A group of Spanish researchers has announced the discovery of Wolf (Canis lupus) in the Middle Atlas Mountains, Morocco. The team leader Vicente Urios from the University of Alicante says it is "a fabulous find". The wolf was photographed by camera photo trapping a year and a half ago. The full report of this major discovery will be published in the September issue of the Quercus magazine: “Detectan al lobo en Marruecos gracias al uso del foto-trampeo” by Vicente Urios, Carlos Ramírez, Miguel Gallardo and Hamid Rguibi Idrissi.
The researchers detailed that the Berbers inhabiting the area where they worked talk about two types of “jackals”, one large and one small. The largest would actually be, according to the work of Vicente Urios’s team, a wolf. "They even have a word for wolf, but always thought it were jackals" says Urios.
The photographs show an animal with "obvious wolf characteristics, such as a large body, slender, with a powerful neck, tall individuals with darker mantle and short tail." The photo is taken in the Atlas at about 1,800 meters.
This discovery extends the known distribution area of the African Wolf (Canis lupus lupaster) westwards by more than 3000 Km to North-west Africa (see Rueness et al. (2011).
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