The Wolf Preservation Blog

The wolf kills to eat.  And it is the wolf’s status as a predator that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of wolves at the hands of humans.  The two prime areas of conflict are the wolf’s status as a habitual predator of big game and as an occasional predator of livestock.

In the United States, federal Animal Damage Control guidelines define predator control as “control…directed toward less desirable species which are depressing populations of more desirable species.” 

CLEARLY MAN HAS DEEMED THAT THE WOLF BE OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED AS “LESS DESIRABLE.”

It is unfortunate that both Canis Lupus and Homo Sapiens sometimes seek the same prey.  It is even more unfortunate that the wolf has often been WRONGLY BLAMED for depleting ungulate populations, populations equally sought by both subsistence and sport hunters.  

Large-scale wolf kills by humans assume that wolves are the primary limiting factor to a hooved game population.  All too often, the wolf is just a convenient and visible scapegoat, the final product of years of prejudice.   And all too often insufficient studies have been undertaken to determine the true role of the wolf in controlling the prey population.

Various studies have shown that in fact wolves my control an ungulate population, extirpate the population, have no effect upon it, increase it, or decrease it.  Other important factors include the prey/predator ratio, habitat loss, overhunting by humans, and the effects of severe winters.

As wildlife biologist Chris McBride has written in The White Lions of Timbavati, “The very fact that any species of predator still exists today is proof that is has evolved in such a way that it cannot seriously limit the numbers of its prey.  If it did, it would have become extinct.”

Overhunting by humans is often a major factor in ungulate declines.  In one study of Alaskan wolves, it was found that humans had killed forty four percent of the Nelchina caribou herd in 1971/1972, a decrease that had previously blamed on wolves.  One year when caribou strayed too close to the city of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories and were slaughtered by its residents by the hundreds, outsiders immediately blamed wolves for the kills.

It is ironic that many fish and game departments exist to support the hunters and fishermen who fund them through the sale of tags and licenses.  The irony turns to tragedy, though, when these departments kill wolves to appease hunters.

In 1983, the British Columbia Wildlife Branch announced plans to kill eighty percent of wolves in the northeast Peace and Omineca districts in order “to support moose and deer numbers.”  However, the close ties between the department and the hunting lobby quickly became evident.  To fund the wolf kill, the government stated their intention to hold a lottery, first prize being a hunting trip to Zimbabwe.  Despite a government report that the moose and deer numbers had decreased primarily because of loss of habitat, overhunting, and a series of severe winters, the wolf was the one put in the crosshairs.

A more recent Canadian wolf kill was the plan to kill 150 wolves in the Yukon in 1993 in an area adjacent to Kluane National Park.  The purpose of the kill was to support the Aishihik caribou herd, which was declining in number.  After much public pressure, the Yukon government admitted that the slaughter was a “scientific experiment” using living animals.  In early 1993, about seventy wolves were killed, and it was discovered that the wolf population in the area was about forty percent smaller than expected.   Despite this finding, the Yukon goverment planned to continue the killing!  The cost of the initial year of killing was an incredible $2,500 per wolf. 

In the IUCN Manifesto on Wolf Conservation, it states that where wolf kills must be carried out, “the methods must be selective, specific to the problem, highly discriminatory, and have minimal adverse affects on the ecosystem.”  It concludes that “alternative ecosystem management, including alteration of human activities and attitudes and non-lethal methods of wolf management, should be fully considered before lethal wolf reduction is employed.”

According to the World Wildlife Fund of Canada, “the only safe conservation route is to stop large-scale wolf killing programs altogether.”  And as wolf biologist Lu Carbyn has noted, wolf control “has become socially unacceptable.”

**Special thanks to The Wolf Almanac by Robert Busch for providing this information!

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So what do Ravens and Wolves have in common you say?  The following information comes from “The Wolf Almanac,” a celebration of wolves and their world, 1995/1998 by Robert Busch.  He explains the relationship and proves once again one of the many contributions wolves give to the environment.

