The Impact Of The ESA On The Gray Wolf Population

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eport that wolves have an affinity for playtime, and that pups often play and roughhouse with each other for hours at a time. Although wolves are very social animals within their own species, they are naturally fearful of humans, and it is rare to spot a gray wolf in the wilderness.
Gray wolves are not only gray in color, but often also have white and black fur. They have erect ears, long tails and have large paws. According to the National Wildlife Federation, Gray wolves are commonly 30 inches tall and weigh 57–130 pounds, and males are usually larger than females (NWF 2005).
When colonists first arrived in Massachusetts, gray wolves roamed across all of the New England, and into the yet to be discovered Midwest and western plains. It is estimated that at the start of the seventeenth century, there were as many as two million gray wolves across the United States (DiSilvestro 1989, 93). As colonies grew and expanded into new territories, colonists soon found wolves to be a problem because of their destruction of livestock. Although many reports of killed livestock were due to irresponsible behavior by the farmer, such as leaving cattle unfenced in an area known to be inhabited by wolves, it was always the gray wolf which bore the brunt of the blame.
By the middle of the seventeenth century, colonists believed that something had to be done to control (and reduce) the gray wolf population, so in 1630 the Massachusetts Bay Colony established the first bounty system for gray wolves, which offered one penny for each slain wolf (Penna 1999, 91). This was of course a great incentive to hunt and kill wolves and with the advent of more advanced weaponry as well as poisons, the wolf population in New England plummeted.
At roughly the same time as the Massachusetts Bay Colony was passing bounty laws for wolf pelts, South Carolina passed laws which mandated that all “Indian Braves are required to yearly bring in one wolf, panther, ...