When Luigi Boitani, Italy’s leading wolf expert, captured a hybrid in 1975, he says he “was met with everything from gentle opposition to [people who] said, ‘this is bullshit’.”
Time has proven Boitani right. Today, a growing number of studies point to the presence of hybrids in nearly every European country with wolves, and in some areas their numbers are growing steadily. In Boitani’s native Tuscany, and other regions, they have become endemic, accounting for as much as 70% of the wolf population. The rise has been driven by the increasing destruction of wolf habitats and the expansion of human settlements, which bring people, their pets, and packs of stray dogs into more frequent contact with wolf packs.
In some regions “they are basically all hybrids,” Boitani says. “In this case, there is nothing you can do. You cannot send the army and kill everything.”
Hybrids trouble conservationists partly for their unpredictability. They may increase conflict with humans, crowd pure-blood wolves out of their habitat, or reduce the viability of future offspring, hampering efforts to revive Europe’s wolf population.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The wolf, spotted deep in the woods of Italy’s Gran Bosco di Salbertrand park, was not grey like his companion, but an unusual blond.
Now hybrid numbers are rapidly growing – and if their spread continues, scientists fear they may put the European wolf – as a wild, genetically distinct animal – at risk of extinction.
“From one event, we now have several packs with hybrids,” says Luca Anselmo, a wolf tracker and researcher with Life WolfAlps EU, a multi-year, multimillion dollar initiative to support the return of wolves to Europe and reduce their conflicts with humans.
While present-day wolves and dogs are distinct sub-species, they belong to the same canine family, and have retained genetic overlap since humans began domesticating ancient wolf ancestors thousands of years ago.
They may increase conflict with humans, crowd pure-blood wolves out of their habitat, or reduce the viability of future offspring, hampering efforts to revive Europe’s wolf population.
For 25 days, Anselmo and his team pursued one hybrid, who they called Godot, along the mountain slopes, observing stringent Italian welfare laws that require them to stay within 30 minutes’ distance from the trap.
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