MONTPELIER, Vt. – A small pack of wolves might be living in the Quebec wilderness within about 20 miles of the U.S. border on the south side of the St. Lawrence River.

If it’s proved true, it’s almost certain the wolves or their offspring will find their way to the forests of northern New England, experts also say.

“It’s pretty close” to the U.S. border, said Mario Villemure, a graduate student at the University of Sherbrooke, who has studied the animal caught by a trapper last winter. “A wolf pack can have so large a territory they can, just in their daily activities, go in[to] Maine and then come back.”

The natural return of wolves to the region would end a bitter debate about whether wolves should be reintroduced to the northeastern United States.

“We hear that natural recovery is OK,” said Peggy Struhsacker, a wolf specialist for the National Wildlife Federation office in Montpelier, which is advocating to bring back wolves. “It’s the reintroduction nobody wants.”

Struhsacker and her organization are asking hunters across northern New England this fall to watch for wolf tracks to see whether any already have arrived. And the group is distributing a brochure that points out the differences between wolves and coyotes.

DNA tests on an 85-pound carcass caught last winter by a trapper near the Quebec town of Lingwick have not been completed so it has not been proved conclusively whether the animal was a wolf or just a large coyote, said Villemure.

But Struhsacker said photographs of the carcass showed it was a wolf.

“I’ve shown the picture to many wolf biologists across the county,” Struhsacker said. “They say ‘nice wolf.'”

The trapper estimated there were at least three additional wolves living in the area, Villemure said. Struhsacker said the trapper found evidence the wolves had bred, but it’s not certain whether they had produced a litter of pups.

Struhsacker and others from her organization are planning to head to Quebec this winter to look for evidence that could prove there is a wolf pack in the area.

Wally Jakubus, a wolf specialist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said he had seen the photo of the animal trapped in Quebec.

“It could be just large coyotes. If these large canids happen to be wolves, then the chance is they have established a pack and may be breeding,” Jakubus said. “We are a long way from saying that yet.”

His office occasionally gets credible sightings of animals that could be wolves, and DNA tests confirmed that a black wolf was shot and killed near Bangor in 1993, although it remains unclear where the wolf came from.

“If you were to expect wolves, that’s where I’d expect them,” Jakubus said of the area of northern Maine and adjacent parts of Quebec. “There’s a good food source, it’s fairly remote, people wouldn’t be bugging them.”

European settlers worked for centuries to eliminate wolves from the northeastern United States. They succeeded about a century ago when hunters killed the last wolves.

In recent years, there has been a push to restore wolves across the United States. In the mid-1990s, wolves were restored to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, and they are doing well.

Some biologists say wolves, which live and hunt in packs, are needed to restore the ecological balance to the region. Coyotes have moved in to fill the niche once occupied by wolves, but they are not thought to prey on moose the way wolves do.

A 1998 study estimated that Maine and New Hampshire could support almost 500 wolves. But there is little popular support for reintroducing wolves.

Gray wolves are known to live in Quebec, on the north side of the St. Lawrence River. But the river has always been thought to be the most significant barrier that kept the animals from migrating south.

But the 1998 paper by University of Maine scientist Dan Harrison said there were two areas near Quebec City where it would be possible, although unlikely, for wolves to cross the St. Lawrence either on the ice in the winter or by swimming.

Struhsacker said wolves have been known to swim long distances and the St. Lawrence has a narrow stretch just west of Quebec City. Coupled with a mild winter last year and reduced hunting pressure on the wolves in Canada could mean that wolves are roaming farther looking for territory in which to live.

“It’s a low probability they are going to make it, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible,” said Jakubus.