Yellowstone wolves

Study suggests wolf harvest reduces park sightings 

In Yellowstone National Park by TwowolvesLeave a Comment

Yellowstone Wolves

 

Hunting wolves outside Yellowstone and Denali national parks reduces the opportunity for tourists to see a wolf, a recent study suggests.

“I was really surprised,” said Laura Prugh, assistant professor of Quantitative Wildlife Sciences at the University of Washington and co-author of the study. “I didn’t think that we were going to find an effect on sightability because the number of wolves being trapped was too low to have an effect on the population size.”

The first of its kind study to tie wolf harvest and sightability theorizes that it is possible the wolves being shot or trapped outside the parks are bolder, a personality trait that would also make them more likely to be visible to tourists inside the parks.

“However, the direct link between exposure to harvest and subsequent behavioral avoidance leading to reduction in sightings was not explicitly tested in our analysis and warrants further investigation,” the report stated.

Wolf viewing

The research concentrated on Yellowstone wolf sightings, pack sizes, den site locations and harvest between 2008 and 2013, a total of 552 days’ worth of notes compiled by Yellowstone wolf researcher Rick McIntyre. In that time McIntyre reported seeing one or more wolves between Mammoth, Wyo., and Silver Gate, Mont., on 436 of those days.

Perhaps nowhere else in the world are wolves so visible to the public. Right now a pack has created a den within sight of a road near Slough Creek in Yellowstone. Last Friday, two pups were seen exiting the den.

“Wolf researchers used to have to spend days in the wilderness to see something like that,” Smith said.

Source: Study suggests wolf harvest reduces park sightings | Outdoors | billingsgazette.com

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