Wolves in Great Britain

An Anglo-Saxon wolf hunt as depicted in Thomas Miller's 1859 novel The British Wolf-Hunters.

Wolves were once present in Great Britain. Early writing from Roman and later Saxon chronicles indicate that wolves appear to have been extraordinarily numerous on the island.[1] Unlike other British animals, wolves were unaffected by island dwarfism,[2] with certain skeletal remains indicating that they may have grown as large as Arctic wolves.[3] The species was progressively exterminated from Britain through a combination of deforestation and active hunting through bounty systems. The last wolf is thought to have been hunted in 1680.

  1. ^ Perry, Richard (1978). Wildlife in Britain and Ireland. London: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-0-85664-306-4.
  2. ^ Harting, James Edmund (1 June 2009). British Animals Extinct Within Historic Times With Some Account of British Wild White Cattle. BiblioBazaar. ISBN 9781110417285. Retrieved 30 December 2017 – via Google Books.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference fossil was invoked but never defined (see the help page).