One of the most fascinating relationships between animals is the one that seems to exist between wolves and ravens.  The raven, scavenger of food of all types, will often follow wolf packs in hopes of morsels of food.  And wolves have learned to watch for circling ravens as a sign of of possible food below.  But there seems to be more than just a symbiosis based on food between the two species; many observations have been made that can only be described as a friendship between the big predator and the wily bird. 

In Arctic Wild, Lois Crisler states her belief that “ravens and wolves just like each other’s company.”  She described one play session between the two species, with the raven diving at the wolves and jumping around just out of reach.  “He played this raven tag for ten minutes at a time.  If the wolves ever tired of it, he sat squawking till they came over to him again.”

L. David Mech, in The Wolves of Isle Royale, described the “peculiar relationship” between a flock of ravens and a large wolf pack, and wrote that wolves and ravens “often seem to play together.”

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“With the arrival of the first wolf in California since the 1920s, no doubt the California Department of Game and Fish is receiving many comments from the public. The quality of this support, opposition and advice probably varies all over the map (the maps in our heads). Norman Bishop, who played a key role as a Yellowstone Park naturalist educating the public about the wolves that were coming to Yellowstone and then after their arrival until 1997, has compiled a fact-filled piece “What Good are Wolves.” This morning he announced he had sent it to the Director of the California Department of Fish and Game. In the current politically charged and cognitively challenged atmosphere of wolf mythology, the contents of this letter should be shared with the public because summarizes what had been learned in recent years so compactly and lucidly. What good are wolves? Compiled by Norman A. Bishop In 1869, General Phil Sheridan said, “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.” Others said, “The only good wolf is a dead wolf.” Barry Lopez wrote of an American Pogrom, not only of Native Americans and wolves, but of the bison on which both depended. Between 1850 and 1890, 75 million bison were killed, mostly for their hides; perhaps one or two million wolves. “Before about 1878, cattlemen were more worried about Indians killing their cattle than they were about wolves. As the land filled up with other ranchers, as water rights became an issue, and as the Indians were removed to reservations, however, the wolf became, as related in Barry Lopez’s book, Of Wolves and Men, ‘an object of pathological hatred.’”

 Lopez continues: “(T)he motive for wiping out wolves (as opposed to controlling them) proceeded from misunderstanding, from illusions of what constituted sport, from strident attachment to private property, from ignorance and irrational hatred.” In 1884, Montana set a bounty on wolves; in the next three years, 10,261 wolves were bountied. “In 1887, the bounty was repealed by a legislature dominated by mining interests.” *** “By 1893,… desperate stockmen were reporting losses that were mathematical impossibilities. The effect of this exaggeration was contagious. The Montana sheep industry, which up to this time had lost more animals to bears and mountain lions than to wolves, began to blame its every downward economic trend on the wolf. *** Men in a speculative business like cattle ranching singled out one scapegoat for their financial losses.” Not until wolves were functionally extinct from much of the West did anyone begin to ask, “What good are wolves?” to study wolves, and to report their beneficial effects on their prey species and on the ecosystems where they lived. Adolph Murie realized that wolves selected weaker Dall sheep, “which may be of great importance to the sheep as a species.” His brother, Olaus J.Murie, thought predators may have an important influence during severe winters in reducing elk herds too large for their winter range.

Douglas H. Pimlott pointed out that wolves control their own densities . Yellowstone National Park wolf project leader Douglas W. Smith says that restoration of wolves there has added exponentially to our knowledge of how natural ecosystems work. It has also reminded us that predation is one of the dominant forces in all of nature, present in ecosystems worldwide over millions of years. Bob Crabtree and Jennifer Sheldon note that predation by wolves is important to the integrity of the Yellowstone ecosystem, but we should realize that, before their return to Yellowstone’s northern range, 17 mountain lions there killed 611 elk per year, 60 grizzly bears killed 750 elk calves annually, and 400 coyotes killed between 1100 and 1400 elk per year. P.J. White et al wrote that climate and human harvest account for most of the recent decline of the northern Yellowstone elk herd, coupled with the effects of five predators: wolves, grizzly bears, black bears, cougars, and coyotes. These are parts of a system unique in North America by its completeness.

