New Scientist, 23 February, 2008
By Sharon Oosthoek
Pilgrims from England landed on the coast of present-day Massachusetts in 1620 to carve a settlement from a vast and forbidding wilderness. Living cheek by jowl with North America’s wolves, settlers quickly came to fear and loathe these formidable predators, which competed for deer and preyed on livestock. Spurred on by tales of werewolves terrorising the towns and villages of Europe, the Pilgrims and those who came after them set about wiping wolves from the face of the continent. In 1630, their young colony became the first to offer a bounty for every wolf killed. Nearly four centuries later, conservationists are trying to rescue red and eastern wolves from oblivion.
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