The current return of wolves to
human-dominated landscapes poses a major challenge for the protection of
this species, says conservation biologist and private lecturer (PD) Dr.
Marco Heurich from the University of Freiburg. He emphasizes that
conflicts arise around the conservation of wolves in these landscapes
due to farm animal slaughter, competition with hunters and human
protection. The question of how humans can coexist with predators
triggers a strong emotional debate.
Based on these observations, a team of scientists led by Dr. Dries
Kuijper from the Mammal Research Institute of the Polish Academy of
Sciences in Białowieża, Poland, analyzed the existing knowledge on how
to deal with large carnivores living in the wild in Europe and other
parts of the world. The aim was to enable an objective, scientifically
sound discussion of various scenarios of wolf management. The
researchers have presented their results in the current issue of the
scientific journal Biological Conservation.
According to the scientists, the control of wolf populations, which
is often advocated in other countries outside the European Union, is in
clear contradiction to current European legislation. In addition,
several studies show that control of populations by hunting does not
resolve conflicts and can even lead to problems between humans and
animals. Fencing in the areas where wolves live is a common tool in
other parts of the world for the containment of predators. But even
that, according to the researchers, is not practicable in the highly
fragmented European landscapes to the extent necessary to maintain a
healthy wolf population. In addition, large-scale fencing has a negative
impact on other wildlife, leading to fragmentation of habitats.
However, the scientists claim smaller electric fences are effective in
excluding wolves from high-conflict areas with a high density of
livestock.
From a legal standpoint, the least problematic situation is when no
preventive measures are taken against the wolves, but farm animals are
protected and compensation is paid for any damage caused. The team
around Heurich assumes, however, that the conflicts between humans and
wolves will become more frequent as wolf populations grow. In addition
to protecting farm animals with electric fences or guard dogs, for
example, the researchers recommend strengthening the natural population
of ungulates such as deer and red deer in order to prevent conflicts.
In addition, the scientists suggest influencing wolf behavior and
working towards proper human behavior. The use of so-called deterrence
measures, i.e. negative conditioning, is intended to ensure that animals
avoid humans. At the same time, however, people must learn to have
respect for animals. In this way a meeting of wolves with farm animals
and humans can be avoided. However, the Freiburg scientists explain that
so far the only experience gathered for this method stems from the
Yellowstone National Park in the US, so that its suitability for Central
Europe must first be investigated.
Finally, Heurich and his colleagues stress that an important aspect
of wolf management is to provide the public with a balanced view of the
wolves: "People must be convinced of the ecological value that the
return of the wolves has. It is necessary to show that these animals
pose a very low risk to human safety. However, we must not forget that
wolves are large predators who demand respect."
IMAGE: Two of the newly introduced gray wolves pick their way through deep snow on Isle Royale.
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Credit: Rolf Peterson/Michigan Tech
Fifteen wolves. 2,060 moose. Extensive ice and deep, powdery snow.
Michigan Tech researchers have released the annual Winter Study report.
In its 61st year, the study is the longest running examination of a
predator-prey relationship in the world.
The report chronicles the four-week research expedition to the
island, where researchers track -- by ski and plane -- wolves and moose,
collar moose, and catalogue the cascading effects of an ecosystem that
has lacked a healthy population of apex predators for a number of a
years. New Tracks in the Snow
Prior to this fall and winter's wolf reintroductions, the wolf
population on the remote island had remained at just two -- a strongly
bonded, but also highly inbred male-female pair -- for three years. The
moose population, lacking predation, expanded by an average of 19% each
year during the past eight years since 2011, when the wolf population
first dwindled to fewer than 10 individuals. Consequently, primary plant
species in moose diets -- balsam fir and watershield -- dropped
precipitously.
The National Park Service (NPS), after an extensive review process,
decided to introduce new wolves to the island. In September and October
2018, NPS introduced four Minnesota-born wolves (one male and three
females) to the island. In late October, the male wolf died and on
January 31, 2019, one of the female wolves left the island by crossing
the ice bridge that had formed on Lake Superior, which reached nearly
95% ice cover.
In late February, NPS in collaboration with the Ontario Ministry of
Natural Resources (OMNRF), introduced four Canadian-born wolves,
including a male and female from a pack near Wawa, Ontario, and two
males from Michipicoten Island, Ontario. In late March, NPS and OMNRF
introduced seven more wolves to the island, including three males and
three females from Michipicoten and one male from near Wawa.
