Defenders Magazine

Wolf Controversy in Canada

Algonquin Park's famous canids aren't the only ones howling

By Maryalice Yakutchik

These are the sounds of 2,336 people trying to be quiet: First, there is the crunch of gravel as 584 vehicles veer off to the sides of Highway 60, the main thoroughfare in Algonquin Provincial Park. Then, there is the slamming and sliding of thousands of doors as the masses emerge from canoe-bearing SUVs and mountain-bike-toting trucks with license plates that read Alberta and Ontario as well as Arizona and Florida. Next, there is a chorus of noses blowing and feet shuffling and flashlights flicking as senior citizens, toddlers and teens encounter the crisp Canadian chill of this deep summer night.

Per the instructions of Rick Stronks, chief park naturalist and host of this public ‘wilderness’ event -- the contradiction in terms is not lost on any of us -- our throat-clearing, jacket-rustling group is attempting, against all odds, to keep noise levels down to a low roar. Simply, we want to hear wolves howl.

We have just followed Stronks for a distance of 40 kilometers, our chuffing convoy stretching along an asphalt corridor straddled by the no-vacancy signs of myriad campgrounds and lodges. We saw moose foraging along the road and beaver dens in the wetlands but not a single white-tailed deer. In fact, the deer population here is way down, while moose are burgeoning, likely because of the forest maturing -- and also perhaps because the wolves are having an impact. At about 50 pounds, the park’s wolves are not much bigger than many pet dogs and are seemingly better suited to preying on deer and beaver than moose.

“This park is plugged with people," Stronks had observed earlier tonight, looking out on a crowd that overflowed the benches and spilled onto the forest floor at the outdoor theater to watch an 8 p.m. slide show about the world-famous wolves of Algonquin. The presentation was upbeat. Referring to the Algonquin wolf by the scientific name Canis lycaon, park naturalists assured the public that the species stretches from Quebec to Manitoba. They did their best to dispel fears that these wolves are an endangered, isolated population, addressed concerns about hybridization with coyotes (no problem, they said) and added that evidence about population decline is inconclusive. Later, I would discover that most of what we know about these wolves is the subject of intense debate.

Next, we were briefed about the logistics of this, the first public wolf howl of the year -- the first since the summer of 2000, in fact. After driving to the location, we are to wait in silence for the howlers to call, first singly, then in chorus.

By 10:45 p.m., everyone is lined up along the highway nearest the west gate of the park, hopefully within hearing distance of the wolf pack that Stronks and his team located last night. The human howlers -- longtime park naturalist (now-retired) Ron Tozer and seasonal naturalist Will Godsow, a student at the University of Guelph -- wait for Stronks’ command to howl. Though howling conditions on this clear and calm night are perfect, Stronks is still edgy. He keenly feels the pressure to “deliver" howls. The success rate for public wolf howls here is an unprecedented 88 percent.

That wolves will reply to human howls is not a recent discovery: Tolstoy alludes to it in his 1862 classic, The Cossacks. However, the late Dr. Douglas H. Pimlott rediscovered this fact in Algonquin Park during wolf research he conducted between 1959 and 1965 for the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests -- now the Ministry of Natural Resources. In an attempt to locate wolves in the summer months, when the highly mobile and shy predators are not easily spotted through the thick forest cover, Pimlott started using recorded wolf howls. On his first attempt in August 1959, wild wolves replied. Researchers soon discovered that their own voices were just as effective, if not more so, at eliciting replies. Four years later, the research howling evolved into a recreational and educational event, open to the public.

In Algonquin, packs typically consist of a handful of small, reddish wolves, usually related. Naturalists estimate about 35 packs live in the park today. The top-ranking alpha males and females breed in February, giving birth to at least a couple of pups per pack in late April or early May. At the end of July the wolves move from natal dens to secure “rendezvous sites" -- often old, dry beaver ponds where the grasses are overgrown -- where adult wolves leave the pups while they go hunting. Pups in rendezvous sites are extremely playful and vocal, keenly anticipating the return of adults that travel tremendous distances in pursuit of beaver, deer and moose. Wolves regularly change rendezvous sites, often several times a season.

Stronks is a bit skeptical about the success of this, the 86th public howl in Algonquin park since 1963. Two nights before, he and his team of wolf-scouters located a vocal pack when they howled from the parking lot of the Western Uplands Backpacking Trail, at kilometer 3. Last night, there was no reply when Stronks howled from that same location, but when his scouters howled a couple kilometers away, closer to the west gate, they were rewarded with a raucous chorus of pups that sounded almost close enough to reach out and pet. When Stronks howled there later in the night, the pups answered again, cementing his decision to schedule the first howl in two years. Still, he suspects the pack is mobile and knows it could just as easily have moved on today as stayed put.

Stronks waits for utter silence from the crowd. A few miles to the east, a logging truck barrels along Highway 60, whisking away Algonquin Park pines that succumbed today to whirring chain saws. (About 75 percent of Algonquin’s 7,725 square kilometers are available to be logged -- a quarter of the park is off limits -- and about 2 percent is logged in any given year.)

