Across region, call of the wolves

Reported sightings could signal a greater presence

The hair stood up on the neck of outdoorsman David Shamberger.

In his backyard in the White Mountains in the middle of an autumn day, a large animal stood staring at him. It wasn't a dog. And it was too big to be a coyote.

"It looked like a wolf," said Shamberger in a telephone interview Saturday from his home in Chocorua, N.H. He snapped a picture that November afternoon of the animal, about 70 pounds by his estimate, before it ran off. "I've been in the woods since I've been 19 and I'm 63 now. I've never seen an animal like that before," he said.

Earlier this month, US Fish and Wildlife officials confirmed the existence of an Eastern gray wolf in Shelburne, Mass. It was the first confirmation of an Eastern gray in more than 160 years - and the first in New England since 1993, they said. The animal was shot after it killed more than a dozen sheep on a Shelburne farm, and US officials tested its DNA to confirm its identification.

But some members of the public - including hunters and naturalists - suspect wolves are present in the region in far greater numbers than federal authorities have documented. In recent weeks, members of the public have called New England wildlife officials and about a dozen have contacted the Globe to give accounts of run-ins over the past 15 years with animals they believe are wolves.

Wildlife specialists say they could be right. But without DNA from the federally endangered animals - collected from a dead wolf or from a live one's scat - they say they have no proof. Coyotes and even large dogs can sometimes be mistaken for wolves. Officials speculated that the 85-pound male wolf killed in Shelburne traveled here alone from Canada, but they acknowledge they had no concrete information about his origin or destination.

"It's always possible [many more are here], but it's unlikely," said Todd Fuller, a wildlife biologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who helped identify the Shelburne animal. He said he doesn't doubt people are seeing large wolf-like animals, but that they could be coyotes, which vary in size more than people realize. He said it's often difficult for even experienced biologists to distinguish a wolf from a coyote in a photo.

Beloved by many in the Northeast as a romantic reminder of the region's once-wild nature, wolves were wiped out by the mid-1800s by humans who saw them as a livestock threat. The nearest established packs today are in central Ontario and Quebec above the St. Lawrence River, officials say. While citizens have reported sighting wolves in New England in the past two decades, officials say most of the animals disappear before they can be positively identified, or they turn out to be dogs or coyotes.

Yet, some advocates of the species say the government isn't doing enough to document wolves' presence. They dispute federal accounts that the last wolf killed in New England prior to the Shelburne animal was in 1993. The Maine Wolf Coalition, an advocacy group dedicated to the recovery of wolves, wants the US Fish and Wildlife Service to search for evidence of the animals and increase protection of them.

"We are seeing too many wolves . . . for them to be isolated individuals that just happened to survive the trip down from Canada. I believe they are established here and that they are reproducing," John Glowa of the Maine Wolf Coalition wrote in an e-mail recently.

Sheila Quinlan of Newton says she believes she saw a quartet of wolves about four years ago as she was driving on Route 27 at the Wayland-Sudbury line. She stopped, along with other cars, and a group of drivers and passengers watched as the animals crossed the road with steady eyes and disappeared into the brush.

"They didn't have the demeanor of dogs - and they didn't look alike," Quinlan said in a telephone interview Saturday. She knows coyotes, she said, and these animals were larger and more confident. "I've never forgotten it."

Carol Gorski of Monson, Mass., said that she and her husband would find moose tracks years ago and see wild turkeys in the Quabbin Reservoir long before wildlife authorities said the species were here in any numbers.

During a walk in the woods in the early 1990s, she said, she and her husband were stalked by a wolf-like animal that followed them for nearly a mile. Gorski's husband told her to walk briskly and not run. The animal stopped when it hit a swamp, and the couple walked out safely.

Shamberger has no doubt the animal he saw in his yard that November day was a wolf.

But Sal Amato, deputy special-agent-in charge of the US Fish and Wildlife's Northeast office, said that after examining the photo he found it impossible to tell if the animal was a wolf, even though the animal had wolf-like features in the face and snout. It is difficult to discern Eastern gray wolves from coyotes, he said.

But, Shamberger said, "I know what I saw. I took a picture to show people and say 'this is a wolf' and wait for them to deny it. And no one has."

Beth Daley can be reached by email at bdaley@globe.com