For researchers, perhaps equal parts vexing and exciting are the
unanswered questions about the future of the wolves on the island.
"Some of the most important questions at this point are: Will there
be pups this year? How quickly will the wolves form a pack, and how many
packs?" said John Vucetich, professor of ecology at Michigan Tech and
report co-author. "As is so often the case with nature, the answer is,
nobody knows -- but three packs is the likely answer."
The Michigan Tech School of Forest Resources and Environmental
Science researchers speculated that wolf pups could be possible this
year, but the new wolves were introduced to the island near the end of
the traditional breeding season, so only time will tell.
Vucetich added that there are similar questions pertaining to the
moose. "What's going to happen to the moose population? Will it keep
increasing from 2,060, or level off, or decline quickly or slowly? The
answer is the same, nobody knows."
To seek the answers, researchers fitted the first GPS-enabled radio
collars since 1985 to the newly introduced wolves and 20 moose. The
collaring efforts are part of a collaboration with University of
Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine, National Park Service and
Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. New Collars, More Data
Collaring the moose will also help researchers understand the
effects of predation, as well as other factors that influence the moose
population, including forage abundance, parasites and climate.
"As soon as you start collaring individuals you learn about them in
great detail; they all have interesting stories," said Rolf Peterson.
The researchers are also excited about their collaboration with
Jennifer Forbey, an associate professor of biology at Boise State
University, who studies the chemical ecology of herbivory.
Scientists are coming to understand that the reason many herbivores
eat what they eat is due to subtle chemical differences in the plants.
Isle Royale offers a unique environment in which to study herbivory.
"Most people study a herbivore's decision of what to eat when there
are no predators involved," Vucetich said. "They've got all day to
figure out which plant they want. But when exposed to a predator, they
still have a choice of which plant to eat, but the calculus of the
decision is more complex."
And what individual moose elect to eat may have a profound impact on
their population as a whole. Lacking predators, the growing moose
population has ravaged much of the available forage on the island, and
that has consequences.
"We expect there might be a slowing down of moose population growth
next year, at least at the west end of the island," said Sarah Hoy,
assistant research professor. "The moose have severely damaged much of
the vegetation they rely on during winter on the western end of the
island. And it was such a deep-snow winter, it'll have been more
difficult for them to get around and find food."
According to the report, moose browsing is one factor relating to a
decline in the number of mature fir trees. In 1988, 473 mature balsam
fir trees were tagged on the western end of the island. Only 28 (6%) of
those tagged trees remained in 2018.
Watershield, a floating-leafed aquatic plant, has also experienced
decline as the moose population grew. In the late 2000s, watershield
covered as much as 90% of the water surface in ponds on the eastern side
of the island. By 2018, it was not readily found in aquatic areas.
Next Steps
Reintroducing a thriving wolf population to Isle Royale also has
an effect on the island's other residents, which include beavers and
foxes. Wolves eat beavers as well as moose, and so the beaver
population, which has been booming since 2012, may eventually decline to
levels of a decade ago, about 20% of current numbers. Foxes, which are
scavengers, will likely benefit from the return of the island's apex
predator.
Also of interest to the scientists is evidence of yet additional
wolves who may have crossed the ice bridge and visited Isle Royale
during the winter. Each winter, the Isle Royale wolf-moose project
embeds a husband-wife team, Ky Koitzsch and Lisa Osborn, to observe the
moose and wolves by skis, and they found evidence of the tracks of an
unknown wolf on the island. Aerial survey suggested that perhaps three
wolves crossed the ice and circumnavigated the island, but this may have
been just a quick visit followed by a return home to the mainland.
Peterson, Hoy and Vucetich are headed back to the island in May to
conduct summer research, along with six students who will showcase their
progress on the project's social media.
As usual, four to five dozen volunteers will head to the island for
the annual Moosewatch Expedition to collect bones at locations where the
collared wolves seem to have lingered long enough to presume they were
feeding on a dead moose.
"When we're there in the winter, we learn a tremendous amount about
the moose population, but this summer we are hoping to learn a lot more
detailed information about moose behavior and what they like to eat,
depending on how tolerant the collared moose are of being watched,"
Peterson said. "This summer should likewise prove valuable in
determining the trajectory of both wolf and moose populations. This is
definitely a notable year."
