The Gray Wolves (Canis lupus) of British Columbia’s Coastal Rainforests

The mainland coast of British Columbia (BC) is a remote area that is comparatively free from human-caused disturbance. However, concerns about current and anticipated increases in industrial forestry activity have prompted conservation biologists to investigate the biota in this understudied region. We were commissioned by the Raincoast Conservation Society to study coastal wolves so that information could be incorporated into ongoing conservation planning and education efforts. The summer of 2000 marked the pilot season of a multi-year research project. Our team spent more than 240 person days in the field during the summer and fall seasons. We surveyed 18 mainland watersheds and 21 islands in an area greater than 29,000-km2 (land and sea). We examined scats to describe wolf diet, collected genetic material, and noted other natural history observations. We also conducted an extensive review of scientific literature and made estimates of population size and human-caused mortality

What Enables Size-Selective Trophy Hunting of Wildlife?

Although rarely considered predators, wildlife hunters can function as important ecological and evolutionary agents. In part, their influence relates to targeting of large reproductive adults within prey populations. Despite known impacts of sizeselective harvests, however, we know little about what enables hunters to kill these older, rarer, and presumably more wary individuals. In other mammalian predators, predatory performance varies with knowledge and physical condition, which accumulates and declines, respectively, with age. Moreover, some species evolved camouflage as a physical trait to aid in predatory performance. In this work, we tested whether knowledge-based faculty (use of a hunting guide with accumulated experience in specific areas), physical traits (relative body mass [RBM] and camouflage clothing), and age can predict predatory performance. We measured performance as do many hunters: size of killed cervid prey, using the number of antler tines as a proxy. Examining ,4300 online photographs of hunters posing with carcasses, we found that only the presence of guides increased the odds of killing larger prey. Accounting for this effect, modest evidence suggested that unguided hunters presumably handicapped with the highest RBM actually had greater odds of killing large prey. There was no association with hunter age, perhaps because of our coarse measure (presence of grey hair) and the performance tradeoffs between knowledge accumulation and physical deterioration with age. Despite its prevalence among sampled hunters (80%), camouflage had no influence on size of killed prey. Should these patterns be representative of other areas and prey, and our interpretations correct, evolutionarily-enlightened harvest management might benefit from regulatory scrutiny on guided hunting. More broadly, we suggest that by being nutritionally and demographically de-coupled from prey and aided by efficient killing technology and road access, wildlife hunters in the developed world might have overcome many of the physical, but not knowledge-based, challenges of hunting

Online Hunting Forums Identify Achievement as Prominent Among Multiple Satisfactions

Understanding hunter satisfactions can lead to improved wildlife management policy and practice. Whereas previous work has suggested that hunters often seek multiple satisfactions (achievement, affiliation, appreciation), little is known about how satisfactions might vary with target species. Additionally, past research has mostly gathered data using interviews and surveys, which might limit scope as well as introduce strategic bias for potentially provocative subjects such as hunting. To address these gaps, we analyzed data from online hunting forums, which provide an open-access source of peer-to-peer discussion that is geographically and taxonomically broad. We used directed qualitative content analysis to analyze hunting narratives for satisfactions by coding 2,864 phrases across 455 hunting “stories,” and compared patterns of dominant (most frequent) and multiple satisfactions between target species type (ungulates and carnivores) using forums from 3 regions: British Columbia, Canada; Texas, USA; and North America-wide. We found that achievement was the dominant satisfaction in 81% of ungulate and 86% of carnivore stories. Appreciation was nearly absent as a dominant satisfaction in carnivore stories. We found that 62% of ungulate and 53% of carnivore stories had multiple satisfactions present, indicating that appreciation and affiliation play important secondary satisfaction roles even when achievement is dominant. If these data are broadly representative of hunters on a larger scale, management policy instruments that ignore achievement may not evoke change in hunter behavior, particularly involving carnivore target species. Despite limitations associated with online forums (e.g., nonrepresentative of all hunters), they provide a new and valuable resource for wildlife management research

Why Men Trophy Hunt

The killing of Cecil the lion (Panthera leo) ignited enduring and increasingly global discussion about trophy hunting. Yet, policy debate about its benefits and costs focuses only on the hunted species and biodiversity, not the unique behaviour of hunters. Some contemporary recreational hunters from the developed world behave curiously, commonly targeting ‘trophies’: individuals within populations with large body or ornament size, as well as rare and/or inedible species, like carnivores. Although contemporary hunters have been classified according to implied motivation (i.e. for meat, recreation, trophy or population control, as well the ‘multiple satisfactions’ they seek while hunting (affiliation, appreciation, achievement; an evolutionary explanation of the motivation underlying trophy hunting (and big-game fishing) has never been pursued. Too costly (difficult, dangerous) a behaviour to be common among other vertebrate predators, we postulate that trophy hunting is in fact motivated by the costs hunters accept. We build on empirical and theoretical contributions from evolutionary anthropology to hypothesize that signalling these costs to others is key to understanding, and perhaps influencing, this otherwise perplexing activity

