Defenders Magazine

Maned Attraction

In Brazil, the maned wolf—a cousin of the gray wolf—is running out of room

by Heidi Ridgley

Tui de Roy/Minden Pictures

Rogerio Cunha de Paula is casually pointing out a large bird far off in the fog when our driver spots tracks in the red mud and slams on the brakes. The smell of skunk is unmistakable. It means only one thing here in Brazil's Serra da Canastra National Park: A maned wolf is near.

This aroma—distinctly nonwolf-like—is just one of the many traits that set South America's wolves apart from their North American brethren—and other wolves throughout the world, for that matter. A short distance down the road I learn about another difference when we pile out of the truck to examine the droppings this wolf left behind. When de Paula breaks apart the pile with a stick, it looks like a ripe avocado filled with seeds. It's the digested remains of the maned wolf's mainstay, lobeira, something similar to a green tomato that the Brazilian biologist calls "wolf fruit" in English.

"These wolves are genetically interesting," says de Paula, with the Brazilian nonprofit ProCarnivores Institute and CENAP, the government agency for conservation of biodiversity, who has been studying maned wolves in the wild since 2000. "Their skull and canines are like a wolf but they enjoy fruit like foxes—although they also eat small and medium mammals, birds and insects—and genetically they are most related to South American bush dogs—even though they look nothing like them." Maned wolves also don't howl or travel in packs like other wolves, but they do bark to attract mates and communicate territory, which could also be the reason behind their pungent smell.

Unfortunately the maned wolf, largest canid in South America at around 50 pounds, is running out of room to roam. Even in a country as large as Brazil—the size of the lower 48 states—their habitat is shrinking, making the wolves vulnerable to extinction. And like their canid cousins in other countries, these shy animals face unfair persecution for killing livestock, are wrongly considered dangerous to humans and too often end up as road kill. Long-held superstitions also put them in peril. Some villagers still hunt the wolves for the eyes, which they carry in their pockets or hang on their farm gates to repel evil spirits and bring good luck.

To help ensure the wolf's population remains viable into the future, de Paula and his colleagues are combining rural public education campaigns with a study of maned wolf ecology, behavior, health and genetics in and around Canastra, a land of springs, waterfalls, valleys and grassland plateaus in the southeast state of Minas Gerais. It's the reason we are barreling down this bumpy dirt road in the pounding rain with a bucketful of chicken in the backseat. The researchers use the meat as bait in steel cages designed to trap wolves they hope to evaluate.

"A series of rainy days will mean luck tomorrow," de Paula proclaims confidently on day two of getting our brains rattled on the five-hour drive around the park to check traps. He neglects to add, "If the sun appears." It's mid March, and the rainy season is almost over—but not quite. The day before all 19 traps stood empty, most of the bait stolen by caracaras, a South American bird of prey. "Wolves stay bedded down in the rain and don't look for food, so when the sun finally comes out they are hungry," he adds.

Canastra is one of the last strongholds for this wolf, which is also found in more limited numbers in Argentina, Boliva, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. The park is part of the cerrado, a vast tropical savannah, and one of the world's most important biodiversity "hotspots." Some 186 species of amphibians and 607 known bird species call it home, along with anteaters, armadillos, pampas deer, cougars, ocelots, jaguars, jaguarundi, capuchin monkeys, howler monkeys and black-tufted marmosets—along with about 23,000 maned wolves, the majority of the population.

"It's like one big biodiversity chest out here," says de Paula. But, including the park's 850 square miles, only 20 percent of the cerrado remains undisturbed, and what is left of the prime wolf habitat is threatened with being plowed under for soybeans and sugarcane, used to make ethanol. Even the park is not safe. Two-thirds of the land is protected only in theory because it is still in private hands.

Created in 1972 to protect the headwaters of three important rivers, the park later evolved into a sanctuary for endangered animals and rare flowers. But some people are now pushing to decrease its area by 25 percent to use the land not only for biofuel crops but for coffee and cattle ranching. "Two-thirds of the park is not physically protected," says de Paula. "It's just on paper. The government has not yet paid for the land."

About 80 wolves live exclusively inside the park, according to the latest research. The biologists have radio-collared 18 of them. But they are also capturing and studying wolves that live near the park border or on adjacent farms. From data on hormone levels, the researchers have found that wolves living in the farming areas are more stressed than those that live in the park—probably because of increased interaction with humans and dogs and because the wolves have to adjust to changes in the landscape.