Indeed, there is a sense of renewal in this year's report. For the
first time in 10 years, the researchers spotted fresh wolf tracks at
Windigo.
IMAGE: Wolves face off with cow elk in the Lamar
Valley of Yellowstone National Park. While wolf reintroduction in the
mid-1990s resulted in a drop in Yellowstone elk numbers, it didn't...
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Credit: Daniel Stahler
For years, scientists have assumed that when top predators are
reintroduced to an ecosystem, the effects are predictable: The ecosystem
will return to how it was before the predators were wiped out.
Now, University of Wyoming researchers have published a study
showing that there's little evidence for such claims. This has big
implications for wildlife conservation in places such as Yellowstone
National Park.
Most people are probably familiar with the story of Yellowstone's
wolves. Wolves were wiped out in Yellowstone in the 1920s and, in their
absence, elk became much more common and ate so much vegetation that it
degraded the ecosystem.
Wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone in the mid-1990s and over
the next two decades brought profound change to the ecosystem. The
number of elk decreased, while the number of aspen, willow and
cottonwoods increased. Biologists observed positive responses by other
animals, from songbirds to beavers. Scientists assumed that
Yellowstone's ecosystem is on its way to being restored to historical
conditions.
But this new study questions that assumption: Do we really know
what those historical conditions were? And, does reintroducing apex
predators alter ecosystems with any predictability at all?
The team of researchers from UW, Yale University and the
University of British Columbia-Okanagan set out to find the answer. The
results were published in the journal Biological Conservation earlier this week.
Ecosystem restoration via large carnivore reintroduction relies
on two critical assumptions. First, large carnivore reintroduction has
to initiate a predictable trophic cascade -- that is, where carnivores
reduce the abundance of herbivores, which, in turn, increases the
abundance of the plants they feed on. Second, the magnitude of that
trophic cascade has to push an ecosystem back to a previous state.
But lots of other things can happen, too. Reintroduction of large
carnivores might not affect the ecosystem much at all. Or the ecosystem
might veer off in a new, unpredictable direction due to changes to the
ecosystem or biological communities that occurred when large carnivores
were absent. This is particularly likely in today's era of climate
change and invasive species, the researchers say.
There aren't many studies on this topic, so the researchers
collected studies that included data on the reintroduction of native
apex predators or removal of invasive ones. These events are two sides
of the same coin: Reintroductions and removals should work the same way,
but in opposite directions.
They found that trophic cascades brought on by these events don't
appear to be predictable -- sometimes you get them, sometimes you
don't. In fact, they found only one consistent result: When invasive
apex predators were removed, smaller predators such as coyotes, foxes
and rats become more common.
Jesse Alston, the lead author on this study, says there are two take-home messages to this work.
"We need more studies," he says. "More tests of this 'assumption
of reciprocity,' as we call it -- particularly via rigorous experimental
studies -- would be really helpful. This is hard data to get, but we
really do need it before we can credibly claim that large carnivores
restore ecosystems. They might not."
"We also think that large carnivore reintroduction should be
pursued for its own sake," Alston adds. "Large carnivores are great, but
using their effects on ecosystems to justify reintroduction might not
hold up to scrutiny and could be counterproductive in the long term.
"We hope we set up a nice framework for thinking about large
carnivore introduction and invasive species removal that others can run
with. We want to raise an important question, but it's going to take
lots of folks to provide a definitive answer. This is an unfinished
story."
S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources, Utah State University
IMAGE: Utah State University researchers and
their colleagues have shown that wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone
National Park in the mid-1990s have negligible impacts on the movements
of adult female elk that...
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Credit: Matt Metz
Elk roam the winter range that straddles the northern boundary of
Yellowstone National Park with little regard for wolves, according to a
new study illustrating how elk can tolerate living in close proximity to
the large predator.
The study offers new insight into how wolves can have negligible
impacts on elk movements, and how elk may simply ignore the risk of wolf
predation while navigating the landscape in search of forage. It also
adds to a growing body of evidence that changes in elk distribution and
vegetation conditions in northern Yellowstone since wolf reintroduction
in the mid-1990s are not caused by wolves altering elk movement
behavior.