Stable Isotope Analysis Of Summer Wolf Diet In Northwestern Montana

When distinct ?13C and ?15N values of potential prey are known, stable isotope analysis (SIA) of wolf (Canis lupus) hair can be used to estimate diet variability at the individual, pack, and regional levels. Our objectives were to estimate intra-population diet variability, and determine proportions of prey consumed by wolves. We collected guard hairs of 45 wolves from 12 packs in northwestern Montana and temporally matched scats from 4 of the same packs, summer 2008 and 2009. We used hierarchical Bayesian stable isotope mixing models to determine diet and scales of diet variation from ?13C and ?15N values of wolves, deer (Odocoileus spp.), elk (Cervus canadensis), moose (Alces alces), and other prey. We calculated percent biomass of prey consumed from scats, and used bootstrapped scat data, and Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation data from stable isotopes to estimate confidence intervals of difference between results from each technique for the 4 packs with matched samples. Differences among packs explained most variability in diet based on stable isotopes, and moose was the most common prey item for 11 of 12 packs. From scat data, deer was the most common prey item for 3 of 4 packs, and estimates of moose consumed were significantly different from SIA estimates for the same 3 packs. The proportion of moose in wolf diet may have been overestimated by SIA because wolf-specific fractionation values were not available. Stable isotope analysis has the potential to efficiently provide useful management information, but experimentally derived fractionation values for wolves would likely improve the accuracy of estimates in future studies

Mismeasured Mortality: Correcting Estimates of Wolf Poaching in the United States

Measuring rates and causes of mortalities is important in animal ecology and management. Observing the fates of known individuals is a common method of estimating life history variables, including mortality patterns. It has long been assumed that data lost when known animals disappear were unbiased. We test and reject this assumption under conditions common to most, if not all, studies using marked animals. We illustrate the bias for 4 endangered wolf populations in the United States by reanalyzing data and assumptions about the known and unknown fates of marked wolves to calculate the degree to which risks of different causes of death were mismeasured. We find that, when using traditional methods, the relative risk of mortality from legal killing measured as a proportion of all known fates was overestimated by 0.05–0.16 and the relative risk of poaching was underestimated by 0.17–0.44. We show that published government estimates are affected by these biases and, importantly, are underestimating the risk of poaching. The underestimates have obscured the magnitude of poaching as the major threat to endangered wolf populations. We offer methods to correct estimates of mortality risk for marked animals of any taxon and describe the conditions under which traditional methods produce more or less bias. We also show how correcting past and future estimates of mortality parameters can address uncertainty about wildlife populations and increase the predictability and sustainability of wildlife management interventions

A Critical Assessment of Protection for Key Wildlife and Salmon Habitats under the Proposed British Columbia Central Coast Land and Resource Management Plan

The Central Coast Land and Resource Management Plan (CCLRMP) table recently declared a consensus1 on proposed protected areas for British Columbia’s Central Coast. This region is recognized for its globally rare and largely intact mainland and island ecosystems and land use decisions should reflect this importance. We evaluated the efficacy of this proposal using a spatial assessment of habitat. We focus on protected areas in the context of the overall CCLRMP. We examined the level of protection provided by the CCLRMP in three key coastal habitats: deer winter range, wolf reproductive habitat, and salmon reproductive and rearing habitat. Assessment of deer winter range was limited to Heiltsuk Territory, which comprises a large proportion of the CCLRMP region

The genetic legacy of extirpation and re-colonization in Vancouver Island wolves

Hybridization between wild and domestic species is of conservation concern because it can result in the loss of adaptations and/or disappearance of a distinct taxon. Wolves from Vancouver Island, British Columbia (Canada), have been subject to several eradication campaigns during the twentieth century and were considered virtually extirpated between 1950 and 1970. In this study, we use control region mitochondrial DNA sequences and 13 autosomal microsatellite loci to characterize Vancouver Island wolves as well as dogs from British Columbia. We observe a turnover in the haplotypes of wolves sampled before and after the 1950-1970 period, when there was no permanent wolf population on the island, supporting the probable local extinction of wolves on Vancouver Island during this time, followed by re-colonization of the island by wolves from mainland British Columbia. In addition, we report the presence of a domestic dog mtDNA haplotype in three individuals eliminated in 1986 that were morphologically identified as wolves. Here we show that Vancouver Island wolves were also identified as wolves based on autosomal microsatellite data. We attribute the hybridization event to the episodically small size of this population during the re-colonization event. Our results demonstrate that at least one female hybrid offspring, resulting from a cross of a male wolf and a female dog or a female hybrid pet with dog mtDNA, successfully introgressed into the wolf population. No dog mtDNA has been previously reported in a population of wild wolves. Genetic data show that Vancouver Island wolves are distinct from dogs and thus should be recognized as a population of wild wolves. We suggest that the introgression took place due to the Allee effect, specifically a lack of mates when population size was low. Our findings exemplify how small populations are at risk of hybridization. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.Peer Reviewe

Early Ontogenetic Diet in Gray Wolves, Canis lupus, of Coastal British Columbia

Within populations, different age classes often consume dissimilar resources, and provisioning of juveniles by adults is one mechanism by which this can occur. Although the diet of Gray Wolves (Canis lupus) has been studied extensively, the diet of pups is largely unknown. We examined faeces deposited by altricial pups and adult providers during the first two months following birth at two den sites over two years on the central coast of British Columbia, Canada. Pups and adult wolves consumed similar species, and Black-tailed Deer (Odocoileus hemionus) constituted most of the diet for both age groups. Pup and adult diet, however, diverged. Specifically, adult deer occurred significantly less frequently in the diet of pups than in the diet of adult wolves, which suggests that adults selectively provisioned pups. We speculate that this may relate to adaptive strategies of adult wolves to provide their offspring with food of optimal nutritional value or reduced parasitic burden, and/or logistic factors associated with provisioning such as prey transportability and availability