Wolf Killed After Attack on Alaska Boy By Yereth Rosen ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - An Alaskan child was bitten by a wolf at a remote southeast Alaska logging camp, the first incident of its kind in recent Alaska history, officials reported Thursday. The child was treated and released at a clinic at Yakutat. The animal, an adult male, was shot and killed, according to Alaska State Troopers. In the attack, a six-year-old boy was bitten three times on the back. The Wednesday morning attack occurred when the boy was playing in a group of trees at a camp in Icy Bay, the troopers said. Witnesses reported that the wolf tried to carry the boy off into the woods. Tests Thursday revealed that the wolf was not rabid, said Michelle Sydeman, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The animal, which had been radio-collared in 1996 by the U.S. Forest Service, first appeared in the Icy Bay camp in 1998, Sydeman said. ``So he's been around.'' Fish and Game officials knew of no other attack by a wolf on a human in recent Alaska history. Since 1940, 38 people in Alaska have died from dog attacks and 32 from bear attacks, according to reports. Some politicians cited the Icy Bay wolf attack as evidence that the state should do more to thin out wolf packs. ``This is the result of irresponsible management,'' state Sen. Pete Kelly, a Fairbanks Republican, said in a speech Thursday in the state capitol in Juneau. He also blamed out-of-state environmentalists, ``incredibly well-funded outside influences that have made wolves sacred in this state, wolves that are coming in dragging our children off into the woods to eat them alive.'' Kelly and other state lawmakers, along with rural residents and hunters are advocating a state-authorized wolf kill to boost populations of moose and caribou. The Republican-controlled legislature last week overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles of a bill expanding wolf hunting. Under the bill, anyone with a hunting or trapping license will be allowed to track wolves by airplane and kill the animals on the same day. The bill overturned most of the provisions of a 1996 ballot initiative banning same-day airborne wolf hunting that was approved by nearly 60 percent of the voters. The legislature also passed a constitutional amendment that would forbid Alaska voters from passing initiatives on wildlife issues. That amendment will be on the general election ballot in November <http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000428/ts/wolf_attack_1.html> ===================================== No rabies in wolf, test finds Results puzzle experts hunting cause of attack By ELIZABETH MANNING and CRAIG MEDRED Anchorage Daily News reporters The wolf that chased and attacked a child in a logging camp near Yakutat did not have rabies, according to tests completed Thursday. That was good news for 6-year-old John Stenglein, who was back home at the camp Thursday on the west side of Icy Bay after suffering 15 puncture wounds to his back, legs and behind the day before, according to his father, John Stenglein Sr. But the test results puzzled biologists, who say wolf attacks in North America by nonrabid wolves are extremely rare. They're not sure why the attack occurred. The 77-pound male wolf, with a radio collar fastened to its neck, had been seen hanging around the edges of the logging camp recently and off and on since 1998. But it wasn't so tame that it ate garbage or went close to humans, said Fish and Wildlife protection troopers, who interviewed people at the camp Thursday. The boys didn't provoke the animal, troopers said. "It makes it very interesting and puzzling as to why this wolf attacked," said Matt Robus, deputy director of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's Division of Wildlife Conservation. "And it seems the wolf really persisted in the attack." Stenglein said his son John and his 9-year-old friend Keith Gamble were playing Wednesday morning at being loggers, cutting down small trees at the edge of the woods, when they first saw the wolf about 10 feet away. The animal seemed to be stalking the boys, he said. "It just popped its head out from the woods and looked at them," Stenglein said. The boys ran and the wolf attacked, Stenglein said. A neighbor's dog rushed in and tried to bite the wolf, but the wolf fought off the dog and then went after the boy a second time, according to Stenglein. The dog tried to bite the wolf again, he said, but by then the boys were screaming, which sent the camp carpenter running over. The carpenter and Keith's mother, Teresa Thompson, threw rocks at the wolf until Keith's dad, Mike Thompson, came with a gun, walked into the woods and shot it, according to Stenglein. The entire incident happened about 150 feet from the family's trailer, Stenglein said. After the shooting, the boy and the wolf's body were flown to the nearest town, Yakutat, where the boy was treated. Because he thought the wolf was rabid, the trooper began burning the wolf carcass after severing the head for shipment to the state virology lab in Fairbanks, where it was tested Thursday. The boy received seven stitches and five surgical staples, troopers said. With the wolf remains still smoldering, a fisheries biologist in Yakutat heard from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Juneau that the department wanted to perform a necropsy on the wolf. The remains of the carcass were shipped to Juneau on Thursday, Robus said. Biologists hope the wolf's stomach contents and the amount of fat on its body could provide some clues about why it attacked. "This was a terrifying but extremely unusual incident," Robus said. "It's not pleasant, but you do have times when predators are really stressed for food and they're going to reach out and get whatever they can. Wolves don't have a rulebook that prevents them