Grand Canyon Gray Wolf May Have Been Shot in Utah

Grand Canyon wolf — This wolf, photographed near the Grand Canyon in October, is feared to be dead after a coyote hunter in Utah mistakenly shot a gray wolf in Utah over the weekend.

(Image credit: Courtesy of the Center for Biological Diversity)

After a 500-mile (800 kilometers) trek across the West, a lone wolf's journey may have come to an end this weekend.

A coyote hunter in Utah mistakenly shot and killed an endangered gray wolf, which wildlife groups worry was the same wolf photographed near the Grand Canyon this fall. That animal had strayed from its pack in the northern Rockies and was the first of its species to roam Arizona in 70 years.

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When the hunter realized the animal wasn't a coyote, he alerted state officials who then contacted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The federal agency confirmed the animal was a 3-year-old female gray wolf that had been outfitted with its collar near Cody, Wyoming, earlier this year. Wildlife groups are still waiting to hear whether DNA tests will confirm that the wolf was really the lone female they had been tracking since October.

Gray wolves were wiped out from Arizona in the 1940s. That's why Robinson and other conservationists were excited by the news this past October that a gray wolf was repeatedly spotted near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Federal officials failed to capture the wolf to remove its radio collar, but DNA tests of the wolf's feces confirmed that it was a female from the northern Rocky Mountains population.

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Megan has been writing for Live Science and Space.com since 2012. Her interests range from archaeology to space exploration, and she has a bachelor's degree in English and art history from New York University. Megan spent two years as a reporter on the national desk at NewsCore. She has watched dinosaur auctions, witnessed rocket launches, licked ancient pottery sherds in Cyprus and flown in zero gravity. Follow her on Twitter and Google+.