2007 0300 Wolf on LakeMIUS2, photo by Dennis Raney.

Alexis writes Paw took this one of a wolf on Lake Michigan off US2 on the way back downstate. There was another wolf on the ice, but it didn’t make it into this frame It’s part of her very cool Michimania set (slideshow).

Wikpedia says the timber wolf, gray wolf or simply wolf is the largest member of the Canidae family. From the Michigan DNR page on the Gray Wolf (canis lupus) and a recent DNR release regarding the delisting of the gray wolf, we get a picture of the state of wolves in Michigan:

It is believed that wolves were once present in all 83 counties in the state of Michigan. A combination of European werewolf mythology, fairy tales, views that wolves were incompatible with civilization, and active predator control programs throughout the 20th century virtually eliminated the gray wolf from Michigan: by 1840, they could no longer be found in the southern portion of the Lower Peninsula; by around 1910 they had completely disappeared from the Lower Peninsula; and by 1960, when the state-paid bounty on wolves was repealed, they had nearly vanished from the Upper Peninsula.

In 2008, a minimum of 520 gray wolves lived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, part of an estimated population of 4,000 gray wolves living in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

(DNR Director Rebecca Humphries) emphasized that while the gray wolf has been removed from the federal endangered species list, it remains on the state’s protection as a species. There currently is no hunting or trapping of gray wolves allowed in Michigan, and starting on April 22, the gray wolf will be listed as a nongame species in Michigan. In order for hunting to occur, the Michigan Legislature would need to pass a law to add the gray wolf to the list of game species in the state, she said.

You can get more about Canis lupus (gray wolf) from the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology’s Animal Diversity Web and check out pictures & sounds of the gray wolf from Wikimedia including this pic of a wolf print and these sounds from a wolf pack.

You might also want to check out this Absolute Michigan “Weird Wednesday” on the Giant Wolf of Flint by the author of Weird Michigan, Linda Godfrey.