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A giant anteater baby, Cyrano, riding upon the back of his mother, Maripi, is seen on May 7, 2009 at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington. UPI/Mehgan Murphy/National Zoo

Date Taken: December 30, 2009

An Eld’s deer is seen on October 20, 2009 at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington. UPI/Mehgan Murphy/National Zoo

Date Taken: December 30, 2009

A baby red panda is seen on September 3, 2009 at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington. UPI/Mehgan Murphy/National Zoo

Date Taken: December 30, 2009

Kibibi, a female western lowland gorilla, is seen on March 6, 2009 at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington. UPI/Mehgan Murphy/National Zoo

Date Taken: December 30, 2009

Baby burrowing owls are seen on August 18, 2009 at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington. UPI/Mehgan Murphy/National Zoo

Date Taken: December 30, 2009

Clouded Leopard cubs are seen on May 29, 2009 at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington. UPI/Mehgan Murphy/National Zoo

Date Taken: December 30, 2009

Baby black footed ferrets are seen on July 16, 2009 at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington. UPI/Mehgan Murphy/National Zoo

Date Taken: December 30, 2009

DULUTH, Minn., Dec. 29 (UPI) — Minnesota has offered a $1,000 reward for information on the killers of two wolves shot during the deer season in the northern part of the state, officials say.

The state has a wolf population estimated at around 3,000. Officials have been receiving more complaints from hunters who blame the wolves for a drop in the number of deer, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

The dead wolves were both killed in early November, one near Grand Raids and the other in the area of Two Harbors on Lake Superior.

Wolves are listed as an endangered species under federal law. But the protection of the U.S. government has not spared the small number of wolves killed illegally in recent years.

“It doesn’t surprise me given the almost hysteria over the number of wolves and decline in deer population,” said Dennis Simon, Department of Natural Resources wildlife management section chief, said of the killings.

Wildlife officials blame the drop in deer numbers on recent bad winters and more liberal hunting rules.

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

SACRAMENTO, Dec. 29 (UPI) — Geologists say they’ve found more than 350 ancient granite basins used by California’s Miwok tribe to produce salt for trade.

The Miwok were a hunting and gathering tribe who lived in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains for nearly 5,000 years before contact with European Americans in 1769.

They were one of the first groups America Indian tribes to begin producing salt for trade, said Jim Moore, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The basins Moore’s team found were carved in granite in an area the size of a football field, each basin several feet in diameter. The basins were carved near a salt spring and the water carried to the basins to dry and leave a salt residue.

“To deepen the basins just 1 centimeter, they had to build and maintain a hot fire on the rock, let it burn out, and then pound the bedrock with stone tools,” said geologist Mike Diggles. That process had to be repeated nearly 100 times to carve a basin 3-feet deep, Diggles said, estimating it would have taken several workers nearly a year to create one basin.

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

GRISE FIORD, Nunavut, Dec. 29 (UPI) — A male wolf nicknamed Brutus is wearing a satellite tracking collar to learn how wolves fare during harsh winters near the North Pole.

David Mech, a wolf researcher from the U.S. Geological Survey has studied the wolves of Canada’s Ellesmere Island for 24 years. This is the first year he’s attached a collar to any of them. The project was announced earlier this month.

“We made a huge technological jump from notebook and pens to satellite collars because we wanted to find out what these arctic wolves do in winter in areas when it is dark 24 hours a day and temperatures can fall to -70 degrees Fahrenheit,” Mech said in a release Monday.

Ninety-pound Brutus leads a pack of at least 12 adults and six to 12 pups. Recent satellite readings tracked him about 25 miles north of where his pups had been living to a winter feeding ground rich with musk oxen and arctic hares.

Researchers won’t know till spring where the pack, pups and adults, moved with Brutus, whose movements can be followed at http://internationalwolfcenter.blogspot.com/.

Copyright 2009 by United Press International