Dead wolf Echo was hailed by school kids after Grand Canyon sighting

An endangered gray wolf celebrated by schoolchildren worldwide after making a rare appearance near the Grand Canyon last year was shot and killed months later in Utah by a man who thought it was a coyote, officials said Wednesday.

After a DNA comparison by the University of Idaho, geneticists determined that the approximately 3-year-old female wolf killed in central Utah in December matches the DNA of a wolf collared near Cody, Wyo., in January 2014, according to a news release by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The wolf was spotted around the Grand Canyon last fall.

Weeks before the wolf’s death, she was named Echo by hundreds of students who participated in a contest to name “the first northern gray wolf to return to the Grand Canyon since the last was killed in the region in the 1940s,” according to a news release by the Center for Biological Diversity, a national nonprofit conservation organization.

The center said the wolf had traveled at least 750 miles looking for a mate.

“Echo’s killing illustrates the perils that wolves face and the imperative to maintain federal protections as called for under the science-based standards of the Endangered Species Act,” said center spokesman Michael Robinson.

The gray wolf is considered endangered in southern Utah and protected under the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife release said. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Steve Segin said the investigation into the killing is ongoing.

Elizabeth Hernandez: 303-954-1223, ehernandez@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ehernandez