Carnivore coexistence team working to help smooth wolf reintroduction in Colorado

From CBS Colorado:

Wolf reintroduction to Colorado is imminent, and while Colorado Parks and Wildlife put the finishing touches on the plan, a team over at Colorado State University is working to make sure things go as smoothly as humanly possible.

Kevin Crooks, a professor in the fish, wildlife and conservation biology department at CSU and director of the Center for Human Carnivore Coexistence, has been studying carnivores of all kinds for years. He’s been tapped to help make sure the reintroduction of wolves into Colorado’s high country and Western Slope is the least dangerous for the wolves, along with the humans and livestock in those areas.

 

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Watch The First Footage Of A Single Wolf Hunting And Killing A Seal

From IFLScience:

Wolves are famously pack animals, living and hunting together in family groups, they are famous for working together to take down prey items like caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and moose (Alces alces). Now, observations of wolves in Katmai National Park have shown they have developed a taste for a new kind of prey: marine mammals.

 

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Researchers observe wolves hunting and killing sea otters and harbor seals on Alaska’s Katmai coast

From Oregon State University:

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Firsthand observations of a wolf hunting and killing a harbor seal and a group of wolves hunting and consuming a sea otter on Alaska’s Katmai coast have led scientists to reconsider assumptions about wolf hunting behavior.

Wolves have previously been observed consuming sea otter carcasses, but how they obtain these and the frequency of scavenging versus hunting marine prey is largely unknown. Scientists at Oregon State University, the National Park Service and Alaska Department of Fish and Game are beginning to change that with a paper just published in Ecology.

 

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Will rule allowing for killing of wolves that attack livestock sink Colorado’s reintroduction efforts?

From The Aspen Times:

As the final steps fall into place before wolves are officially reintroduced to Colorado, policies governing both lethal take in response to livestock depredation and how to foster coexistence with the apex predator have been a flashpoint among livestock growers, conservationists and lawmakers.

It’s been a long, three-year haul from Colorado voter approval of gray wolf reintroduction to the creation of the Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan in May to locating a viable population in a Western state that is willing to donate the wolves. (Oregon announced in early October that it would donate 10 wolves after other Western states with established populations declined to do so.)

 

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Conservationists fail in push to tighten Washington wolf killing rules

From Idaho Capital Sun:

Washington fish and wildlife officials have declined a request from conservation groups to tighten restrictions around when wolves that attack livestock can be killed.

A petition the groups filed in September with the state Fish and Wildlife Commission described Washington’s system for dealing with wolf-livestock conflicts as “ineffective.” It asked the panel to reopen rulemaking in order to put in place stricter protocols for when the state or ranchers are allowed to kill wolves.

 

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Carnivore coexistence team working to help smooth wolf reintroduction

From CBS Colorado:

Researchers with Colorado State University and Colorado Parks and Wildlife have brought ranchers from Montana who already have to contend with wolves to help educate Colorado high country and Western Slope ranchers.

 

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U of M study suggests humans have impacted how wolves hunt deer

From KARE 11:

ST PAUL, Minn. — Humans may be unwittingly impacting the health of the deer herd in northern Minnesota by allowing wolves to hunt more efficiently.

That is the early conclusion of new research carried out by the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, in conjunction with partners including Northern Michigan University, the University of Manitoba, Voyageurs National Park and the Voyageurs Wolf Project.

 

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FWP Releases Draft of New Wolf Conservation and Management Plan

From Flathead Beacon:

Despite their generally shy and elusive nature, in recent years gray wolves have frequently found themselves at the center of controversy and litigation in Montana. As conflicts about species conservation and management fuel politicized debate, stakeholders have vastly different visions about what proper wolf population management should look like in the state.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) released a draft of their 2023 Gray Wolf Conservation and Management Plan last week, the first update in 20 years, to guide future wolf management policy. The department is currently accepting comments to incorporate public perspectives as they finalize the document. They will not, however, be creating an advisory committee with representatives of stakeholder groups.

 

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Perceptions vary as Colorado prepares for wolf reintroduction

From Vial Daily:

Tony Prendergast’s XK Bar Ranch sits slightly south of Crawford, Colorado, near the Smith Fork of the North Fork of the Gunnison River on the southern edge of the agriculturally rich North Fork Valley. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison lies to the southwest. The 260-acre ranch butts up against the West Elk Mountains, four miles east of the West Elk Wilderness, almost smack-dab in the middle of where gray wolves could be released this winter.

He lives in a small, strawbale house, built in the trees next to the main pasture. His cow dogs, Huckle and Django, follow him everywhere. His son, Darby, is a ranch partner and lives in an airy, 100-year-old house on the property with his girlfriend and two dogs, Pancho and Lefty.

 

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Meet the leader of Yellowstone’s wolf-watching pack

From 9News:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — The search for wolves in Yellowstone National Park starts by spotting a different kind of pack — the human kind.

Wolf spotters line the road whenever they spot an animal. And then more people join. And a few more. Until what seems like half the park’s visitors are zoomed in on their scopes to a tiny wolf-shaped speck way in the distance.

 

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