A Pacific coastal wolf at Pacific Rim national park. The B.C. government's Vancouver Island wolf extermination program allowed 'monster' hybrids to take over the region, a team of scientists said.Photograph by: Chris Darimont/Raincoast.org, Canwest News Service
VANCOUVER — The B.C. government's Vancouver Island wolf extermination program allowed "monster" hybrids to take over the region, a team of scientists said.
From the 1920s until the 1970s, provincial officials tried to rid Vancouver Island of wolves so sport hunters would find it easier to hunt black-tailed deer, the wolves' principal prey.
So when a few hardy wolves swam across from the northern B.C. mainland in the early 1980s, some were unable to find mates.
Instead, they mated with stray dogs.
The result, according to researchers from the University of Sweden, the Smithsonian Institution and the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, was something never documented before in the wild: animals that were neither wolves nor dogs. Full Story
