Kenai Peninsula wolf

The Kenai Peninsula wolf (Canis lupus alces), also known as the Kenai Peninsula grey wolf,[4] is an extinct subspecies of the gray wolf that lived on the Kenai Peninsula in southern Alaska.[5]

Kenai Peninsula wolf
Extinct  (1925[1])
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Canidae
Genus: Canis
Species:
C. lupus
Subspecies:
†C. l. alces
Trinomial name
Canis lupus alces
Goldman, 1941[2][3]
Historical and present range of gray wolf subspecies in North America

History

The species was classified in 1941 as one of the four subspecies in Alaska by Edward Alphonso Goldman.[2] This wolf is recognized as a subspecies of Canis lupus in the taxonomic authority Mammal Species of the World (2005).[6]

Wolves were common on the Peninsula before 1900, however, gold was discovered there in 1895. Miners, fearing rabies, commenced poisoning, hunting and trapping the wolves and by 1915 they had been extirpated.[7][8][9] The Kenai Peninsula wolf was officially declared extinct in 1925.[1]

Re-population of wolves from other areas onto the peninsula did not occur until the 1960s. It has been shown through DNA studies that, at minimum, the current population of wolves on the Kenai Peninsula mated with other Alaskan subspecies, as the structure of the current wolf population's DNA is similar to other mainland Alaskan subspecies.[10][11]

Description

The Kenai Peninsula wolf was dependent on the very large moose of the region and Goldman proposed that its large size was an adaption to this.[12][13]

A skull is held by the Smithsonian museum, specimen number USNM 147471.[14]

References
  1. Charles Bergman (2003). Wild Echoes: Encounters With the Most Endangered Animals in North America. University of Illinois Press. pp. 256–. ISBN 978-0-252-07125-6.
  2. Goldman, E. A. 1941 Sep 30. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. 54: 109.
  3. "Canis lupus alces Goldman, 1941". Integrated Taxonomic Information System.
  4. Murray Wrobel (2007). Elsevier's Dictionary of Mammals: In Latin, English, German, French and Italian. Elsevier. pp. 68–. ISBN 978-0-444-51877-4.
  5. Weckworth, Byron V.; Talbot, Sandra; Sage, George K.; Person, David K.; Cook, Joseph (2005). "A Signal for Independent Coastal and Continental histories among North American wolves" (PDF). Molecular Ecology. 14 (4): 917–31. doi:10.1111/j.1365-294X.2005.02461.x. PMID 15773925.
  6. Wozencraft, W.C. (2005). "Order Carnivora". In Wilson, D.E.; Reeder, D.M (eds.). Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 575–577. ISBN 978-0-8018-8221-0. OCLC 62265494. url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JgAMbNSt8ikC&pg=PA576
  7. Peterson, R.O. and J.D. Woolington. 1982. The apparent extirpation and reappearance of wolves on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. Pages 334-344 in Harrington, F.H. and P.C. Paquet (eds.). Wolves of the world. Noyes Publications, Park Ridge, New Jersey. 474 pp
  8. Palmer, L. J. 1938. Kenai Peninsula moose. Research Project Report, Bureau of Biological Survey-Sept.-Oct. 1938. Unpubl. report, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge files, 24 pp,typewritten
  9. Effects of Increased Human Populations on. Wildlife Resources of the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. Edward E. Bangs. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 1982
  10. Rolf O. Peterson, James D. Woolington and Theodore N. Bailey (1984). "Wolves of the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska". Wildlife Monographs. 88: 3–52. JSTOR 3830728.
  11. "Kenai Peninsula Wolf". Wolf Pack. Retrieved 29 January 2014.
  12. Goldman EA. 1944. Classification of wolves: part II. Pages 389– 636 in Young SP, Goldman EA, editors. The wolves of North America. Washington, D.C.: The American Wildlife Institute.
  13. L. David Mech, The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species, The Natural History Press, 1970, Appendix A page 2
  14. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. "Canis lupus alces Goldman, 1941".
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