by the Europeans prior to 1899. The decline and extermination of the wolf population was studied in east Greenland between 1899 and 1939. There the wolf population was located mainly in the central part of the range, which made them vulnerable to Danish and Norwegian hunters who exterminated that population with poison. Arctic wolves were considered lesser in terms of economic value by the hunters because of their low abundance, with the hunters trapping Arctic foxes for the fur trade. They sought to maximize profits by killing as many wolves as possible. Between 1899 and 1939, there were 252 sightings of the wolves or their tracks. Of 112 wolves that were sighted in the early winter, 31.3% were lone wolves, 23.2% were in pairs, and the rest stayed together in larger groups. Between 1920 and 1932, 35 wolves were killed in the core wolf range, forcing the population to decline rapidly to extinction. Wolves could not recover during the years between 1939 and 1978 in east Greenland due to factors such as geography and limited resources. Prey was insufficient and a dispersal corridor was hidden at 79 degrees north, thus restricting access to east Greenland. In 1979, a wolf pair had arrived into the historical wolf range and during 1980 several wolf pairs were reported throughout eastern Greenland by military patrols. The migrating wolves began to repopulate the area and have established a new population of wolves. By 2011, they had re-established a population of 23 wolves through single and pairs of wolves following military dog-sled patrols from the northeast over distances of up to to eastern Greenland. References Subspecies of Canis lupus Mammals described in 1935 Mammals of Greenland