Utah State University researchers Dan MacNulty and Michel Kohl co-led the study, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology,
with Jeremy Cusack (University of Stirling), Tim Coulson (University of
Oxford), Matt Metz (University of Montana), Doug Smith and Dan Stahler
(Yellowstone National Park). Several organizations funded the research,
including the National Science Foundation, Natural Environment Research
Council, Yellowstone Forever, The Tapeats Fund, Perkins-Prothro
Foundation, and the National Park Service. The Park-led wolf and elk
monitoring programs provided data for the project.
The team used global positioning system (GPS) radio-collars to
track the movements of elk and wolves across four winters between 2012
and 2016. They tracked 34 adult female elk and at least one member of
each dominant wolf pack. The collars recorded the location of the
animals every 1-3 hours, providing comprehensive data on how they used
the landscape. The team tested if elk avoided wolves that were in close
proximity, and if elk avoided 'risky areas' where they might be killed
by wolves, including where wolf densities were high; where wolves had
previously killed elk; and open grasslands where wolves often hunted.
"We compared recorded elk movements with those from a simulation
that described how elk would move if they completely ignored wolves and
risky areas" says MacNulty, who has studied wolf-elk interactions in
northern Yellowstone since 1995 and is an associate professor in USU's
Department of Wildland Resources and Ecology Center. "In 90% of cases,
there was no difference between real and simulated elk movements,
indicating that our sample of real elk mostly ignored the risk of wolf
predation".
According to Cusack, the lead author of the study, most elk did not
alter the location and configuration of their annual winter home ranges
to minimize overlap with wolves and risky areas, and none bothered to
steer around wolves that were in the immediate vicinity. "A few elk
avoided open grasslands during daylight hours when wolves were most
active, which mirrors the result of a separate recent study that
examined finer-scale elk movements in the early 2000s when wolves and
elk were more numerous," explained Cusack.
The findings are also in line with other studies of northern
Yellowstone elk, including one that compared elk movements before and
after wolf reintroduction and found that "in winter, elk did not
spatially separate themselves from wolves". Another study reported that
"elk did not grossly modify their migration timing, routes, or use areas
after wolf restoration".
Why don't elk budge for wolves? "A main reason is that elk tend
to be philopatric, which means they have an inherent tendency to
habitually return to the same wintering and summering areas year after
year," says MacNulty. "Familiarity with an area helps them find the high
quality forage they need, and this outweighs the small chance they
encounter and fall prey to wolves."
MacNulty and Cusack estimated that elk in their study encountered
wolves once every 7 to 11 days, and previous research found that elk
frequently survive their encounters with wolves. Low risk of predation
was also reflected in relatively high rates of annual survival,
particularly among younger adults. "Elk in their prime do not have a
massive incentive to avoid wolves, especially in winter when forage is
scarce," explains MacNulty.
He says that elk intransigence towards wolves is a reminder that
altered movement behavior is not the only way prey species avoid
predation.
"Antipredator behaviors during encounters - including fighting
back, grouping, and running - are effective ways for large-bodied,
philopatric prey like elk to avoid predation without abandoning or
reconfiguring their home ranges," he says.
"This has implications for understanding how wolves and other
predators, including humans, affect the distribution of philopatric prey
like elk. Predators removing different numbers of elk in different
areas is the main way they affect elk distribution. Elk movement away
from risky areas, if it happens, is secondary."
Coyotes expanded their range to colonize eastern North America over
the last century, where their impacts on white-tailed deer populations
are highly debated. In a Journal of Wildlife Management
study, researchers conducted the first long-term, large scale
assessment and documented no consistent decline in deer harvest numbers
after coyote arrival.
For the study, the team evaluated deer harvest numbers from 1980 to 2014 in 384 counties of six eastern US states.
The results indicate that coyotes are not limiting deer numbers and
that coyote removal programs will do little to increase regional deer
numbers.
"Coyotes on the east coast of the United States have not been
limiting deer, so eradicating coyotes is not an efficient way to
increase deer numbers in the region," said lead author Dr. Eugenia
Bragina, of the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Video on this:
IMAGE: A coyote captured on camera trap preying on a deer fawn.
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Credit: Dr. Aimee P. Rockhill (Western Carolina University) and Dr. Christopher S. DePerno (North Carolina State University)
Coyotes eat deer, but not enough to limit the deer population at a
large scale. A new study of deer numbers across the eastern United
States has found that the arrival and establishment of coyote predators
has not caused the number of deer harvested by hunters to decline.