Joel Berger et al demonstrated “a cascade of ecological events that were triggered by the local extinction of grizzly bears…and wolves from the southern greater Yellowstone ecosystem.” In about 75 years, moose in Grand Teton National Park erupted to five times the population outside, changed willow structure and density, and eliminated neotropical birds; Gray Catbirds and MacGillivray’s Warblers.

Dan Tyers informs us that wolves haven’t eliminated moose from Yellowstone. Instead, burning of tens of thousands of acres of moose habitat in 1988 (mature forests with their subalpine fir) hit the moose population hard, and it won’t recover until the forests mature again. Mark Hebblewhite and Doug Smith documented that wolves change species abundance, community composition, and physical structure of the vegetation, preventing overuse of woody plants like willow, reducing severity of browsing on willows that provide nesting for songbirds. In Banff, songbird diversity and abundance were double in areas of high wolf densities, compared to that of areas with fewer wolves . Fewer browsers lead to more willows, providing habitat for beaver, a keystone species, which in turn create aquatic habitat for other plants and animals. By reducing coyotes,which were consuming 85% of the production of mice in Lamar Valley, restored wolves divert more food to raptors, foxes, and weasels. By concentrating on killing vulnerable calf elk and very old female elk, wolves reduce competition for forage by post-breeding females, and enhance the nutrition of breeding-age females. Wolves promote biological diversity, affecting 20 vertebrate species, and feeding many scavengers (ravens, magpies, pine martens, wolverines, bald eagles, gray jays, golden eagles, three weasel species, mink, lynx, cougar, grizzly bear, chickadees, Clark’s nutcracker, masked shrew and great grey owl). In Yellowstone, grizzly bears prevailed at 85% of encounters over carcasses, and they usurp nearly every kill made by wolves in Pelican Valley from March to October. Some 445 species of beetle scavengers benefit from the largess of wolf-killed prey. In Banff and Yellowstone, no other predator feeds as many other species as do wolves. Wolf-killed elk carcasses enhance local levels of soil nutrients; 20-500% greater nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Dan Stahler and his colleagues saw an average of four ravens on carcasses in Lamar Valley pre-wolf. Post-wolf, that increased to 28 average, with as many as 135 seen on one carcass. Eagles seen on carcasses increased from an average of one per four carcasses to four per carcass. P.J. White and Bob Garrott observed that, by lowering elk numbers, wolves may contribute to higher bison numbers; by decreasing coyote populations, result in higher pronghorn numbers. They also said wolves may ameliorate ungulate-caused landscape simplification. Daniel Fortin and others saw that wolves may cause elk to shift habitat, using less aspen, and favoring songbirds that nest in the aspen. Christopher Wilmers and all tell us that hunting by humans does not benefit scavengers the way wolf kills do. Carrion from wolf kills is more dispersed spatially and temporally than that from hunter kills, resulting in three times the species diversity on wolf kills versus hunter kills. Wolves subsidize many scavengers by only partly consuming their prey; they increase the time over which carrion is available, and change the variability in scavenge from a late winter pulse (winterkill) to all winter. They decrease the variability in year-to-year and month to-month carrion availability. Chris Wilmers and Wayne Getz write that wolves buffer the effects of climate change. In mild winters, fewer ungulates die of winterkill, causing loss