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Wildlife: Scandinavian Wolf Makes Tracks
And the new worldwide wolf champion in the category of long-distance travels is…a Scandinavian female, according to a new report published in the Journal of Wildlife Management.
Researchers radio-collared the wolf as a seven-month-old pup near her den in southern Norway in June 2003 and mapped her movement in detail using a satellite Global Positioning System (GPS) until the battery in her collar died the following March—in northern Sweden.
Nearly a year after she went “off the grid,” the wolf was killed by a reindeer owner in northeastern Finland, about six miles from the Russian border. The straight-line distance she traveled was nearly 680 miles.
But her wanderings were anything but straight. Based on the GPS data, scientists from the Scandinavian Wolf Research Project reckon the total distance she traveled during her short life was as much as 9,667 miles—equivalent to walking from Los Angeles to New York four times.
Meanwhile, the Scandinavians face some stiff competition. In July, a female wolf originally from Idaho was found in Elgin, Oregon, the first in-hand confirmation of a wild wolf in the state in seven years. (She was, unfortunately, discovered dead—illegally shot.) Hundreds of wolf sightings have been reported to Oregon state officials since 1998, with only three confirmed. In August, a live wolf was also captured by a remote camera in Washington state, giving wolf-spotters in the Northwest something to howl about.