A video presenting this research is available for article embedding or linking here: https://youtu.be/2XCbHhDlU_k
"With wolves and cougars extinct in most of the eastern U.S.,
white-tailed deer have become abundant, sometimes overabundant," says
Roland Kays, wildlife biologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural
Sciences and North Carolina State University, and co-author of a paper
describing this research. "Coyotes moved in as the new top predator of
the east, but they aren't nearly as effective deer hunters as wolves, so
there's been a lot of controversy about whether these medium-sized
predators can really limit deer populations at large scales."
Previous studies of how coyotes might be affecting deer populations
have produced inconsistent results. Some experimental removals of
coyotes found that fawn survival increases following coyote removal, but
others have shown no effect. Kays and a team of researchers led by
Eugenia Bragina from NC State, surveyed deer population trends from 1981
to 2014 using data from 384 counties across six eastern states. "Our
study is unique because it's the first to link coyote presence to
changes in deer population at a large scale," Bragina says. "Getting the
big-picture of the interactions between these species helps inform the
management practices of these species by hunting agencies."
The researchers collected county-by-county data on coyote arrival
by assessing museum collections, and deer population numbers by tracking
hunting records from state wildlife agencies. They evaluated these data
for changes in the number of deer harvested after coyote arrival and
establishment in an area, while accounting for environmental differences
like climate and landscape. They found that the number of harvested
deer in all states generally increased over time, and that there was no
consistent crash in harvest numbers following coyote arrival. They
concluded that coyotes are not controlling deer populations at a large
region-wide scale in the eastern North America.
"We see direct evidence of coyote predation on deer when looking at
coyote scat or even spotting them with camera traps carrying off deer
fawns," says Chris Deperno, a co-author on the study from NC State.
"Though coyotes are known to kill adult deer, predation is focused
primarily on vulnerable individuals that are sick, injured or in late
stage pregnancy. Predation of healthy adults is uncommon."
The researchers caution that this species interaction could
potentially change as coyote numbers are still on the rise across the
eastern U.S. It is unknown whether coyote populations will increase in
number or density enough to influence deer populations in the future.
Human-induced changes in habitat quality or landcover may also influence
how these species interact.
Management efforts to increase deer population sizes involving
coyote removal, the researchers advised, are unlikely to be effective at
large scales or over long periods of time. "Coyote removal as a method
of increasing deer abundance is expensive and labor-intensive," Bragina
says. "We hope that this research leads to more acceptance of this
carnivore by people. Coyotes are here to stay."
The paper, "No region-wide effects on white-tailed deer following eastern coyote colonization," is published in the Journal of Wildlife Management and Wildlife Monographs.
Allison Hody, Christopher Moorman and Christopher Deperno from NC
State, as well as L. Scott Mills from University of Montana, co-authored
the research.
IMAGE: A GPS-collared moose in western Wyoming
moves into its desired habitat. New University of Wyoming research has
documented interactions between moose and wolves in the region.
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Credit: Mark Gocke
Driven by the need for food, moose in western Wyoming are less
likely to change their behavior to avoid wolves as winter progresses,
according to new research by University of Wyoming scientists.
The findings, published today (March 13) in the journal Ecology,
provide new insights into the interactions of the region's apex
predators and their prey. The results also highlight the complexity of
the relationships between wolves and big-game species, making it
difficult to reach general conclusions about whether and how fear of
wolves has impacted the ecosystem, the researchers say.
"We have known for some time that hungry animals will tolerate
the presence of predators in order to forage and avoid starvation, and
that phenomenon, called the 'starvation-predation hypothesis,' is
supported by our research," says Brendan Oates, now with the Idaho
Department of Fish and Game, who conducted the research as a UW graduate
student. "In this case, close proximity of wolves does cause moose to
move, but not enough to drive them from their preferred habitats --
especially late in the winter."
Oates is the lead author of the Ecology paper.
Co-authors include his UW advisers: Jake Goheen, associate professor in
UW's Department of Zoology and Physiology, and Matt Kauffman, a U.S.
