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Physical Description
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The northwestern wolf (Canis lupus occidentalis) is a gray wolf subspecies sometimes referred to as the 'Rocky Mountain wolf. ' The species primarily ranges across Alaska, western Canada, and the northwestern regions of the United States (including Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming). Northwestern wolves come in various colors, ranging from gray to black and white. Northwestern wolves generally weigh 70 to 150 lbs and stand 2-3 feet tall (26-32 inches). The typical lifespan of a Northwestern wolf in the wild is roughly 6-8 years.
A gray wolf's diet primarily consists of ungulates (large, hoofed mammals) such as elk, deer, bison, moose, and carrion. When large prey is scarce, they rely on smaller prey like snowshoe hares, beavers, ground squirrels, voles, and lemmings. Gray wolves will also eat various berries, fibers, and grasses to aid digestion and fulfill nutritional needs.
Diet/Eating Habits
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Conservation Efforts
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The best-known gray wolf conservation initiative was their reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park in 1995, after they had been eradicated from the park nearly 70 years earlier. More recently, on February 10, 2022, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White ruled to reinstate federal protections for gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in the lower 48. However, this ruling does not include wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountain region (Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming), where most of the slaughter occurs.
In the 17th century, Ernest Thompson Seton estimated that 2 million gray wolves once roamed North America and Mexico before westward expansion. In the 1800s, as Europeans arrived in America, native animals such as bison were eradicated, and domestic animals such as cattle were introduced. With the wolves' natural prey now absent, they turned their attention to livestock as their new food source, causing direct conflict with ranchers. Government-sponsored extermination campaigns against gray wolves in the U.S. lasted for nearly a century, peaking between the 1880s and 1930s. A variety of radical methods were used, from setting live wolves on fire to lacing bits of meat and animal carcasses with strychnine, and even capturing wild wolves and deliberately infecting them with sarcoptic mange, a painful, skin-burrowing mite, and releasing them to spread the fatal disease to their packs. By the early 1960s, gray wolves were nearly eradicated. However, the gray wolf later became one of the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act of 1974.
In the Northern Rocky Mountain region alone, between 500 and 1,000 wolves are killed each year via hunting and trapping. Lawmakers and industry lobbyists are continuously targeting the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and proposing bills to weaken it and remove several sensitive species, including gray wolves and grizzly bears. Bills such as Rep. Lauren Boebert's (R-CO) 'Trust the Science Act' (H.R. 845) would permanently delist the gray wolf and prevent judicial review.
History Of The Northwestern Wolf
Current Threats
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