of carrion for scavengers. Wolves mitigate late-winter reduction in carrion by killing ungulates all year. Mid-sized predators can be destructive in the absence of large keystone predators. In the absence of wolves, pronghorn have been threatened with elimination by coyotes. Wolves have reduced coyotes, and promoted survival of pronghorn fawns. Pronghorn does actually choose the vicinity of wolf dens to give birth, because coyotes avoid those areas, according to Douglas W. Smith. Mark Hebblewhite reviewed the effects of wolves on population dynamics of large-ungulate prey, other effects on mountain ecosystems, sensitivity of wolf-prey systems to top-down and bottom-up management, and how this may be constrained in national park settings. Then he discussed the implications of his research on ecosystem management and long term ranges of variation in ungulate abundance. He cites literature that suggests that the long-term stable state under wolf recovery will be low migrant elk density in western montane ecosystems. Noting that wolves may be a keystone species, without which ungulate densities increase, vegetation communities become overbrowsed, moose and beaver decline, and biodiversity is reduced. But as elk decline, aspen and willow regeneration are enhanced. In this context, wolf predation should be viewed as a critical component of an ecosystem management approach across jurisdictions. Chronic wasting disease could wipe out our elk and deer. Tom Hobbs writes that increasing mortality rates in diseased populations can retard disease transmission and reduce disease prevalence. Reduced lifespan, in turn, can compress the time interval when animals are infectious, thereby reducing the number of infections produced per infected individual. Results from simulations suggest that predation by wolves has the potential to eliminate CWD from an infected elk population. Wildlife veterinarian Mark R. Johnson writes that wolves scavenge carrion, such as aborted bison or elk calves. By eating them, they may reduce the spread of Brucellosis to other bison or elk. Scott Creel and John Winnie, Jr. report that wolves also cause elk to congregate in smaller groups, potentially slowing the spread of diseases that thrive among dense populations of ungulates. John Duffield and others report that restoration of wolves has cost about $30 million, but has produced a $35.5 million annual net benefit to greater Yellowstone area counties, based on increased visitation by wolf watchers. Some 325,000 park visitors saw wolves in 2005. In Lamar Valley alone, 174,252 visitors observed wolves from 2000 to 2009; wolves were seen daily in summers for nine of those ten years. Wolves cause us to examine our values and attitudes. Paul Errington wrote, “Of all the native biological constituents of a northern wilderness scene, I should say that the wolves present the greatest test of human wisdom and good intentions.” Aldo Leopold, father of game management in America, said, “Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; … The land is one organism.” Leopold also pointed out that the first rule of intelligent tinkering with natural ecosystems was to keep all the pieces. Eliminating predators is counter to that advice. Wolves remind us to consider what is ethically and esthetically right in dealing with natural systems. As Leopold wrote in his essay “The Land Ethic,” “A land ethic …does affirm (animals’) right to continued existence…in a natural state.” He concluded, “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” What good are wolves? References cited Berger, Joel , Peter B. Stacey, Lori Bellis, and Matthew P. Johnson. 2001. A mammalian predator-prey imbalance: grizzly bear and wolf extinction affect avian neotropical migrants.