Geological Survey researcher based at UW. UW's Jerod Merkle, assistant
professor in the Department of Zoology and Physiology, also was involved
with the research, as were agency personnel from the National Park
Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The scientists tracked movements of dozens of GPS-collared moose
and wolves in Grand Teton National Park and the Bridger-Teton National
Forest over a five-year period, detecting 120 unique encounters among 25
individual moose and six wolf packs. An encounter was defined as when
moose and wolves were within about 1,600 yards of each other.
They found that movements of moose increased in early winter
following encounters with wolves, but only when wolves were within about
550 yards. Even then, the moose didn't move from their preferred
habitat, which is near streams and marshy areas. Late in the winter,
when the moose were presumed to be hungrier, there was no change in the
movement rates of the animals in response to wolves in the vicinity.
"The unwillingness of moose to abandon preferred habitats
following encounters with wolves adds further support for the
starvation-predation hypothesis," the researchers wrote.
In contrast, previous research has shown that elk -- the primary
prey of wolves in the region -- will move when wolves approach within
about 1,000 yards, even during winter. Elk also move from their
preferred habitat to avoid wolves. The difference may be explained
simply by the fact that moose are larger than elk and are more likely to
stand their ground when approached by wolves, the researchers say.
Additionally, the nature of moose's preferred habitat --
described as "structurally complex" -- means it could serve as both a
good food source and a refuge from wolves.
Still, it would be inaccurate to say that the presence of wolves doesn't affect moose movements.
"Although moose may be generally less responsive to predation
risk from wolves, our detection of a heightened behavioral response
during early winter suggests that anti-predator behavior is dynamic
within and among species of ungulates," the researchers concluded.
Woodland caribou populations have been dwindling towards local
extinction across much of their range and scientists believe that
predators, and specifically wolves, are a leading cause of the decline.
Wolf populations are thought to have increased and expanded into caribou
range due to the expansion of linear features, such as pipelines and
roads, resulting from oil, gas and forestry development.
Controversial practices such as wolf culling and building fenced
enclosures have been implemented to reduce the encounters between wolves
and at-risk woodland caribou in the Canadian Oil Sands.
New research suggests there may be more effective and less invasive
strategies to reduce the ability of wolves to encounter caribou.
Researchers used motion-triggered cameras to capture photographs of
wolves, caribou, and other wildlife species in the Canadian Oil Sands.
The study captured more than 500,000 photographs that were used to study
the habitat use patterns of the animals and test management strategies
aimed at reducing the impacts of the linear developments on caribou.
The results showed that disrupting the ability of wolves to travel
on the linear developments can reduce the ability of wolves to access
caribou habitat, without building fences or culling wolves.
A paper describing the research is published in the March issue of the Journal of Animal Ecology,
a British Ecological Society journal. The paper reveals new methods for
using motion-triggered cameras to study animals. In doing so,
researchers found that spreading logs, felling trees, or roughing the
soil surface of the linear developments can be used as a habitat
recovery strategy to disrupt the ability of humans and predators to
access the critical habitats of at-risk caribou.
Disrupting the ability of animals to travel on linear developments
is different than recovering the habitat. It takes decades for the
habitat to recover in these northern caribou ranges and the cost of
reclamation is considered prohibitive. However, disrupting travel on
these same features can be more easily implemented, scaled-up across
ranges, and reduce the predator's ability to encounter caribou
immediately.
Jonah Keim, the lead author of the study, and his collaborators,
Subhash Lele of the University of Alberta, Philip DeWitt of the Ontario
Ministry of Natural Resources & Forestry, Jeremy Fitzpatrick
(Edmonton, Alberta), and Noemie Jenni of Matrix Solutions Inc. have been
conducting studies in ecology and data science for more than two
decades. In 2011, members of the team co-authored a study revealing the
abundances, diets and habitat use patterns of caribou, wolves and moose.
The study suggested that removing wolves may have unintended
consequences. This January, the team released the results of a second
camera study that shows how to reduce the use of caribou habitat by
wolves. Surprisingly, they found that moving recreational snowmobiling
trails away from caribou habitats may help draw wolves away from caribou
- reducing the opportunistic killings of caribou by wolves.
Encounters between wolves and caribou can be managed by reducing
wolf populations or by reducing the ability of wolves to access caribou.
The research shows that the expansion of linear features has enabled
wolves to more readily travel into caribou range and encounter caribou.
Disrupting the ease-of-travel on linear features can reverse the impact
on wolf-caribou encounters without wolf culling.