Finally, at 11:11 p.m., Stronks’ command crackles across Tozer’s radio: ‘Commence howling!’

Tozer lets loose with a siren-like wail. Once, twice, three times.

Nothing but his own echo answers.

He and Godsow howl in chorus now. Once, twice, three times.

Silence.

Tozer radios Stronks. He’s saying something about “our goose being cooked" when a wolf howls in the distance. Then a chorus of pups lets loose with yipping and yapping. Another more sonorous reply comes from far to the north. The responses are delayed and distant. But no matter. I am holding my breath, my eyes are wide, I’m smiling in the dark.

These are the sounds of a handful of people -- scientists, civil servants, naturalists, conservationists and sportsmen -- trying to answer a few seemingly simple questions: What kind of wolf inhabits Algonquin Provincial Park? What is its range? Is the population stable and self-sustaining?

First, there is posturing and snarling behind closed doors and in the press. Then, petty name calling and outright character assaults between “stakeholders" whose opinions, data and personal interests place them on opposite sides of wolf issues. Next, there is grudging compromise -- on the part of some, at least -- about a recent management decision. On New Year’s Day, the Ontario provincial government enacted a 30-month ban on the killing of all wolves in the 39 townships surrounding Algonquin, Ontario’s oldest park. The moratorium was won largely on the basis of population data collected from 1988 to 1999 by scientists John and Mary Theberge of Waterloo, British Columbia. During more than a decade of radio-tracking the wolves of Algonquin, the Theberges reported that the average annual rate of human killing of their radio-collared Algonquin wolves was about 25 percent, with peaks of as high as 50 percent in a couple of years. Although wolves were protected inside the park’s boundaries, the Theberges discovered that they were being shot, trapped, snared and poisoned at an alarming rate the minute they stepped out of it, which they did with regularity during the winter months while preying on deer. Meanwhile, on average just 21 percent of pups were surviving their first winter. “The writing was on the wall if it stayed like that," John Theberge predicted.

There is no population data since 1999, when the Theberges wearily ceased their research because of “so many years of persecution by the Ontario government," John Theberge says now. The Ontario government has published plans to conduct intensive research during the 30-month moratorium, but a civil service strike earlier this year has delayed the start of that project.

In the early days of Algonquin -- up until just 25 years ago -- the destruction of wolves was considered desirable. George Bartlett, park superintendent from 1898 to 1922, regularly wrote for Rod and Gun magazine, churning out articles such as “How shall we destroy the wolf?" In the mid 1960s, the park began conducting bona fide wolf research, but even at the end of that effort, rangers attempted to collect (kill) most of the wolves in the park study area in order to determine numbers and gender.

Today, says L. David Mech, U.S. Geological Survey biologist and founder of the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota, “the Algonquin wolf is not imminently threatened; there are plenty of them up there. The moratorium on hunting and trapping will make some difference but not a big deal." He says it “is a symbolic victory for the pro-wolf people, but I don’t know if it’s going to have a real impact on the population."

In fact, after decades of data collection on population, behavior, morphology and genetics, and in the face of enlightened public attitudes and evolving politics, bitter arguments cloud almost every aspect of the park’s wolf population. The truths about their taxonomy, range, population and management change drastically according to who is doing the talking.

It is no surprise to most that the controversies surrounding the wolves of Algonquin weigh heavily on the issue of wolf recovery in the northeastern United States. If wolf reintroduction ever does take place here — and Mech says he doesn’t see it happening for at least half a century, given that it took 25 years for a national park such as Yellowstone to get wolves — a big decision would be which species fits best into the current ecological niche. The small, endangered red wolf (Canis rufus)? The big, moose- eating gray wolf (Canis lupus)? Or the Algonquin wolf, which some scientists recently proposed to be classified as a distinct species (Canis lycaon)?

These are the sounds of scientists debating the origins of the Algonquin wolf: Scientists have not agreed on the true genetic identity of the Algonquin wolf. That is, how exactly is this animal related to the gray wolf, the red wolf and even the coyote? Until recently, this eastern wolf was designated as a subspecies of the gray wolf and named Canis lupus lycaon. But advances in genetics have called this designation into question.

Recent research data from geneticists Bradley White of McMaster University and Paul Wilson of the University of Trent, both in Ontario, suggests that the Algonquin wolf, the red wolf and the coyote (Canis latrans) evolved in North America, whereas the gray wolf evolved in Eurasia. These scientists propose that the Algonquin wolf is closely related if not identical to the red wolf and should receive the new taxonomic designation Canis lycaon. But biologist Robert Wayne of the University of California at Berkeley disagrees, arguing that Algonquin’s wolves are the result of hybridization between gray wolves and coyotes within the last 250 years. And former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Ronald Nowak recently published a study in the journal Southeastern Naturalist arguing that, based on skull specimens, the Algonquin wolf is a hybrid between gray and red wolves. To complicate matters even further, while historically scientists have identified the red wolf as a distinct species, some scientists believe it is a hybrid between gray wolves and coyotes.

