Defenders of Wildlife Blog

For Wolf Awareness Week 2012, we’re sharing some of our favorite facts about wolves. Help us spread the word by sharing the image below on Facebook.

It’s no surprise that the wolf gets a bad rap. For many of us, our first exposure to wolves was the “big, bad wolf” we heard about as children in bedtime stories. But did you know that Charles Perrault’s original printed version of Little Red Riding Hood had nothing to do with actual wolves? The story was told in the late 17th century court of King Louis XIV, at a time when the French aristocracy was concerned about beguiling men in the streets taking advantage of their daughters. It was meant as a cautionary tale regarding the corruption of young women, and the moral was to be wary of strangers, especially predatory men, not to have an irrational fear of local wildlife.

To our knowledge, real wolves have never blown down a pig’s house either, but such fairy tales designed to frighten people may have led to the demise of wolves in European cultures. Wolves were essentially eradicated from much of central and northern Europe during the 19th century, and prejudices against them followed to the New World. As a result, wolf populations up and down the East Coast were eliminated around the same time. In the early 20th century, government-sponsored eradication programs wiped out most of the remaining wolves from the West to make the land more suitable for raising livestock.

Today, wolves are back in many parts of the country, but Defenders is still fighting an uphill battle to overcome centuries of anti-wolf persecution. Fortunately, efforts like Wolf Awareness Week are helping us tell a new story about wolves—one that emphasizes their value as a keystone species. In places like Yellowstone National Park, we’ve seen the return of wolves have a positive and cascading effect on parts of the ecosystem. Wolves keep elk herds on the move and away from sensitive wetland and riparian areas, allowing streamside willow and aspen trees to recover in some areas. With more trees available, fish and songbirds are returning and beaver colonies are expanding. Wolves also keep coyote populations in check, which means more pronghorn antelope fawn survive and red foxes have less competition for food. Thus, more wolves = greater biodiversity = healthier environment.

It’s time to replace those old notions of the “big, bad wolf” with a fuller understanding of the important role that wolves play in maintaining nature’s balance. All of us can do our part to help set the record straight.

For Wolf Awareness Week 2012, we’re sharing some of our favorite facts about wolves. Help us spread the word by sharing the image below on Facebook.

Wolves are capable of consuming an incredible amount of meat—up to 20 pounds in a single sitting—and sometimes they do. But they don’t always clean their plate, so to speak. Much of the time, wolves will save some for later by “caching” part of their bounty in case food becomes scarce. According to the Wolf Education & Research Center, wolves will cache as little as a single piece up to 15 pounds of meat from any given meal by burying it in the dirt. Doing so prevents ravens and other scavengers from stealing the surplus so that wolves can return and feed on it later.

Wolves hunt two bull elk in Yellowstone. Photo courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service.

Wolves are known for their skilled hunting of larger prey, but they’re also opportunistic scavengers. It takes a lot less effort for a wolf to feast on the cached remains of a dead animal than it does to try to take down a live one that’s five to ten times its size. Further, food is often scarce during certain times of the year and in certain places, so it pays to keep a stash hidden for those lean times. If you’ve ever seen a dog burying a bone in the backyard, they’re following the same instinctual behavior from their canid ancestors, the wolves.

Because of their incredible sense of smell, wolves can easily detect old meat that’s been buried in order to locate their food caches. Unfortunately, this behavior can also get them into trouble. Livestock producers will often maintain open carcass pits of animals that die from a variety of causes—bad weather, disease, birthing complications, fatal injuries—and these pits can attract wolves from miles away. Some pits are fenced off or buried deep underground, but many of them are not protected at all. Once a wolf gets wind of an open carcass pit, they will often return again and again, treating it as their own personal food cache. As a result, ranchers greatly increase the likelihood that wolves will eventually come into conflict with any other livestock using the area.

One of the most important wolf coexistence strategies Defenders employs is helping ranchers identify major attractants like carcass pits and cleaning them up. By properly disposing of dead animals off-site or burying them deeper underground, ranchers can greatly reduce the chances of wolves becoming routine visitors to their livestock operation. These actions have been critically important in the Northern Rockies and adjacent states like Oregon and California where wolves have only recently returned. We’ve been able to help ranchers avoid disaster by cleaning up old carcass pits before wolves discover them, increasing the odds that wolves can share the landscape with livestock without turning them into dinner.

