Our friend Lynn Murphy supplied this 2008 USA Today article documenting a confirmed gray wolf sighting in Massachusetts, one of several in New England over the past 20 years.........Declared extinct in Massachusetts in 1840, this prospector would have likely crossed the St. Lawrence River in Quebec............one heck of a journey through open farmland, rivers, highways and hunters rifles..............We likely have to assist these "lone wolves: with suitable mates if we want Eastern Wolves(and very likely a further hybridizing canid mix of wolf and coyote) back in our woodlands

Rare gray wolf appears in Massachusetts

When more  than  a dozen lambs  and sheep were  slaughtered on a  Shelburne farm  last  fall, wildlife officials  suspected   a wolf that had  escaped from caotuivity.  How did a wild  eastern gray wolf, an  endangered species  absent from the state for more than a century,  find its way to western  Massachusetts? Thomas J. Healy, head of the U.S. Fish  and Wildlife Service's Northeast regional office, said  Tuesday recent DNA tests at  the agency's Oregon labs confirmed it is the first gray wolf found in New England since a 1993 case in upstate Maine. The discovery of the 85-pound male wolf  may help solidify  experts' theories that the endangered species has been  migrating south from Canada and  repopulating rural parts of New England. This wolf, though, was found farther south  than any other  reported spottings, and nothing indicates it had escaped or been set free by  someone keeping it as a pet, authorities said."This posed more questions  than it answered," Healy said.  "The only thing we were able to answer was that it was an eastern gray wolf. The history  of where it came from and how it got here, we may never know." According to the Massachusetts Division of  Fisheries and Wildlife, the wild  gray wolf was considered  extinct in Massachusetts by about 1840. One  was recorded in Berkshire County  in 1918, but was  believed to have escaped from domestic captivity. A handful of confirmed spottings have been reported  over the past decade of  wolves being found in  parts of Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire, but  determining if they were  wild or had been kept as  illegal pets was difficult. New England's large stretches of interconnected  woods, mountainous regions  and rural farmland offer  good north-south corridors for wolves on the move. Shelburne, about 8 miles west of Greenfield in Franklin  County, is one such  area. It is surrounded by  miles of state forests, ski areas and open acreage. The wolves disappeared from much of the northeastern  United States  by the late 19th century, but  ideal habitat for the animals remains in remote parts of Maine, New  Hampshire and New York's  Adirondack mountains. Wolves can travel hundreds of miles as they wander  from where they were  born, seeking food, mates  and new territory. If this wolf originated in Canada, the experts say, it likely crossed the  St. Lawrence River in Quebec,  went through Maine, then navigated hundreds of  miles of roads, rivers  and communities before  reaching Shelburne. "I'm a little bit flabbergasted, but that being said,  when it comes to wolves,  never say never," said  Peggy Strusacker, a Vermont-based wolf expert  with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Wolves always make us eat our words, wild  wolves particularly." Massachusetts state biologists visited Shelburne  last October to check  the sheep farmer's reports, which came a few weeks after another nearby  farmer reported losing sheep and rams to an unknown  predator. Healy said the farmer did not kill the wolf,  but that someone else —  whom Healy would not identify  — shot it one day after the biologists visited.  Then, local wildlife officials  examined it and turned it  over to federal authorities. Gray wolves usually eat deer and moose, but  will adapt to eat other animals  if necessary. Indeed, bits of lamb, bone fragments and tufts of wool were  discovered in the Shelburne  wolf's stomach after it  was killed. Todd K. Fuller, a professor of wildlife conservation  at the University of  Massachusetts-Amherst, was among the experts who examined the carcass.He said  the wolf was large  for its species and probably  was young because it had no obvious signs of disease,  hair loss, tooth damage or other age-related problems. "I think once they get to Maine, it wouldn't be that  unusual," he said of the lengthy migration, "but  I think it's a very rare occurrence."