“We can’t even be sure what a red wolf is, and now the Algonquin wolf is thrown into that picture," says biologist Mech. The truth, according Mech, is elusive and just might remain that way indefinitely: “The evidence points in different directions, and we don’t have the whole picture. In fact, I’m not sure you can have the whole picture. Certainly more genetics work needs to be done. But sometimes that just adds to the complexity of it."

White and Wilson’s studies also demonstrate that, unlike the red wolves of eastern North Carolina, Algonquin Park wolves don’t tend to interbreed with eastern coyotes. Using this information, these scientists argue in favor of an ecosystem approach to managing the park’s wildlife, allowing “continued gene flow of the park wolves with packs in the north and west" to minimize hybridization and to allow “the evolution of the Algonquin wolves to a changing ecosystem, which is far preferable to managing the park for deer and ill-adapted smaller animals."

These are the sounds of chief park naturalists, present and former: Algonquin Park naturalists long suspected their smallish reddish wolves to be “different" somehow, but until two years ago, considered them to be a special race of gray wolf. Now the park embraces Wilson and White’s genetic research and espouses the view that Algonquin wolves are members of the newly identified species Canis lycaon, which stretches east from Quebec to Manitoba. These wolves, they say, are not in danger of hybridization. The evidence about population decline, they add, is inconclusive.

Dan Strickland, retired chief park naturalist of 30 years, says, “No one person is the complete arbiter or keeper of the truth. It’s only we human beings wrestling with the data we gather."

Strickland is skeptical about Theberges’ claim that the Algonquin population is in trouble, but he still sees a problem with their management. “The problem was that Algonquin wolves, supposedly protected by the park, were subjected to human killing the moment they stepped outside the park bounds — as if a far-ranging predator can know and abide by arbitrary human boundaries," he says. Even though he doesn’t think the overall population is in danger, he says “these Algonquin Park wolves deserve to be protected as a matter of principle. It’s a function of the park."

“If you stop the killing, you stop the problem," Strickland says. “As a civil servant and a scientist and an interested person, I do not have the right to mislead the public just because I’m pro-wolf. And of course, I am pro-wolf. I have a 30-year record of fostering better attitudes toward wolves."

These are the sounds of conservationists: “For the time being, the wolves are better off, says Chris Henschel of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Wildlands League. “The moratorium was the right idea, but the sunset clause is a real problem. It’s just going to expire and the onus will be on those who want to protect wolves."

Jean Langlois, executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Ottawa Valley, agrees. “We’ve been working for six years to get that moratorium in place, and think it’s a very good thing." But he says it will take several generations to permanently boost numbers. “That’s not going to happen in 30 months."

“The other limitation is that the moratorium is limited to wolves, not coyotes," says Henschel. “It’s difficult to tell the difference between them in the field."

In fact, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources District Manager Ray Bonenberg admitted in July that the 30-month moratorium is unenforceable — because it doesn’t apply to the similarly sized coyotes.

These are the sounds of John Theberge: Theberge describes Algonquin as a “shot-over, hunted-over, trapped-up, logged-over environment that’s increasingly isolated by exploitative land use around it." Human activity is going to change the genotype of the animal that’s there, he says: “So maybe we have been studying the living dead.

“With the human killing stopped, if its really stopped, then the data suggest the population should start to come back, but it’ll take years. So many variables can affect the numbers: heavy snowfall, ticks, migration of deer. You can’t make a management decision after three years.

“We have to ask ourselves if we want wolves to make us happy, or if we want wolves for wolves’ sake. . . .

“A park must maintain natural selective pressures that keep forging the species. If humans are the most significant thing animals have to face in a park — and in Algonquin the major mortality factor, more than all others combined, was human killing — that park is failing. At the end of three years, you have no choice but to leave that ban on."

These are the sounds of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters: Ed Reid, OFAH wildlife biologist, says the moratorium will not work for three reasons. First, he says, there was no need for the ban in the first place. Second, the province did not make any effort at public education, and third, any results will be muddied by “the many other factors that affect wolf reproduction and survival."

“Hunters and trappers are conservationists, first and foremost," Reid says. “They understand thoroughly that they can benefit from the regulated sustainable harvest of wildlife providing the core breeding population, its habitat and its food sources are maintained. They will support scientifically sound regulations to conserve wolves, and other species, and abide by such restrictions.

“But they understandably oppose unnecessary politically motivated restrictions, especially when it threatens their livelihood and heritage, and by implication unfairly casts them as wildlife villains. It is as though yesterday’s myths of the big bad wolf have been replaced with new myths about a noble creature’s persecution at the hands of big bad hunters. Don’t believe it."

Reid says hunters and trappers tried to strike a compromise by agreeing to strictly limited hunting and trapping seasons. “Out of the many groups with opinions about what is needed to protect the wolves of Algonquin, hunters and trappers were the only stakeholders asked to ‘give something up’ for added wolf protection."

The absolute last sounds heard on this subject should be those of the wolves. With the new moratorium in place, all sides agree to at least one thing: these animals will be howling 30 months from now in Algonquin Provincial Park. In the meantime, the rest of the voices will continue unabated.

Maryalice Yakutchik wrote about Florida’s manatees in the winter/spring 2002 issue of Defenders.