"Wolves can adapt to living in some disturbed habitat, but when it's a monoculture crop it becomes a lot harder for them," says de Paula. "To harvest sugarcane, for example, farmers burn the plantation. I'm not saying biofuels aren't a good idea but there are so many other places to grow these crops instead of getting rid of natural areas. Why not plant them in the deforested areas that became pasture lands in the Amazon, for example, that have already been highly disturbed?"

Human encroachment poses other challenges for the wolves. One of the biggest is deadly diseases such as parvovirus, rabies and canine distemper carried by local, domestic dogs. More than 75 percent of the wolves in the study test positive for parvo, which is deadly to wolf pups with undeveloped immune systems.

To remedy these and other challenges for the wolves, de Paula's team works to educate local people. They move from village to village, trying to entice locals to presentations by offering free feature-length movies (many villagers don't have televisions or access to theatres). Before the feature movie, locals see a 10-minute film about the beauties of the park, or the problems of uncontrolled crop burns by farmers, or the benefits of having dogs vaccinated.

The team also uses other tools to reduce potential conflicts between villagers and wolves—including encouraging farmers to build chicken coops. "We are up against cultural habits here," says de Paula. "Locals tend to think it is easier to raise their chickens free and kill the wolf and that the park was created for the wolf, so the wolf should stay in the park. We try to convince them that wildlife and people need to coexist."

To this end, they educate farmers about the benefits of wolves: Wolves are great seed dispersers, for example, and they are good at keeping away rats and snakes. The biologists also inform farmers how much easier it is to manage chickens and find eggs if birds are kept inside coops at night. The group provided supplies to a few farmers that agreed to build coops, and these farmers have since become models of success for other farms. "We give them a sign that says this is part of a research project and this property was selected because of the owner's commitment to wildlife protection," says de Paula. "Then we bring the TV station here and make them important. Before, they were simply farmers. Now they stand out from the crowd because they are doing something novel for the world."

 Back in the park, though, it's day three and the weather still isn't cooperating. It's rainy and fog hangs in dense gray sheets, although it doesn't obscure the brilliant purple blur of the wolf fruit in bloom along the road as our truck rushes past. Everywhere spider webs are strung like hammocks between tall grasses.

By the time we reach the last trap, all they've caught is a caracara. Biologist Jean Pierre Santos runs down the trail in the drizzle to check the cage while the rest of us wait in the truck. After a few minutes, he comes strolling back to de Paula speaking Portuguese. This day, too, appears to be fruitless—until de Paula calmly turns to me and says, "Let's go see the wolf."

The researchers have named this one Pierre, and when de Paula met me at the airport in San Paulo earlier in the week, he assured me I would see this wolf: "Pierre loves our chicken. He's been captured an amazing amount of times. He probably knows that we will not anesthetize him every time. He realizes he can sleep there, that he's safe and no pumas will attack him."

Of the 20 wolves the team monitors, most have been caught fewer than 10 times. This is capture number 61 for Pierre—his second this week. "We are going to have a birthday cake for his 100th," jokes de Paula. At about eight years old, he's the oldest wolf in the study. Maned wolves probably live to around 10 years in the wild.

As we approach the cage, Pierre starts growling, and his bushy tail is tucked. His oversized ears—used to pick up sounds while hunting in tall grass—graze the top of the 3-foot- high cage. Fabiana Lopes Rocha, the field veterinarian, opens the cage and the wolf trots off awkwardly on his spindly black legs—also perfect for hunting in the grass—without looking back. He looks like a fox on stilts. They'll let him go today with a full stomach and no repercussions. "We want to be able to study these animals for a long time," says Rocha, "so we can't be anesthetizing them all the time."

Next month, though, Pierre's meal won't be free. When he's trapped, he'll have to provide a semen sample—taken annually in spring to monitor reproductive health.

"We don't yet have enough information about the impacts of disease, habitat loss and road kill on the reproductive successes of the wolves," says de Paula. "But we suspect these are the problems having a negative impact on the population. We saw dens last year, so they are giving birth. We just never saw any of the young grow up."

This is why de Paula believes protecting Canastra is so important. "It's a very delicate moment for the maned wolf," he says. "The park may be the only way to keep the species viable in the wild."

While reporting on this story, Senior Editor Heidi Ridgley got close enough to touch a maned wolf. But she didn't.