Entries in news (2)
Update on the Yukon Quest
This 100o mile dog sled race from Fairbanks to Whitehorse will probably end some time after midnight tonight. The two leaders, Lance Mackey and Ken Anderson, will leave Braeburn for Whitehorse this afternoon.
rebecca
Lance Mackey and Ken Anderson both crossed the finish line overnight, 15 minutes apart. Mackey was first, winning $35,000, and Anderson came in second to win $25,000. From the latest news release on the Yukon Quest website: As the bobbing light of a headlamp came around the corner on First Avenue in Whitehorse approaching the Yukon Quest Finish Chute, the enthusiastic crowd of almost five hundred well wishers held their breath – was it Lance? Was it Ken?
Earlier this afternoon, Lance Mackey had left the last Checkpoint in Braeburn 19 minutes before rival Ken Anderson and reports along the trail to Whitehorse had placed the two mushers eight minutes apart at one stage.
rebecca
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Do Not Dance With Them!
North America has it’s first documented case of a healthy wolf killing a human in the wild.
A coroner’s jury in Saskatchewan has determined that Ontario university student Kenton Carnegie was killed in a wolf attack.
Carnegie was 22 when he died in November 2005 near Points North Landing, Sask. On a work term for a company at the mining exploration camp, located about 750 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon, Carnegie went for a walk and didn’t come back.
Searchers later found his body surrounded by wolves.
Not that the findings are undisputed. One expert witness, Paul Paquet, testified that it is more likely that it was a black bear that killed Carnegie. However, he did not rule out the possiblity that it was a wolf attack.
Mark McNay, recently retired as head of the research department at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (who happens to be my cousin, and with whom I visited in September when he flew through Whitehorse on his way south), testified that he was convinced that it was indeed a wolf attack. He argued that bears would have been in hibernation at the time Carnegie was killed, and that no bears had been seen in the area for several weeks before the attack, nor were any seen for months after.
In photographs of the site, what Paquet identified as bear tracks were actually wolf tracks, said McNay. The tracks were on the lake’s surface, which had not completely frozen over. When the wolf stepped into the ground and broke through to water, the water came up and made the track larger, leading people to believe it was bear tracks.
McNay said it was also unlikely that two wolves would have eaten the same hair from the dump on the same day Carnegie was killed.
As for the argument that wolves don’t attack humans, McNay said that is not the case anymore because wolves are becoming habitualized and losing their fear of people.
These incidents of wolves and people, predictably, are going to increase,” he said.
Sources: OHS Canada, CBC News
You’ll find more info on agressive and nonagressive wolf-human encounters in this case history (pdf) done for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game by Mark McNay.