The firetower at the summit of Magalloway Mountain in Pittsburg, N.H., offers spectacular views of one of the wildest areas in the northeastern United States. The unbroken expanse of forest, which runs for hundreds of miles into northern Maine and Quebec, is ideal wolf territory.

“No people,” said Peggy Struhsacker, a biologist with the National Wildlife Federation, as she watched two red-tailed hawks flying over the tower. “There are miles of undisturbed, unfragmented habitat connecting with more habitat.”

It has been more than 100 years since wolves roamed this territory. Struhsacker’s group and others want the haunting howling of wolves to be heard again in the Northeast.

Before that can happen, though, they must answer a basic question: Which wolf? Red or gray?

Genetic testing has led scientists to conclude that red wolves were what were here a century ago. But experts believe the red wolves would not do well because they cross breed readily with coyotes and are less likely to prey on moose.

“We’d like to try to match what was here if we can,” said Paul Nickerson, the chief of the endangered species division for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Northeast, which would oversee any reintroduction program. “But we don’t want to waste our time dealing with an entity which will disappear in a few generations.”

That sentiment has led some to promote the introduction of the gray wolf.

“It doesn’t make sense to introduce the red wolf,” said Elizabeth Soper, who works with Struhsacker on wolf issues at the National Wildlife Federation’s Vermont office.

Biologists in Maine say the body of evidence pointing to the red wolf is too small, and they agree it would not do well here. So, one question in the state is: Should the gray wolf be here if it was not 100 years ago?

Gray wolves are larger and prey upon animals like moose, whereas red wolves prey upon deer.

Debra Davidson, with the National Wildlife Federation in Maine, said the gray wolf is the one that would survive in the ecosystem today.

“Do we want an animal that is going to dilute the coyote population? Or do we want to maintain a specific species? We want to try to bring in as pure an animal as we can,” she said.

However, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife biologist Craig McLaughlin said if the red wolf was here at the time of colonization, introducing the gray wolf would in essence add an exotic species to the ecosystem, and that is not the intent of the Endangered Species Act, under which the gray wolf was listed in 1969.

“That’s not the way the Endangered Species Act is designed to protect wildlife,” McLaughlin said. “It’s about returning animals to their historic range.”

Biologists across the world know what can happen when nonnative species are introduced to an area. Many Northeast lakes are struggling with the effects of zebra mussels and Eurasian milfoil.

“To bring back canis lupus would be essentially bringing an animal that may never have been here,” said Kim Royar, a wildlife biologist with the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, using the scientific name of the gray wolf. “It essentially would be an exotic species.”

But Nickerson says you can’t compare gray wolves with zebra mussels. He points to the peregrine falcon, reintroduced to the Northeast in the mid-1980s. When the program began there were no eastern peregrines left alive so scientists used birds from all over. Nickerson called that program “a howling success.”

Some question whether any wolf belongs in the region.

This spring Gov. Angus King signed into law a bill requiring that wolf reintroduction in Maine must have the support of both houses of the Legislature as well as of the DIF&W commissioner, making NWF’s movement to return wolves to Maine more difficult.

Robert Chambers, a retired professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, said other animals have been introduced successfully and without fanfare.

Then again, they weren’t wolves.

“Wolves generate so much more emotion,” he said. “We haven’t really cared which elk we bring back or which turkey we bring back.”

The talk about reintroducing wolves is a reversal of the attitudes brought to the region by European settlers, who set out to kill every wolf they could. Wolves would prey on their livestock and their howl struck terror into settlers’ hearts.

By the mid-20th century the only surviving wolf populations in the lower 48 states were in northern Minnesota.

The only known specimen of a wolf killed in Maine before they were extirpated is in the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. That wolf was killed in 1863.

McLaughlin said there were bounties paid on wolves in 1911 and 1912, and that’s when the animal disappeared from the state. By the time the coyote started to appear around 1930, there were no recorded wolf sightings.

While there are reports of wolf sightings that DIF&W investigates, McLaughlin said only one or two a year prove credible, and none have been verified without DNA tests. The last wolf clearly identified in Maine was killed near Moosehead Lake in 1993.

But in the last generation, humans have begun working to restore animals killed out of their former ranges. Wolves were restored to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and they are doing well.

McLaughlin said introduction of the gray wolf would take widespread acceptance by the public. In Michigan, the wolf was introduced there without public support and was killed off before a second effort introducing the animal succeeded.

At the heart of this debate is the question of whether wolves are needed. Some argue that eastern coyotes, which have already cross bred with wolves making them larger than their western cousins, are filling the role once held by wolves.

“We have got to accept that evolution is a continuing thing. It’s not something that ended 200 years ago,” said John Hall, a spokesman for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Renewed attention to the question of which wolf was sparked by a research paper published last year in the Canadian Journal of Zoology.

A group of scientists led by Paul Wilson at Trent University in Ontario did DNA analysis of wolves in Algonquin Park in Ontario and compared the results with samples taken from two remaining wolf specimens from the Northeast.

The Algonquin wolves were once considered to be a subspecies of the gray wolf. But the tests found the specimens were distinct from the gray wolves found farther north in Canada than Algonquin Park and farther west on the North American continent.

But McLaughlin and Davidson both said because the study only used two wolf specimens from the Northeast, it’s difficult to know if its findings are correct.

Last winter, McLaughlin collected 108 coyote carcasses and sent them to Trent University to determine the animals’ genetic component. Coyotes will breed with wolves, so DNA tests on coyotes should tell biologists what wolves may be in the state.

But while the results of McLaughlin’s field work will show what type of wolf hybrid is here now, he said the question over what wolf was here originally may never be answered.

One thing is certain, he said, and that is there is a different ecosystem now than there was a century ago. There are more moose, as well as coyotes, which were not here at all. While the coyotes prey on deer, there isn’t anything large enough to prey on moose.

That’s exactly why the larger gray wolf would be an effective addition to the ecosystem, says Davidson.

“We need a big animal, one that will use moose as its primary prey,” she said.

McLaughlin said such an animal is not needed if the public doesn’t want it.

“I don’t want to take sides. As a state agency, we try to balance what most people want,” he said.

Nickerson emphasized scientists need to continue to debate which wolf would be best suited for the Northeast before agreeing on a species.

Struhsacker said a spirited debate about which wolf will help ensure that a wolf reintroduction program would be accepted by a wide number of people.

“We don’t want to bring wolves back and have them all shot,” she said

But the end result would be worth all the effort.

“Our Northeast ecosystem evolved having top predators in it,” she said. “If we can right the wrongs of the past, it is our responsibility as a society to do so.”

Struhsacker said one of the most spiritual experiences she has ever had was listening to reintroduced wolves howl in Yellowstone National Park.

She’d like to be able to do that closer to home.

“When they are howling, you know they are having fun doing it.”

NEWS outdoor writer Deirdre Fleming contributed to this report.