

This canid is suspected to be a gray wolf that reached the North Rim of the Grand Canyon from the Northern Rockies/Handout This canid is suspected to be a gray wolf that reached the North Rim of the Grand Canyon from the Northern Rockies/Handout

Nearly 20 years after gray wolves were returned to Yellowstone National Park, conservationists believe a "disperser" from the Northern Rockies has found its way to the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park and is looking to carve out a home range.

Over the last three or four weeks there have been a number of sightings of a canid roaming between the North Rim and the adjacent Kaibab National Forest, Kim Crumbo, conservation director of Grand Canyon Wildlands, said Thursday during a phone call.

'There's been a lot of speculation. It's still circumstantial evidence, but it probably is a northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf," he said. "There's been a number of reports. There's been a bunch of photos that were circulated early on. A lot of speculation. There often is when a wolf-like animal is spotted.'

Grand Canyon National Park officials did not immediately return a phone call Thursday concerning the matter. If the animal is indeed a wolf, and one from the Northern Rockies, it's quite a traveler, as it's more than 800 miles from Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon.

If wildlife biologists can confirm the animal is a gray wolf and not a hybrid or large coyote, something that requires DNA testing of scat or fur, it would mark the first time in more than six decades that a gray wolf has roamed the North Rim, according to Mr. Crumbo and representatives for WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity.

"It's truly canid," said Drew Kerr of WildEarth Guardians. "It's wearing an inoperative tracking collar that certainly appears to be similar to those worn by wolves in the northern Rockies."

Because the sightings came during hunting season, the conservation groups issued a press release to alert the public, pointing out that gray wolves are protected under the Endangered Species Act, which prohibits killing, wounding or harassing the animal.

"In the early 1900s over 30 wolves on the North Kaibab, including Grand Canyon National Park, were killed by government hunters,' Mr. Crumbo said in the release. 'The possibility that a determined wolf could make it to the Canyon region is cause for celebration, and we must insist that every effort be taken to protect this brave wanderer.'

Wolves have returned to less than 10 percent of their historic range in the lower 48 states. Scientists identified the Grand Canyon ecosystem as one of three in the Southwest, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area where Mexican gray wolves now roam and the southern Rocky Mountains, as capable of supporting a robust and ecologically viable wolf population, said Mr. Kerr.