A mystery over whether gray wolves are roaming the greater Yellowstone ecosystem will persist as tests on a wolflike animal shot near the park have failed to determine its parentage.
While the animal, shot Sept. 30 in the Teton Wilderness just south of Yellowstone National Park, looked like a wolf and loped like a wolf, DNA tests could not say it was a wolf, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.The problem, according to Ralph Morgenweck, regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Denver, is that DNA data to differentiate wolves from dogs do not exist.
"It is not clear at this time what this animal is, largely because some of the basic research on genetic differences between dogs and wolves has never been done," he said Thursday in a news release.
Despite the animal's wolflike appearance, federal authorities wanted to conduct the DNA testing before declaring it a wolf since the predators have not roamed the 2.2-million-acre national park in northwestern Wyoming for decades.
And with the ongoing debate over a federal plan to return wolves to Yellowstone, the authorities wanted to make sure northern Montana wolves were not migrating south to the park and that wolves raised in captivity were not being set free there illegally. If Montana wolves had made a home in Yellowstone, the park's wolf reintroduction plan would be unnecessary.
What the DNA tests did conclude was that the animal was not a cross between a wolf and a coyote or between a gray wolf and red wolf, the Fish and Wildlife Service said. The tests, and studies on the animal's skull by Ron Nowak, a zoologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service's Office of Scientific Authority in Washington, D.C., also indicated that the animal was not related to wolf packs that roam Glacier National Park in Montana.
And while additional tests are being conducted on wolf and dog DNA, the results are not expected in the near future, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.
In the wake of Thursday's long-awaited announcement, state and federal officials will continue work on a draft environmental impact statement on the plan to help wolves return to Yellowstone. That document, to examine the various impacts of wolves in Yellowstone, is due in May 1993.
Packs of the predators have not been documented in the park since the federal government authorized an extermination program in the 1920s. While some say the northern Montana wolves eventually could migrate to the Yellowstone area without man's help, that presumably could take decades.
Larry Kruckenberg, a spokesman for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said the announcement Thursday won't defuse the highly charged debate over wolves in Yellowstone. Ranchers vehemently oppose the predator's return, fearing livestock losses, while environmentalists see the wolf as the "missing link" in Yellowstone's wildlife.
"I think everybody expected that regardless of what the animal was, whether a wolf, a wolf-coyote or a wolf-dog hybrid, the controversy surrounding that particular animal was going to continue," Kruckenberger said.
The animal was shot by Jerry Kysar, a Worland, Wyo., hunter who thought he was shooting at a pack of coyotes. If the animal had turned out to be a wolf, which is protected under the Endangered Species Act as an endangered species, he could have been prosecuted by the government.
While tests were inconclusive, the necropsy on the animal showed that it was in excellent physical condition, that there was no evidence that it had recently been in captivity, and that it had fed on an elk shortly before it died.