Wild Monday: Some wolf leftovers

Sometimes in putting together a column, there’s juicy tidbits that are cut away. it happened last week while tracking down information for last Wednesday’s column on the possible sighting of a wolf by Jeff Berg in Winthrop Harbor.

I meant to post this before but lost the time.

While trying to assess the probability of the sighting, my friend and naturalist/author Joel Greenberg, highly recommended that I contact Adrian Wydeven. He’s the Wisconsin authority on wolves.

Glad I did. Wydeven had not heard of any recent wolf sightings near the Illinois border, but he indicated that wolves can be extremely secretive.

And told this story.

In 1999, a wolf equipped with a satellite collar crossed from Minnesota into Wisconsin. With that kind of collar, they were able to keep rather exact track of the wolf.

It went through 26 or 27 counties in less than three months, ranging to the outskirts of Green Bay to near Stevens Point to Portage to La Crosse to Eau Claire, then left Wisconsin..

.

“With all those movements, we only had three good reports of people observing it,” Wydeven said.

I like that something in the nearby outdoors–our outdoors?–remains that secretive in the 21st century.