For Wolf Awareness Week 2012, we’re sharing some of our favorite facts about wolves. Help us spread the word by sharing the image below on Facebook.

What’s the key to a wolf’s survival in the wild? The answer is right under its nose.

Wolves have a very acute sense of smell that they use to detect other animals more than a mile away. A huge part of a wolf’s brain is used to process smell, just as a huge part of our brain is used to process visual information. The olfactory centers in a wolf’s brain are about the size of a fist, while in humans they’re about the size of a pea.[1] There’s even evidence to suggest that wolves dream in smell!

Part of the reason wolves have such a finely tuned nose is that it helps them keep track of other wolves. Wolves have special scent glands near their tails that emit a smell unique to each wolf. They use the scent as their personal calling card, making it easier for wolves to identify their pack mates and any potential rival wolves from another pack. Dogs have the same scent glands since they’re descended from wolves. So next time you see dogs sniffing each other’s rear ends, you’ll know what they’re up to. That’s just their way of getting acquainted, similar to how we introduce ourselves by shaking hands, looking someone in the eye and saying our names to improve the chances of recognizing someone the next time we see them.

A female wolf follows her nose through the Wood River Valley of central Idaho.

A wolf’s strong sense of smell can also be used as a nonlethal deterrent–a way to keep wolves away from livestock without placing them in danger. Wolves can pick up the scent of a human upwind, and that is often enough to keep wolves away. Our field technicians on the Wood River Wolf Project use this to their advantage by camping upwind of a band of sheep, so any wolf that approaches will know a person is there too.

Researchers have started to experiment with using scent as a deterrent in other ways as well. In theory, the scat or urine of other animals, or even other wolves, can be used to create a “bio-fence” to keep wolves away by marking a territory with an unfamiliar scent. However, as with many deterrents, wolves can become habituated to the smell unless it is coupled with negative reinforcement. The smell of a human, or another wolf, will only discourage wolves if they perceive the source as a threat to their safety.

That’s why Defenders is working with ranchers and herders to make sure they’re implementing nonlethal deterrents effectively and remaining vigilant. A wolf’s nose can detect danger, but ultimately it’s boots on the ground that prevent conflict.

Come back on Wednesday for another Wolf Awareness Week fact, and more on how we work with ranchers to protect them.

Happy Wolf Awareness Week!

A collared gray wolf in Yellowstone. Photo courtesy of William C. Campbell/U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Hope you had a great one! If you missed any of our special features, be sure to click back to check them out. Guest bloggers included:

• Peter Haswell, one of Defenders’ summer volunteers on the Wood River Wolf Project
• David Hornoff, co-president of the National Wolfwatcher Coalition
• Larry Schoen, Commissioner of Blaine County, Idaho
• Story Warren, budding wolf activist from Olympia, Washington
• Michelle Dennehy, wildlife communications coordinator for Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

Yesterday, our own wolf expert Suzanne Stone got her chance to discuss broader wolf conservation issues as well. She was a guest on LA Talk Radio for Wolf Awareness Week to address the history of wolf reintroduction, the current political context for wolf management and the importance of keeping wolves in the wild. You can listen to the show here (jump to the 10:15 mark):

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Thanks to all our outstanding contributors for all their hard work and for providing valuable insights into wolf conservation nationwide.

More praise for Wood River Wolf Project

We reported last week on the wrap-up meeting for the fourth successful season of our Wood River Wolf Project, but we weren’t the only ones. The project also got a mention in the Idaho Mountain Express (scroll past the first story) and radio coverage from Public News Service in Idaho. Listen below:

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Wolf hunt injunction denied

Three conservation groups filed a request for an injunction early this week in an attempt to halt the ongoing wolf hunts in Montana and Idaho. The injunction was denied in court a few days later, but the groups continue their appeal of a lower court ruling denying their request to overturn Congress’ bill removing wolves from the ESA in April. Their case is waiting to be heard in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Watch this report from KAJ-18 in Kalispell, Montana:

For Wolf Awareness Week this year, Defenders has invited guest bloggers to offer their perspectives on the importance of wolf conservation. Michelle Dennehy is wildlife communications coordinator for Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

I’m not a wildlife biologist but in my position I still have a front row seat on wolves’ return to Oregon.

ODFW wolf biologist Russ Morgan takes measurements of a wolf in the Imnaha Pack.

Much of my job is relaying what wildlife biologists see in the field, where the real action is. Most of these professionals grew up in the woods and the first place you’ll find them following a work day in the woods is…back in the woods (just try getting them on cell!).

