009 - The Last Adirondack Wolf?

In episode 009, we talk about wolves and their long and troubled relationship with people. You will find out the full backstory behind the supposed last wolf in the Adirondacks. 

Transcript

The Last Adirondack Wolf?

[Preview] Here at the Adirondack Experience, we have a lot of artifacts and a lot of exhibits. Each artifact holds a unique story of its own. Join us on today’s podcast episode as we take you inside the museum. 

[Diane] One of our permanent exhibits at the museum is called Woods and Waters. In this exhibit, we have a wolf. No, not a wolf that is alive. It’s a taxidermied wolf. Have you ever heard of the word taxidermy? Taxidermy is an art form that preserves the fur and skin of an animal by stuffing and placing it on a mount--creating an often life-like version of the animal. This wolf isn’t the only piece of taxidermy we have at the museum. It shares a big exhibit case with other taxidermied animals--like a beaver, racoon, bobcat, and even a skunk! 

[Taylor] However, this wolf is probably the most unique piece of taxidermy we have. Allegedly, this wolf is the LAST known wolf to be found in the Adirondacks. 

But how could this be? How could this wolf we have at the museum possibly be the last wolf in the Adirondacks?

[Diane] On today’s podcast episode, we’re going to talk about wolves and their long and troubled relationship with people and you’ll find out the full backstory behind the supposed last wolf in the Adirondacks. 

[Intro] Ready to earn some extra credit? This is Taylor and Diane and you are listening to ADKX-tra Credit. A history podcast for students made by the Adirondack Experience, the Museum on Blue Mountain Lake,  located in the heart of the Adirondack Park of New York State.

[Content]

Society’s Views on Wolves:

[Taylor] Today it’s hard for us to understand how people could have done things that would lead to the destruction of a species. Very hard! Let's take a closer look at common beliefs of long ago.

[Diane] Before 1800 wolves could be found all over the world. Their habitat was huge and there were a great many of them. Humans and wolves have been in competition for land and resources for a very long time.  People that immigrated to this country brought their attitude and beliefs concerning wolves with them. You have heard of the Big, Bad Wolf from folk tales and fairy tales. Think of all the stories and books that have a wolf as the antagonist. Little Red Riding Hood. Peter and the Wolf. The Three Little Pigs.  Those are just a few. 

Some of those stories are very old. They were intended as lessons about caution and wisdom. Wolves are described using terms that make us fearful; mean, sneaky, ravenous, and savage. For many those tales were all they knew about wolves. 

[Taylor] Even books about natural history, that were intended as nonfiction descriptions of wild animals, had some of the same misinformation about these animals that were in fiction stories. Many of the naturalists of long ago did not have the scientific background that naturalists and biologists do today. & Here are some of the common beliefs about wolves that were believed to be true: 

1. Wolf packs are huge. They will have 40 to 50 members.
2. Wolves hunt for sport. They will kill an entire herd just because they can and only eat one animal. 
3. Wolves will turn on their own if they scent weakness.

[Diane] That’s terrifying! Imagine moving to a home located in a deep forest; far from a city and other people, when those are the things you believe about your natural neighbors. 

Yes! Wolves have habits, real ones, that made them particularly fearsome to the European settlers that were living in a forest. Those habits made the settlers feel vulnerable. For example, wolves do live in a pack and work together to take down their prey. Packs are generally groups of 4 to 10. 

[Taylor] They are territorial. They will have a territory of 50 to 1,000 square miles where they live and hunt. So, if a farmer moves into that territory, their livestock and pets will be viewed by the pack as prey. 

And since livestock are large and slow moving they become an easy target. They are much easier to catch than moose or deer. Wolves and other predators tend to target the old and weak in any herd because they are easier to catch. This would have been very frustrating for early settlers in the Adirondacks. Most were poor and their livestock was the most valuable thing they owned. To lose that animal to a hungry wolf would have been devastating.

[Diane] Wolves have a feast or famine feeding cycle. That means they will take down some big game, that’s the feast when the pack is all well fed. But, then they can go up to two weeks without food. That’s the famine. So, when they hunt again they are very hungry and intent on getting some food. That is probably why people would describe them as ravenous. You would be ravenous too if you hadn’t eaten in a long while! 

