Mother wolf in state's first pack in decades is missing

[Robbien]

Source: Seattle Times



TWISP — The mother wolf of the state’s first confirmed pack of wolves in 70 years is missing.

The Wenatchee World reports that biologists don’t know where the alpha female wolf has gone and they fear that, at worst, someone killed her. Although there’s also the possibility that the radio collar biologists equipped her with has stopped working. Her radio collar stopped transmitting a signal on May 12.

Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Scott Fitkin says the collars are supposed to work for four years.

The wolf pack, which numbers at least seven, settled in the Okanogan National Forest area, near Twisp in north central Washington. Their presence was confirmed in 2008. Two wolves were collared. Fitkin says the collar on the alpha male of the pack is still working.


Read more: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012485838_motherwolf30.html?syndication=rss

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Oh no.

Here's hoping that it is just a faulty collar.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

1. It was Palin in the drawing room with the lead pipe.

[grasswire]

2. when I read the OP, I thought the location was misspelled

I always think of it as Okanagan, not Okanogan. So I looked it up, and read that Okonagan is the Canadian spelling, and Okanogan is the U.S. spelling. Weird.

[boppers]

4. More properly: Syilx

:evilgrin:

[Igel]

6. That's what the area's named?

Gee. I never thought the area was named for one of the groups of people there.

Wiki, the fount of all knowledge(?) makes the unreferenced claim: "The name derives from an Okanagan language word S-Ookanhkchinx meaning 'Transport toward the head or top end'." In other words, "Okanagan" (or any of its variants) is just fine. It's not named after the people that live there. Rather the other way around.

Of course, "syilx" masks the usual problem: In an ethnic group defined mostly by reference to others a lot of different endonyms arise, and the outsiders impose an exonym. At some point the people so dubbed reject the exonym, but often there's no clear endonym that should be imposed on all the different subgroups.

We can also debate the extent to which we really need to adopt the official or preferred endonym of a people. Some act like it's a big deal. It's not. I mean, really--how long would the lower-case "s" last, and are people really going to parse the yi digraph properly? We don't pronounce "Chinese" as we would in Mandarin, insist on France with the low nasal vowel, or even quibble over what to call Greece. And few want to insist that Albania be called Shqipëri (or even trying to sort out the Tosk/Gheg division). No, we save that kind of thing for specific classes of people. Perhaps to make sure they sound sufficiently "other," perhaps to show how sensitive or "correct" we are. Don't know. The asymmetry is humorous. It also leads to injustice when "correctly" applied ("correctly" here means "blindly foolish").

We'll overlook etymologically false claims about some exonyms used to guilt people into using endonyms. People want to believe the worst, and some people are too concerned with image to think critically about allegations of racism.

[boppers]

7. Well, my intent was to get gears churning about names..

Looks like it was a success. My personal preference is towards self labeling, rather than perpetuate labels foisted upon a people by others... but you do make some interesting points.

[proteus_lives]

3. I hope they find her safe and unharmed.

[Javaman]

5. Any sign of failin quitters helicopter in the area? nt