To give you a taste of what they do: Between January and August of this year, wildlife biologists spent 135 days surveying for new and lesser-known wolves and wolf packs in Oregon, combing the woods for tracks, scat and other signs of wolves.  They use this information to determine new pack activity, home ranges and reproduction. A new pack just discovered in January 2011, the Walla Walla of Umatilla County, had pups this year. Two new wolves were found in the county over the summer. Two wolves from the well-known Imnaha Pack of northeast Oregon have made their way to central Oregon. Surveys may yet turn up new pups for the Wenaha pack wolves, which would mark three years of reproduction for this pack.

That’s the biology part of the job they trained for in college. But with wolves, sociology is as important as biology. Much wolf management involves people, not wolves.

Biologists have also spent hours on the phone talking with livestock producers, conservationists, government officials and others. In that same time period mentioned above, they personally contacted livestock producers 263 times to let them know about wolf activity in their area or preventive measures to avoid wolf-livestock conflict. They have sent more than 2,500 text messages to ranchers about recent wolf activity. (Ranchers have used this information to change their husbandry practices, turning cattle out at different times and places to avoid wolves.)

Defenders of Wildlife has funded a range rider for some time, to help keep tabs on wolf activity and even haze them away from livestock operations. Carcass piles have been buried, fladry hung and radio-activated guard boxes installed.

The alpha male of the Imnaha pack sits up after being fitted with a working GPS collar in May.

But like every other state, Oregon has experienced livestock losses to wolves. In one of the more difficult parts of the job, wildlife biologists are also on the scene for livestock loss investigations when wolves are suspected.

Emotions run high when producers lose an animal they have cared for and count on for their livelihood. Discerning what actually happened can be difficult, especially if the animal has been dead several days, or when weather or another disturbance effects evidence. Here the job turns into a scene from CSI, with biologists carefully looking for evidence (wolf tracks, signs of struggle). Their previous knowledge of other predators in the area is useful here. To be thorough and make sure the animal wasn’t just scavenged, the dead animal is usually skinned, even if it’s been dead for several days. (Oregon’s livestock loss investigations are summarized online at http://www.dfw.state.or.us/Wolves/livestock_loss_investigations.asp)

When repeated depredations occur, our wildlife biologists are also called to remove the wolves they have been tracking. The decision to kill wolves, an endangered animal in Oregon, is never made lightly. But the hope is that by removing problem wolves, the rest will be able to thrive.

Each year, we learn more about Oregon’s wolves that will help us reach our goal. The state has a wolf management plan with an initial conservation objective of four breeding pairs on each side of the Cascades. Oregon’s wildlife biologists will continue working hard to make that plan a reality.

–Michelle Dennehy

Follow Oregon’s wolf news at www.dfw.state.or.us/wolves, and visit our photo archive here.

For Wolf Awareness Week this year, Defenders has invited guest bloggers to offer their perspectives on the importance of wolf conservation. Story Warren, a seventh grader in Olympia, Wash. testified before the state Fish and Wildlife Commission in support of its wolf recovery plan. The text of her testimony is included below:

This wolf was spotted earlier this year in the Cascade Mountains, about 100 miles east of Seattle. The state is currently finalizing its comprehensive wolf conservation plan.

Members of the commission:  My name is Story Warren. I am in seventh grade at NOVA middle school in Olympia. When I saw my first tiny speck of a wild wolf in a telescope that was almost as big as me, I was six years old.  Ever since that day, wolves have intrigued me and sparked my imagination. Since then, I have painted them, written about them, and studied them extensively. I have watched them in the wild on numerous occasions.  I hope to, one day, make a career out of studying wolves and also coming up with ways to prevent livestock/wolf interaction. It would be wonderful if I could make that career happen right here in Washington state. It saddens me to see that such resentment is fueled toward wolves. Dogs, our beloved companions and workers, are genetically more than 99% wolf, and dogs kill more livestock nationwide than wolves do.

I want to represent young people in saying that I believe it is very important that we keep wolves in Washington for my generation; my generation is going to have to live with – or without – whatever your generation does to the world. My personal opinion is that the Wolf Management and Conservation Plan that we are all here today to discuss is not perfect for any party, but I am here to support it because it seems to be reasonable.

So I ask you to please adopt this Wolf Recovery plan. Thank you for your time.

–Story Warren