The habits of both humans and wolves put the two species at cross purposes. The European settlers wanted to push back the forest and all of the scary predators that inhabited it. The wolves wanted to hunt fat, slow prey and live in prosperity.

Bounties: 

[Taylor] To help settle society’s fear of wolves, many states and counties around the United States started passing wolf bounties. A bounty is a reward that is offered for capturing a specific animal. Bounties have been around for centuries. In North America, bounties were put into place when colonists started settlements here in the 1600s. The fears that wolves would eat their livestock and could go after them and their families, combined with the popular myths that folklore spread about the dangers of wolves,  were enough to convince people that bounties were necessary for safety and survival. 

[Diane] On April 7, 1815, the state of New York passed an official wolf bounty. The bounty read as follows:

“Be it enacted by the people of the state of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, that every person who shall kill any grown wolf within any county in this state, shall be entitled to a state bounty of twenty dollars, and for each wolf’s whelp, seven dollars and fifty cents.”

A welp is a young wolf. & Back in 1815, $20 was a good chunk of money--especially for just killing a single wolf! This goes to show that the government was serious about controlling the wolf problem and used bounties to encourage citizens to help! 

[Taylor] Here in the Adirondacks, many counties also passed bounties in addition to the New York State bounty. And wolves weren’t the only animal that the government put a bounty on. Bears, coyotes, panthers, foxes, and bobcats were all animals that had bounties on them in some Adirondack communities.

Once a person killed a wolf, they would take it to the justice of the peace, which is a government official, & provide proof that they had killed that wolf in that location, and then would receive their money from the government. 

[Diane] When looking at historical documents found in our museum library, we know that the State of New York paid out $75,241.65 in wolf bounties in 7 years--from 1815 to 1822. With an amount of money that high, and if each wolf was worth $20, then over 3,000 wolves had to have been killed!

And these bounties had an effect on the wolf populations in the Adirondacks. It wasn’t until about the 1960s when the New York State government stopped paying citizens for predator bounties, for animals such as bears, coyotes, and foxes. 

[Taylor] But what about the wolf? What long lasting effects did these bounties have on wolves? The most feared of the predator animals…

Extirpation/Reuben Cary:

[Diane] In 1893 it was reported that the last wolf in the Adirondacks had been killed. That is the mount we have on display here at the museum. 

The Last Wolf was killed by Reuben Cary to much fanfare. It was reported in numerous newspapers and magazines. ** The pelt of this wolf was mounted and put on display. The mount was even taken to the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. You may have heard of this famous international exhibition because it was the first fair ever powered by electricity. We mentioned a similar event, the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, NY,  in episode 4 of the podcast, Theodore Roosevelt’s Ride to the Presidency.

[Taylor] You may wonder, “How did they know it was the last wolf?” Reuben Cary was a lifelong resident of the Adirondacks. He was a well known guide who had  many years experience fishing, hunting, and trapping. He was an avid outdoorsman from an early age. He was born and raised in the Long Lake and Raquette Lake area. Because of the bounty on wolves their population was decreasing steadily. It is likely that a hunter like Reuben Cary, with such thorough knowledge of the forest, would know that there were very, very few wolves left in the area. So, when he trapped one it was probably just a good guess that it was the last one.

[Diane] The Adirondack mountain region was not the only place in the US that had lost their wolf population. In the 1970s there were less than 1,000 wild wolves in the lower 48 states. 

In the beginning of this episode we called our mount the supposed last wolf. That brings up another interesting question. Is it a wolf? In 1999 a piece of our mount had a DNA test performed on it. It was discovered through this that the animal was actually a wolf-coyote hybrid. That means that one of its parents or grand-parents was a wolf and the other was a coyote. 

[Taylor] Today the wolf is considered to have been extirpated from New York State. That means it is gone from the area, not extinct in the whole world. The Eastern Coyote has replaced the wolf as an apex predator of the region. The eastern Coyote is much larger than the coyote found in the western states. Many naturalists believe that they are actually a hybrid of coyote and Grey wolf.

Since our Last Wolf is part coyote it makes you wonder if this transition from having a population of wolves to having a large population of coyotes had already begun in the 1880s. Maybe he wasn’t the last wolf, but the first of the new coyote-wolf hybrid.