from preying." Dave Crowley, the Fish and Game area biologist, said mountain goats are plentiful in the region so it's unlikely the wolf lacked prey. People who saw the wolf said it appeared healthy. The wolf wore a tight radio collar, which led some biologists to wonder whether it had trouble running and hunting normal prey. Troopers said no evidence exists yet to say that the radio collar had any bearing on the wolf's behavior. The U.S. Forest Service collared the wolf in March 1996 in the eastern Copper River Delta, when it was a 10-month-old pup. They tracked it until September 1997, when it left the area, Crowley said. He thinks it split from the pack and first showed up around the logging camp in 1998. He didn't know whether the wolf had joined another pack. Wolf attacks in North America are rare, biologists said Thursday. Often the attacking wolves are found to be rabid. Only two wolf attacks in Alaska history have been fatal, Alaska State Troopers said. Both attacks were by wolves believed to be rabid and occurred in the early 1940s, according to information provided to troopers by Fish and Game. Bears attack people an average of twice a year in Alaska and dogs have killed at least 38 people here through the years, troopers said. One account of a wolf attack, reported in the Daily News on Jan. 27, 1950, told of wolves stalking a pastor and his dog team as he traveled from the Wasilla Children's Home to Chitina. The wolves tracked the Rev. Everett Bachelder for five days and then attacked, tearing one of his dogs to shreds. The encounter led to a headline proclaiming "Ravenous Wolves Attack Missionary," though Bachelder himself was never actually attacked. Five people have been attacked by wolves in Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park since 1987. The last of those attacks came in fall 1998. Algonquin rangers later wrote about their growing concerns with "friendly wolves." In Canada, at least one person has been killed by wolves in the past 50 years. A 24-year-old woman was attacked by a pack of five at the Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve in Ontario in 1996. <http://www.adn.com/stories/T00042886.html> ======================================== Wolves losing fear Growing populations of humans, wolves may hasten conflicts By CRAIG MEDRED and ELIZABETH MANNING Anchorage Daily News reporters When an international wolf magazine early this year asked Ludwig Carbyn, one of Canada's top authorities on wolves, for a prediction on the biggest wolf story of this millennium, he made what seemed at the time a startling prediction: "I think, in the new century, you will find a situation where a wolf or a pack of wolves is going to kill someone." Carbyn recalled the conversation Friday from his office in Alberta. The editors of the magazine, he added, were taken aback. But what Carbyn said publicly is something many biologists were saying privately long before this week's wolf attack on a 6-year-old boy playing by a remote logging camp northwest of Yakutat. As they have monitored the rebuilding of the continent's once decimated wolf populations and tracked public attitudes toward wolves, they've seen big changes in how the animals are perceived and treated. Once widely hated, feared and persecuted, wolves are now more often embraced as vital components of wild ecosystems, as symbols of wilderness, sometimes even as models of family order. Much of that may be true, biologists said, but these ideas play down the inherent danger of an animal that evolved over thousands of years as a killing machine. The rising concern is how people's new attitudes and behaviors will interact with the wolves' ancient instincts. This subject is rarely broached because of the political debate over wolves. Biologists are reluctant to raise the issue for fear of giving ammunition to people who oppose efforts to re-establish wolves on parts of their original Western range. Alaska, with stable and healthy wolf populations, is outside that fight. But it has seen its own political turmoil over how to manage the animals. The argument has been mostly about killing wolves to increase numbers of moose, caribou and Dall sheep. But the arguing recently in the Legislature and before the state Board of Game has gone a step further, with wolf-control advocates warning that wolves present a real danger to people. Then, on Wednesday near Icy Bay, the wolf attacked John Stenglein. The boy and a friend were near the edge of the forest about 150 feet from the family's logging camp trailer when a male wolf popped its head out of the woods. The boys ran. The wolf caught Stenglein and bit him on the back and legs before a camp worker and the friend's mother drove it away. The friend's father later shot the wolf. The wolf quickly became a hot political issue. Some state biologists this week said they were told to refer all questions about wolves to Department of Fish and Game headquarters in Juneau, where officials have focused all remarks on the extreme rarity of wolf attacks. Wolf-kill advocates, meanwhile, are claiming vindication. On the Senate floor Thursday, Sen. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks, said no one should be surprised at the Icy Bay attack. "This confirms what the people of McGrath have said all along," Kelly said Friday. "Their fears are justified." Kelly said the attack bolsters arguments for predator control. Gov. Tony Knowles' spokesman, Bob King, condemned Kelly's statements as "predictable political posturing." Alaska Board of Game member Mike Fleagle, the chief of the McGrath Native Village Council, said his community feels bad for the boy. But he said the attack is certain to become part of the wolf-control debate. "We're not trying to exploit this," Fleagle said. "But there has to be a certain amount of vindication. And it comes at an unfortunate time for Knowles and the wolf protectionists." Fleagle said he doesn't think the attack means predator control is needed in Yakutat but rather illustrates that wolves can be dangerous. "The people of old Alaska were always taught to be careful of wolves when we were growing up," he said. "It's a rarity that they attack, but they do, regardless of the prey situation. Wolves will kill for the sake of killing. They're not these super-duper fluffy little house pets." In McGrath, wolves killed three dogs this winter, Fleagle said. Parents, saying they feared for their children's safety, have called on the state to kill wolves in that area. Donna Erick, the tribal administrator in Venetie, said a wolf went into the village earlier this month and ate a musher's lead dog. "We had to warn the children because it was spring carnival time," she said. Nearly all the wolf attacks on record from the past 20 years have involved what rangers at Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada, have taken to calling "fearless wolves" - those habituated to people. Since 1987, Algonquin has been the site of five wolf attacks by four wolves. All were healthy adult animals that hung around park campgrounds for weeks or months before attacking, said Dan Strickland, chief park naturalist. Strickland said Algonquin's rangers and visitors at first thought it was great to have wolves that regularly made themselves visible. They even dismissed the first wolf attacks as oddities. That changed two years ago when a wolf grabbed a 19-month-old child playing with toys in a campground. "The kid was sitting on his behind playing with his favorite yellow truck," Strickland said. "The father saw the wolf come into the campsite, but he thought it was a dog. ... He took his eyes off it, and the next thing, he looked up and there was the wolf throwing his son to one side." The father saved the child. The wolf was shot, and park policy now is to kill any wolves that show signs of fearlessness. There hasn't been another instance like it since. There are similarities between that Algonquin attack and the one at Icy Bay. Both wolves hung around people, but neither appeared to have eaten garbage. Both were males. Both attacked unexpectedly, though in the Icy Bay case biologists believe the wolf might have pursued because the children fled. The Algonquin wolf had never shown any obvious aggression toward humans before the attack. Strickland fears that is characteristic, and it makes the situation particularly difficult for wildlife managers. There is no way to tell when a habituated wolf loses its fear of humans. Fortunately, state wildlife biologists said, that isn't much of a threat in most of Alaska. In the Bush, they noted, a "fearless wolf" almost always becomes a wolf hide. That could explain, they add, why attacks like that on John Stenglein have been virtually unheard of in Alaska in the past 50 years. <http://www.adn.com/stories/T00043082.html> Wolf facts set straight by John Carnes in Anchorage Daily News I am the biologist who put the radio-collar on the wolf that bit John Stenglein on April 26. The Daily News article "No rabies in wolf, test finds" on April 28 states that the wolf wore a tight radio-collar "which led some biologists to wonder whether it had trouble running and hunting normal prey." The suggestion that the radio-collar may have been a factor in the attack is ridiculous. All three people that examined the wolf (a state trooper and two state biologists) stated that the wolf was in "average" condition, well muscled with a nice pelt. If the wolf had "trouble hunting normal prey" how could it have maintained itself in good condition? A collar has to be tight enough that it will not slip off over the animal's head and this can appear tight to people unfamiliar with radio-collars. The three people who examined the wolf agree that although the collar was snug there were no sores or lesions on the neck, so I conclude that the collar was not tight enough to affect the animals behavior in any way. As to why the wolf attacked the boy, I think there are four critical facts: 1) this wolf had been hanging around camps in the Icy Bay area for up to two years, had likely obtained food from people and was clearly habituated to people, 2) this wolf had shown fearless behavior toward people before, 3) there was a large dog present, which can be viewed by wolves as a competitor or enemy, and 4) the wolf bared its teeth and growled at the boys before attacking. This last fact is more important than people realize. Wolves typically do not show aggressive behavior toward prey, usually only toward other wolves or dogs. I do not question the facts as reported by the trooper that investigated the incident, but I disagree with the implication in the Daily News articles of April 27, 28 and 30 that the wolf intended to predate (i.e., kill and eat) the boy. The father's statement that the wolf stalked the boys has no basis in fact since he did not observe the initial attack. Based on the facts available, my conclusion is that this was a habituated wolf that was showing dominance/territorial behavior. Whether the wolf was showing predatory or dominance behavior, the key factor is that the wolf was habituated to people. I do not want to downplay the seriousness of this incident, but the take home message is not that wolves attack people, rather that wolves are wild animals and should be treated as such. The same common sense rules applied to bears (keep a clean camp, do not feed or approach wildlife closely) should be applied to wolves. John C. Carnes University of Idaho Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources Moscow, ID 83844-1136 208-885-4343 [log in to unmask] <http://www.adn.com/letters/letters.html#L13> --- end forwarded text -- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Rex L. 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