Ecol. Applications 11(4):947-960. Crabtree, Robert L., and Jennifer W. Sheldon. Coyotes and Canid Coexistence in Yellowstone. Pages 127-163 in Clark, Tim W., A. Payton Curlee, Steven C. Minta, and Peter M. Kareiva. 1999. Carnivores in Ecosystems: The Yellowstone Experience. Yale U. Press. 429 pp. Creel, Scott, and J.A. Winnie, Jr. 2005. Responses of elk herd size to fine-scale spatial and temporal variation in the risk of predation by wolves. Animal Behaviour 69:1181-1189. Duffield, J., C. Neher, and D. Patterson. 2006. Wolves and People in Yellowstone: Impacts on the Regional Economy. Department of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Montana. Errington, Paul L. 1967. Of Predation and Life. Iowa State Univ. Press, Ames. 277 p. Fortin, D., H. Beyer, M.S. Boyce, D.W. Smith, T. Duchesne, and J.S. Mao. Wolves influence elk movements: behavior shapes a trophic cascade in Yellowstone National Park. Ecology 86(5):1320-30. Hebblewhite, Mark. 2010. Predator-Prey Management in the National Park Context: Lessons from a Transboundary Wolf, Elk, Moose and Caribou System (Pp. 348-365 in Transactions of the 72nd North American Wildlife and Natural Resources conference. Hebblewhite, Mark, and Douglas W. Smith. 2007. Wolf Community Ecology: Ecosystem Effects of Recovering Wolves in Banff and Yellowstone National Parks in Musiani, M., and P.C. Paquet. The World of Wolves: new perspectives on ecology, behaviour, and policy. U. of Calgary Press. Hobbs, N. Thompson. 2006. A Model Analysis of Effects of Wolf Predation on Prevalence of Chronic Wasting Disease in Elk Populations of Rocky Mountain National Park. Johnson, Mark R. 1992. The Disease Ecology of Brucellosis and Tuberculosis in Potential Relationship to Yellowstone Wolf Populations. Pp. 5-69 to 5-92 in Varley, J.D., and W.G. Brewster, Ed’s. Wolves for Yellowstone? A report to the United States Congress. Volume IV, Research and Analysis. Leopold, Aldo. 1938. Unpublished essay, “Conservation,” on Pp. 145-6 of Round River, 1953.) Leopold, Aldo. 1949. A Sand County Almanac. Oxford University Press. P. 204 and Pp. 224-225. Lopez, Barry H. 1978. Of Wolves and Men. Charles Scribner’s Sons. New York. 308 p. Murie, Adolph. 1944. The Wolves of Mount McKinley. Fauna of the National Parks of the United States. Fauna Series No. 5. USGPO, Washington, D.C. Murie, Olaus J. The Elk of North America. 1951. Stackpole Co., Harrisburg, Pa., and Wildl. Mgmt. Inst., Wash., D.C. 376 pp. Pimlott, Douglas H. 1967. Wolf Predation and Ungulate Populations. Amer. Zool. 7: 267-78. Smith, Douglas W. Personal communication. Stahler, Daniel, Bernd Heinrich, and Douglas Smith. 2002. Common ravens, Corvus corax, preferentially associate with grey wolves, Canis lupus, as a foraging strategy in winter. Animal Behaviour 64:283-290. El Sevier. Tyers, Daniel B. 2003. Winter Ecology of Moose on the Northern Yellowstone Winter Range. Ph.D. Dissertation, MSU, Bozeman. White, P.J., and R.A. Garrott. 2005. Yellowstone’s ungulates after wolves – expectations, realizations, and predictions. Biological Conservation 125:141-52. White, P.J., Robert Garrott, and Lee Eberhardt. 2003. Evaluating the consequences of wolf recovery on northern Yellowstone elk. YCR-NR-2004-02. Wilmers, C.C., and W.M. Getz. 2005. Gray wolves as climate change buffers. PLoS Biology 3 (4):e92. Wilmers, C.C., R.L. Crabtree, D.W. Smith, K.M Murphy, W.M. Getz. 2003. Trophic facilitation by introduced top predators: grey wolf subsidies to scavengers in Yellowstone National Park. Journal of Animal Ecology 72(6):909-16. About the compiler After university work in Botany, Zoology, Forest Recreation, and Wildlife Management, and 4 years as a naval aviator, Norman A. Bishop was a national park ranger for 36 years. He was the principal interpreter of wolves and their restoration at Yellowstone National Park from 1985 to 1997, when he retired to Bozeman. For his educational work on wolves, he received a USDI citation for meritorious service. He also received the National Parks and Conservation Association’s 1988 Stephen T. Mather Award, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition’s 1991 Stewardship Award, and the Wolf Education and Research Center’s 1997 Alpha Award. He led many field courses on wolves for the Yellowstone Association Institute until 2005. He is the greater Yellowstone region field representative for the International Wolf Center. He serves on the boards of the Wolf Recovery Foundation, and Wild Things Unlimited. He is also on the advisory board of Living with Wolves. Norman A. Bishop Bozeman, MT 59715

