To get close with our audio equipment, we had to track the wolves every day to learn where they’d most recently been within their large territories. Wolves naturally avoid coming near people, but the best quality recordings are made up close to where the animals are producing the sounds. And then of course comes the actual fieldwork. We had to constantly check ourselves for ticks. Biting insects, especially mosquitoes and deer flies, are abundant in wolf habitat. On any given day, there can be daunting weather fluctuations. It would be an understatement to say fieldwork can be challenging. So with the support of the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience at Carthage College, volunteers from the Timber Wolf Information Network, and wildlife managers at Sandhill Wildlife Area in Babcock, Wisconsin, my undergraduate students Cara Hull and Caitlin McCombe and I began to record wolves in the wild. Their research provided evidence that it made sense to test whether vocal identification in wild animals is possible. In 2013, behavioral ecologist Holly Root-Gutteridge and her colleagues successfully demonstrated that they could identify individual wolves in captivity using acoustic features. Caitlin McCombe, CC BY-ND Listening to learn who’s who This method is used to track a wide array of animals, including turtles, birds, bats, whales, fish, snakes and more.Īngela Dassow and Cara Hull survey a road in central Wisconsin for signs of wolves. Researchers can then use aerial surveys where a pilot searches for the collared animal or ground surveys where a field crew drives throughout a pack territory searching for feedback from the radio signal. In spite of these risks, radio-collaring has been the standard way to track populations because each collar’s radio-transmitter frequency acts as a unique identifier of an individual. Even after an animal is successfully radio-collared and released, it’s still vulnerable to predators while the sedative wears off. Human handling of a sedated wolf can also be stressful on the pack members that are often nearby, observing the scene. If successful, the animal needs to be sedated before it can be removed from the trap – which can be stressful both for the wolf and the researchers involved.Ī sedated wolf cannot regulate its body temperature and overheating can become an issue on hot days. Once they’ve identified a suitable area, they set traps that must be checked every 24 hours. To successfully set a trap, wildlife managers must first spend days, if not weeks, scouting for signs of wolves. Fish and Wildlife Service employee fastens a radio collar onto a sedated female gray wolf. This experience led to several conversations with the wildlife biologists in the area about whether wolf howls could be used to help identifying non-radio-collared pack members.Ī U.S. During the summer trapping seasons, I became familiar with each of the wolves in the central forest region of Wisconsin. I was fortunate to participate in this entire process firsthand as an undergraduate student. While effective, this approach is time intensive and expensive, and entails risks for the animals. The traditional way to track wolves involves setting traps, sedating and then radio-collaring individual animals. Keeping track of wolf pack movements is important for reducing human-wolf conflicts which can arise when packs move too close to ranches. Wolf populations are growing in North America – the Great Lakes region in particular now supports over 3,700 individuals. Love them or hate them, wolves are vital members of natural ecosystems and the health of a wolf population can be an important factor in maintaining balance among species.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |