Gray Wolf Lacks Diversity

This gray wolf and its offspring may not have as diverse a future as scientists had hoped.

Plans to reintroduce American gray wolves to the Western United States will not restore the population to the near same extent of genetic diversity it originally boasted, according to a new study.

The gray wolf was eradicated from the West and from Mexico in the mid-20^th Century by an aggressive government program. There had been about 400,000 of them before they became extinct. Reintroduction of the wolves is an attempt to reverse all that.

But the new research indicates that the genetic diversity of U.S. wolf population was historically much greater than that of contemporaneous Canadian wolves that are being used for the reintroduction.

"Our results imply that current restoration goals of a few hundred wolves in the American West are grossly inadequate and reflect political and economic concerns rather than past biological reality," said UCLA researcher Robert Wayne.

-- LiveScience Staff

Image Credit: USFWS, Gary Kramer