Historic Range

At one time, wolves were distributed over an immense part of the northern hemisphere. Certainly, wolves lived across most of the United States within the last two hundred years. (The only exception was in the Southeast, where the red wolf filled the gray wolf's niche in the environment.) Even today, there are still a few wolves left in the extreme Southwest and Mexico. (The Mexican wolf is a subspecies of the gray wolf, and is considered extremely endangered.) Today the gray wolf is found in a few northern states in very low numbers. Only Minnesota is home to enough gray wolves for them to be considered in the threatened category. ("Threatened" is one step safer than "endangered.")

Across our northern border into Canada, the wolves are in somewhat better shape. There, millions of acres of woodland and wilderness have offered a refuge for wolves. Wolves that are reintroduced to the United States are usually Canadian by birth. Some emigrate naturally, choosing to move south to find new home ranges.

There is no record of a healthy wolf attacking a human in the wild. That's a surprising fact, considering the "Big Bad Wolf" fairy tales we learn as children. There is some belief that European and Asian wolves might at one time have been more fierce than their American cousins. It's hard to prove. Wolves in Europe and Asia are now so scarce and so timid that any fierceness, if it was ever there, seems to have vanished. There, as in North America, a wolf would rather run from a human than confront one.

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