Checking in on my new favorite local species.
Long the object of intense interest among residents and a thorn in the side of developers, Galveston’s so-called “ghost wolves” have become something akin to the island’s unofficial mascots. As interest in preserving their habitat continues to escalate, T-shirts, hoodies, and beanies emblazoned with these enigmatic canines were all the rage on local holiday gift lists. (Proceeds benefit the Gulf Coast Canine Project).
Earlier this month, Moody Gardens’ 3D IMAX theater held a “Ghost Wolves Town Hall” meeting, the third in as many years. The theater’s large size signals the level of public interest in the animals, a cluster of coyotes scientists have found share genetic material with the highly endangered red wolf. The big takeaway this time was a $2.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to continue studying the unique animals, researchers and GCCP co-directors Bridgett vonHoldt and Kristin Brzeski announced.
Possible uses of the money include moving some ghost wolves to a facility in St. Louis for further study, the Galveston County Daily News reported. Rebutting arguments that a possible solution could be relocating the clan estimated at around 55 members strong elsewhere off the island, Galveston Island Humane Society director Josh Henderson said a radio collar on one ghost wolf allowed it to be tracked from Galveston’s West End to Matagorda Bay, traveling 731 miles in 184 days—the kind of range that makes moving the pack somewhere else implausible.
Some developers are also tentatively factoring the ghost wolves’ needs into their future projects on the island. According to the Daily News, Royal Crown Enterprise plans to incorporate a 200,000-square-foot nature preserve as part of its Sachs Avenue development, a 16-acre project on the West End that includes a hotel, apartments, restaurants, and two condominium towers with an ocean-facing courtyard.
However, the builders behind the new Margaritaville resort now underway on the island’s East End have gone quiet after initially promising to at least consider adding a 150-foot corridor along the 300,000-square-foot project’s eastern flank. Leaving that strip of land untouched would grant ghost wolves unfettered access to the beach and a nearby lagoon, the Daily News reported. Their ongoing silence stands in stark contrast to the swell of public support after a ghost wolf was struck and killed by a car in the island’s West End last June.
“These animals are part of the island’s natural heritage; if any can proudly claim to be ‘BOI’ (born on the island), it is the ghost wolf who has been here for generations,” vonHoldt and Brzeski wrote in a guest column for the Daily News last August. “Every part of the island is their home, and every part plays a critical role in their survival. Many islanders already embrace the uniqueness and beauty of ghost wolves as integral to island pride and identity.”
See here and here for some background. This was from February, well before the dire wolf news. You’ll note that the linked story there that four red wolves had also been cloned, and these Galveston ghost wolves are a variation on those red wolves that were thought to be extinct in this part of the country.
I don’t really have any point to make, I just want to say that I think these red wolves/”ghost wolves” are cool, I support what the Gulf Coast Canine Project is doing, and I hope we learn lots about these creatures and take the steps we need to help them thrive. Oh, and I hope that the carnage going on in Washington doesn’t affect that NSF grant.