Earthroots is eagerly awaiting the results from the federal Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada’s (COSEWIC) re-assessment of the eastern wolf’s at-risk status.
COSEWIC is currently meeting in Quebec City for the first of its 2015 meetings. As of 2001, eastern wolves (Canis lycaon) were listed as a grey wolf subspecies of special concern. Since this assessment, researchers discovered that eastern wolves are a unique wolf species occurring only in Canada, and are closely related to the endangered red wolf in the United States. The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources estimated that the total population does not exceed 500 individuals. However, a management plan (legally required under the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) within three years of a species being designated ‘special concern’) was never released. In 2014, Environment Canada published a 3-year plan that outlines the timelines for release of all overdue recovery documents, including recovery documents for the eastern wolf in 2016-1017.
Earthroots originally applied to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources to provincially re-assess the eastern wolf in 2010. The government denied the application, citing that COSEWIC was already reviewing the population. The federal assessment is only now being released, five years later. The provincial assessment will likely match the federal designation, and is expected to be released by the Committee on the Status of Species at Risk in Ontario in Spring, 2015.
In Ontario, eastern wolves are only fully protected from hunting and trapping in and around Algonquin Provincial Park. However, the latest research contributed by OMNR biologists reveals that eastern wolves are prone to being trapped, hunted and killed by vehicle collisions outside of their protection zone. Earthroots urges the provincial government to immediately expand full protection from harvest to both eastern wolves and the indistinguishable eastern coyote in all suspected eastern wolf range, including the Frontenac Axis that joins the Algonquin and Adirondacks protected complexes.