![]() “Basically what they’re doing, through just their basic presence and predation, is allowing certain forests to remain undisturbed by beavers,” explained Tom Gable, a University of Minnesota researcher who leads the Voyageurs Wolf Project.įor Gable, while the study may not demonstrate wolves are dramatically altering forests on a wide scale, he said it does illustrate wolves “are connected through predation to larger ecological processes. They searched nearly 28,000 clusters of GPS locations from 51 collared wolves, documenting nearly 2,000 ambushing attempts by wolves, and more than 500 beavers killed by wolves. In this study, researchers found the farther beavers ventured away from ponds in search of food, the more likely they were to be killed by wolves. Over time, as beavers eat more and more deciduous trees close to the water, that creates what are known as “conifer halos” around ponds, easily seen from above. And they can have profound impacts on the makeup of the surrounding forest.īeavers prefer to eat deciduous trees, such as aspen, often leaving evergreen conifer trees standing. They travel along these trails to forage for food. The study examines what happens to the surrounding ecosystem when an apex predator, a wolf, meets up with a beaver, a major ecosystem engineer that shapes forests by cutting down trees and creates wetlands by damming creeks.īeavers in northern Minnesota create a network of well-defined trails emanating out from the ponds where they live. Now, in a study published earlier this month in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers found that wolves disproportionately kill beavers the farther away from water that they venture, thus helping to preserve the forest farther away from beaver ponds. Over the years they’ve uncovered some surprising predation behavior, including that wolves hunt freshwater fish, gorge on berries and kill a surprising number of beavers, often by waiting, sometimes for hours, to ambush beavers as they leave their ponds in search of forage. They gather evidence like forensic scientists, and sometimes set up trail cameras to help document future activity. They know it’s likely a place where the wolf ate something. Whenever a wolf spends more than 20 minutes in the same spot, scientists hike in to investigate. The collars send a location signal every 20 minutes. Most past studies of wolf predation have been conducted in the winter, when wolves are easier to track, and when they hunt in packs for large prey such as deer.Įvery spring, researchers place GPS collars on about a dozen wolves in their study area. “The rules of this predator-prey game change when people alter ecosystems, and it’s possible we have created conditions that may have tipped the scales in the predators’ favor.” Tracking wolvesįor the past decade, researchers have combined cutting-edge technology - GPS collars and trail cameras - with countless hours of sweaty, buggy field research to gain a better understanding of how wolves hunt during the summer months in the dense, boreal forest of northern Minnesota. “When we put all of the pieces together, it is pretty clear that the cumulative effects of all major aspects of human activity in the Northwoods - logging, infrastructure development, and road/trail development - have fundamentally changed where and how wolves hunt deer fawns here,” said Sean Johnson-Bice, a PhD candidate from the University of Manitoba and one of the lead authors of both studies.
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