**Special thanks to The Wildlife News for providing this information (http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2011/12/30/what-good-are-wolves/)

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• “You stand a better chance of being struck by lightening than being killed by a wolf.
  In general, wolves fear humans and do not approach them. In fact, very few incidents involving wolves attacking humans have occurred in North America. Those rare occurrences were reportedly caused because wolves associated humans as a source for food like garbage or scraps, or because a wolf was likely reacting to the presence of dogs (McNay 2002). To prevent conflicts with wildlife, people must act responsibly by never feeding or approaching wild animals or take other actions that cause wild animals to lose fear of humans. Learn more about coexisting with carnivores.
• Wolves and large grazing animals lived side-by-side for tens of thousands of years before the first settlers arrived.
  Recent studies on Yellowstone elk and wolves have found that weather and hunter harvest affect elk declines more than wolf predation. In fact, wolves often enhance prey populations by culling weak and sick animals from the gene pool, leaving only the strongest animals to reproduce. Food availability and weather regulate wolf populations. When their prey is scarce, wolves suffer too. They breed less frequently, have fewer litters, and may even starve to death.
• Wildlife tourism is a major part of the economic base of the northern Rockies.
  For instance, in the counties around Yellowstone National Park , livestock production accounts for less than 4% of personal income, while tourism-related industries account for more than 50%. Moreover the effect of wolves on the livestock industry as a whole is negligible, with wolves accounting for less than 1% of livestock losses.
• In portions of the northern Rockies and Southwest, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) designated wolves as “experimental, nonessential” populations.
  This special designation gave landowners a limited right to kill wolves caught in the act of preying on livestock on private property and increased the ability of FWS to remove or destroy problem wolves. Since 1978, wolves, listed as threatened in Minnesota, have been managed under a special regulation that controls individuals that kill livestock and pets.
• According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, very few land use restrictions have proven necessary to facilitate wolf recovery in Montana and Minnesota.
  The service reports that land use restrictions are necessary only if illegal mortality of wolves occurs at high levels.
• Numerous polls taken throughout the United States consistently demonstrate that more people support wolf recovery than oppose it.
  In fact, a 2002 quantitative summary of human attitudes towards wolves found that 61% of the general population samples had positive attitudes towards wolves.”

  Works Cited: McNay, Mark E. A Case History of Wolf-Human Encounters in Alaska and Canada. 2002. Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Wildlife Technical Bulletin 13

**Special thanks to “Defenders of Wildlife” for providing this information! (http://www.defenders.org/programs_and_policy/wildlife_conservation/imperiled_species/wolves/wolf_facts/index.php)

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“CASPER, Wyo. – The most highly-efficient predator hunting elk is not the wolf.

A new study of wolves’ elk-hunting abilities finds that Mother Nature didn’t give wolves the best set of tools – and that they would be more successful if they were built more like cats or bears.

It’s also not uncommon for wolves to be mortally wounded by elk hooves and horns, according to the study. One of its co-authors, wildlife ecologist Dan MacNulty, an assistant professor in Utah State University’s Department of Wildland Resources, shares another finding:

“This impression that we have of larger packs being more dangerous in terms of their ability to hunt is incorrect.”

In fact, he found, hunting success levels out with four wolves in a pack. MacNulty says wolves do tend to gather in large packs, but the reasons why are unrelated to food.

“One of those problems is maintaining territories. Bigger packs tend to be more successful at maintaining a territory than are smaller packs.”

MacNulty says he has encountered a general belief that elk are highly vulnerable to wolves – but he has found that’s clearly not true. He explains why wolves target aging animals.

“Those younger, prime-aged individuals are extremely feisty, and they will stand and defend themselves. Very common for elk to simply just confront wolves and run them off.”

The wolves and elk studied were in Yellowstone National Park.

The study, “Nonlinear Effects of Group Size on the Success of Wolves Hunting Elk,” is in the September-October issue of the journal Behavioral Ecology, and is online at beheco.oxfordjournals.org.”

**Special thanks to Deb Courson Smith, Public News Service – WY (http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?%2Fcontent%2Farticle%2F22776-1) for providing this information in the article!

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