Alaska Wolf Found With Record Amount of Mercury, a Sign of Growing Contamination
From E360.Yale.edu:
In the summer of 2013, two Alexander Archipelago wolves (Canis lupus ligoni), a subspecies of gray wolf, swam across a narrow channel to reach Pleasant Island, Alaska, a 19-square-mile rock jutting out of the stormy Gulf of Alaska. Wolves hadn’t previously lived on Pleasant Island, and they quickly ran roughshod over the island’s deer population. Within a few years, the wolves blossomed to a family of 13, and the deer, in turn, were entirely wiped out.
As the deer declined, Gretchen Roffler, a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, wondered about the wolves’ fate.
