Habitat Loss Wolves suffer greatly from habitat loss. As they are pushed out of their ranges by humans, they can be pushed into the ranges of other packs. This will cause fights that can result in serious injury because the wolves are desperate. If the original wolves are pushed out of this range too, they will be entering the ranges of yet more packs, where their chances of winning could be less. But if the property owner loses his range, he will be in the same position as the challengers. Sometimes these are fights to the death, in which all members of the pack, including females and pups take a part. These fights diminish the wolves still more. Often a wolf will be injured so severely in one such battle that he or she will be unable to hunt, and will slowly starve to death. Habitat loss causes starvation in other ways too. As the habitats disappear, so do the prey animals. Without these the wolves either starve, or turn to human-owned livestock, becoming a threat to man, in which case they are hunted and killed. For the wolves, it is a no win situation. They can either starve, or be slaughtered by humans. Dangers from humans Dangers from humans pose a threat to the wolf too. Trapping, poison, shooting, all these destroy the species still more. Somtimes trapping leaves a wolf free, but at the cost of a foot. Three-legged wolves are not good hunters. Guns can miss a fatal spot, but still cripple the wolf terribly. Poison is still worse. With strychnine, they suffer an agony of convulsions that finally end in stiffening death. With arsenic, horrible cramps in their stomachs roll them on the ground until they die in agonizing pain. Other poisons are still worse. Illegal hunting for airplanes give the graceful predator no chance at all. All these sickening deaths produce money. Money from wolf fur to edge parka hoods. Money from bounties on livestock-killing wolves. Money from the death of hundreds of timber wolves, gray wolves, arctic wolves, and red wolves. What happens to the red wolf is even worse. Very few pure red wolves remain. Most of these lovely little wolves have cross-bred with coyotes. Coy-wolves aren't protected, so they are hunted, trapped and killed in large numbers. Red wolves are killed along with them, mistaken for the coy-wolves they resemble. This will continue until all species of wolves are extinct, and with them will go the Indian tiger, the rhino, the back-footed ferret, and also many others.