Month: November 2021

The gray wolf, Canis lupus, can be found across the North Pacific West, throughout Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon and Wyoming. There are also gray wolf species found in Alaska and by the Great Lakes, but we will be focusing on the PNW wolves. These wolves have seen years of decline and increase in population size throughout the decades due to hunting mandates and conservation efforts. As of 2014, the wolf population was around 1,700 across the five states (US Fisheries and Wildlife, 2017). The population of wolves can easily be affected in numerous ways, such as human impacts or intraspecies interactions (Hochard & Finnoff, 2014). 

The gray wolf has been known to travel all across North America, having populations from Mexico to Alaska. These wolves have been known to help food webs, they help primary and secondary consumers with the carcasses they leave, and help primary producers by keeping their predators out of their territory. But due to human colonization and expansion, the wolf population declined to only a few hundred (US Fisheries and Wildlife, 2011). The wolves were listed as endangered in 1974 to help increase their population. Due to these efforts they were able to become prominent in the North Pacific West, with numbers in the thousands.

There are three distinct regions of Gray wolf habitat in the US. Starting in the west, there are populations in Pacific Northwest states of Washington, Oregon, and California, and in the Northern Rocky Mountain region that includes Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Further south, a non-essential experimental population of subspecies Canis lupus baileyiexists along the New Mexico/Arizona border. In the Western Great Lakes region, > 4400 individuals (US Fish and Wildlife Service, 2010) are distributed across Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan (Map: U.S. Gray Wolf Distribution and Habitat, n.d.). 

Gray wolves require great swathes of land, with pack territories ranging from 50 square miles to  1,000 square miles, and can travel as much as 30 miles in a single day to hunt (USFWS: Gray Wolf Biologue, n.d.). They are extremely adaptable, and can therefor inhabit a wide range of habitats including: temperate forests, mountains, tundra, and grasslands (Species Profile for Gray Wolf(Canis Lupus), n.d.). A great deal of wolf habitat is found on public land where conservation is a priority and protection plans have been adopted to preserve growing wolf populations(US Fish and Wildlife Service, 2010). The only limitations to habitability are insufficient prey density and human harassment (US Fish and Wildlife Service, 2010). 

One method researchers are using to determining the suitability of a habitat for supporting a growing wolf population relies on road density, which serves as a proxy for human-caused wolf mortality. Habitat with road densities < 0.7 mi per mi² are estimated to have >50% probability pack colonization and persistent presence, and are considered prime habitat. Habitats where road density is greater than 1 mi per mi² only have <10% probability of colonization (Mladenoff et al., 1999). In addition to road density, the following three factors are also being used to predict habitat suitability: human density, density of agricultural lands, and prey density (US Fish and Wildlife Service, 2010). 

The gray wolf’s primary threat comes from people. Ranchers kill wolves because they threaten roaming livestock, hunters shoot them for sport, and rural communities view them as a nuisance and a pest (PBS 2008). They can also die from natural threats like disease; fights with bears, elk, and other wolves; and overloading carrying capacity in a region. However, these threats do minor damage to their population, effectively keeping them at a sustainable size, while the threat from humans proves a much more daunting obstacle (PBS 2008).

According to the study by Treves, et al., “For jurisdictions elsewhere, we caution that science may play little role in wolf politics where the animal has become a symbol for political rhetoric and a symbol of cultural divisions.” This cultural and political polarization of the wolf makes conservation difficult and proves a major threat to their continued existence. Gray wolves are sandwiched between federal protection and state hostility (Brunskotter, et al. 2011). Even in light of the decades-long conservation battle to protect wolves, the conflict of interest between ranchers and conservationists, as well as state and federal agencies, leaves them in a precarious place. According to an article by Brunskotter, et al. 2011, “Utah’s director of the Department of Natural Resources compared wolf restoration to a ‘resurrection of the T. rex,’ and asserted that wolves were a ‘biological weapon’ used to end sport hunting.” When wolves are delisted, these states inherit their conservation and management from the federal government. 

Among others, the methods outlined by the state officials in Wisconsin provide dubious claims for maintaining the existing population size of wolves from pre-delisting (Treves, et al. 2021). And it’s not just Wisconsin. In September 2021, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife authorized the killing of 6 more wolves from the Lookout Mountain pack, which is estimated to have only around 9 pack members (Defenders of Wildlife 2021). State interests don’t necessarily lie with the ESA and the protection of this keystone species, and can mean that the journey to full recovery is still further down the line.