatal disease, which causes animals to itch so feverishly they lose hair. The disease, caused by a tiny skin-burrowing mite, can leave wolves emaciated, staggering and susceptible to hypothermia, infections and other health problems.
Eastern Montana saw "unqualifiedly splendid results" and reports of hundreds of dead and diseased wolves, said Morton E. Knowles, state veterinarian at the time of the program.
>Now, 102 years after the Montana law was passed, the same disease is threatening wolves in the country's signature population in Yellowstone National Park.
Earlier this winter, wolf biologists found the aging alpha male of Mollie's pack stricken with mange. About 40 percent of his body hair was gone. The 9-year-old wolf hasn't been seen for weeks and may already have died, park officials said.
It's unclear exactly how he got it but, now that it's arrived in Yellowstone, there's a concern that it could take hold in the park population where wolves intermix regularly, said Doug Smith, leader of the Yellowstone wolf project.
Full story:
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/03/02/news/state/25-century.txt#rating
