Falkland Warrah

The first recorded sighting of a Falkland Islands wolf was by Captain John Strong in 1690. Captain Strong took one on his ship. However, during the voyage back to Europe, it became frightened by the firing of the ship's cannon and jumped overboard. Louis Antoine de Bougainville, who established the first settlement in the Falkland Islands termed it a loup-renard ("wolf-fox").

When Charles Darwin visited the islands in 1833 he found the species present in both West and East Falkland and tame. However, at the time of his visit, the Falkland Islands wolf was already very rare on East Falkland, and its numbers were declining rapidly on West Falkland. By 1865, the Falkland Islands wolf was no longer found on the eastern part of East Falkland. Darwin predicted it would be extinct like the dodo within "a very few years." The Falkland Islands wolf was hunted for its valuable fur and settlers who regarded the wolf as a threat to their sheep poisoned it. However, the belief that Falkland Islands wolf was a threat to sheep was probably due to the sheep mistaking the Falkland Islands wolves for dogs (especially at night), and, in terror, the sheep ran into bogs and swamps, where they became lost. …