I read with interest your recent article titled “Range for Mexican gray wolves includes Rim Country.”
While the article is generally balanced and accurate, it contains one egregious factual error regarding the number of elk killed by Mexican wolves.
The article claims that, “(A) wolf consumes about one elk per week, which means 300 wolves would eat about 15,000 elk per year if they lived only on elk. That amounts to about 30 percent of the existing elk herd in the state.” It attributes this information to Arizona Game and Fish Department Assistant Director Jim de Vos.
This outrageous claim is eight times too high, requiring Mexican wolves to eat their weight in elk meat (about 50 pounds) every day!
Before Mexican wolves were first released, I and a team of wildlife biologists, including one from Mr. de Vos’ department, used published science to calculate the daily food consumption of Mexican wolves.
A generous estimate is about six pounds of prey by the average Mexican wolf per day, or about six elk per year — not 50. And given that wolves are avid scavengers, some of their food died of other causes.
via Numbers for wolf elk consumption in error | Payson Roundup – Payson, AZ.