ALBANY — A wolf shot by a hunter a decade ago in the Adirondacks near Great Sacandaga Lake was the first proven wild wolf in New York in more than a century, according to a new study Monday from the New York State Museum.
Killed in 2001 in the town of Day — about 10 miles west of the village of Corinth, Saratoga County — the 99-pound male gray wolf could portend the predator’s potential return from Canada and the Great Lakes, where its populations are growing.
“We have no evidence that there is a breeding population of wolves in the state, but it is quite possible for more wolves to arrive in the Northeast,” said Roland Kays, a curator at the museum. “There is substantial suitable habitat in northern New York and New England that could support a viable population of wolves.”
Kays, along with fellow curator Robert Feranec, developed a new kind of carbon isotope test on hair and bone that proved the Sacandaga Lake wolf lived on a diet in the wild, and had never been a pet or zoo specimen fed by humans.
Read the entire article on timesunion.com: A century later, the wild wolf returns
