Wolves rarely appear in a positive image, especially in cartoons, and are representatives of evil, viciousness, and cruelty. In addition, in real life, once the survival range of humans and wolves overlaps, it will become a major threat to poultry, domestic animals, and even human life, and it is precisely because of this that wolves have changed from "natural hunters" to hunting objects, and some wolves have gone extinct, such as Newfoundland wolves.
Newfoundland wolves, just by name, once lived on the island of Newfoundland on the east coast of the North American continent. In May 1497, the English explorer John Cabot, at the behest of Henry VII, sailed west along a route north of 50° north latitude, and a month and a half after departure, they arrived in Newfoundland, where in Cabot's records there were endless cod and inexhaustible hides, and the Beoutuks who lived there were quite enthusiastic, and with a knife or a mirror, they could change into their fine leather coats. Whether Cabot saw the Newfoundland wolf at that time is unknown, but more than 400 years later, in the early 20th century, the Newfoundland wolf that made it home to the ice and snow disappeared.
As a subspecies of the North American gray wolf, in the environment unique to Newfoundland, the Newfoundland wolf evolved a full body of white fur, only the hair on the head and limbs was slightly yellow, which became their natural protective color, which can be "hidden" in the snow. Newfoundland wolves are larger, can reach 1.7 to 1.8 meters in length, weigh about 70 kilograms, and like their kind, they lie diurnal and nocturnal, cooperating to hunt reindeer, beavers, hares and so on. Sharing the same habitat for a long time, the Newfoundland wolf and the Beotuk maintain a safe distance and do not invade each other, so the Newfoundland wolf is also called the "Beotuk wolf", and a balance is formed between humans, wolves and predators.
However, when more and more colonists went to Newfoundland, the Beotuks first became the target of the mutilation, since the exchange could not meet the demand, they used slaughter to turn "your" into "mine", in 1800 the Beotuks were wiped out, followed by the Newfoundland wolves, due to the increase in population needs more land, the Habitat of the Newfoundland Wolves was destroyed, they had to break through the original "safe distance", desperate to find food closer to people, the colonists' livestock were repeatedly attacked, People hunted Newfoundland wolves on the grounds of protecting reindeer and other animals, on the one hand, wolves could be rewarded, on the other hand, although wolf skins were not as popular as seals, beavers, and sea otter skins, but they could also be made into clothing and sold to civilians, so soon, Newfoundland wolves were forced to usher in the end of the population in 1911.
The encounter with the Newfoundland wolf is just a microcosm, and the fate of the wolf family is lamentable, such as the Florida black wolf, whose fur color is completely opposite to the Newfoundland wolf, which became extinct in 1917 after a long period of hunting. There is also the often mentioned wolf pack in Yellowstone National Park, which was exterminated in the 1920s to protect the farm's sheep, resulting in a series of ecological problems such as a surge in sheep populations, vegetation destruction, and forest degradation. It is not so much that people hunt wolves to protect animals, but rather that they are afraid of wolves and have a lack of understanding of the consequences of wolf extinction.
To this day, my grandmother still remembers the wolf taking away the children in the village, and she still feels afraid every time she talks about it. Fear of wolves and lack of awareness, can be said to be an important reason for the decline of wolves, but also directly led to the rapid extinction of animals like the Newfoundland wolf in a short period of time, although extinction is actually an integral part of evolution, extinct species may be nearly a hundred times that of existing species, but artificially accelerating the extinction of a species, both destroying its own ecological value and ecological role, but also depriving the time needed to evolve new species, more seriously, irreparable.