Why Are Wolves Going Extinct & Endangered?

Wolves are natural predators, feeding off of the animals they hunt in the wild. As rural areas become increasingly urbanized, the hunting opportunities for wolves decrease and starvation leads to a reduction in overall population numbers. This reduction has reached endangered and extinction levels in some countries. While the populations of most wolf breeds continues to decrease, the gray wolf has faced some of the most damage to their numbers.

  1. Protecting Livestock

    • The natural instinct of wolves to hunt does not discriminate between wild animals and livestock. As a result, wolves tend to encroach into rural areas and feed from farmer's livestock. In response, rural landowners kill wolves when they find them in their land. When wolves have too few wild animals to eat, they move, in larger numbers, into inhabited rural areas. The long-term effects of this process are the slow reduction in the overall populations of wolves in and around rural areas.

    Urban Growth

    • Urban growth reduces the amount of available natural resources of wolves by converting land into new urban areas, extracting resources from rural areas and limiting the food sources that wolves feed on. Wolves are a natural creature, generally unable to survive in urban environments alongside people. Zoos and special wildlife areas have been successful at protecting wolf populations by providing an alternate environment, allowing some wolves to survive in growing urban areas, but these places are not able to support enough wolves to counteract the damage of urban growth on wolf populations.

    Competitive Hunting

    • Hunters rarely attack wolves, except to defend themselves in case of an attack, but wolves hunt and feed off of many of the same animals that hunters hunt. Furthermore, hunters do not go after weak and sick deer and other animals that are the wolves primary food source. Hunters seek out the large, healthy bucks, leaving deer populations weak and unable to come back in numbers. Competitive hunting between people and wolves leads to a depletion of food sources for hungry wolves. Excessive hunting seasons can leave entire regions with so few food sources that wolves must relocate to find new food, many starving as a result. This problem is even more severe in countries without hunting laws or regulations that protect wolf species.

    Government Action

    • Around the world, some governments have no laws protecting wolf populations. In other countries, such as Russia and many European countries, governments pay wolf bounties, rewarding private citizens for hunting and killing wolves. These governmental initiatives have reduced the wolf populations in their countries, leading to a worldwide reduction in the overall population numbers of wolves in the wild. In some European areas, the populations of wolves have become completely extinct.