Beteszem ide a cikked,k0b0ldka,engedelmeddel.(törölték a linkedet)Kanadai farkasok helyzetéről.Köszönet.
Canada's Wolves
Searching for answers to the riddles surrounding some of
North America's least-known wolves........By Matthew Jackson
We were halfway across the mouth of a flooding tidal river on the central coast of Canada's British Columbia, chest high in water, when the misty air around us erupted in wolf song. It was not the beautiful or mournful howling that you sometimes hear when sitting around a backcountry campfire, but rather an agitated barking that was intended to let us know, as intruders, that we should keep our distance. So we stopped on that September morning frozen in the middle of the powerful current, wondering exactly what we should do next.
I was accompanying a group of researchers with the Raincoast Conservation Society, a Canadian nonprofit group, who are studying the coastal wolves of British Columbia. The researchers, led by biologist Chris Darimont, and sponsored in part by a grant from Defenders of Wildlife, had come across this inlet several weeks before. Resting on their boat after a long day of bushwacking and following game trails in search of wolf scat, they were suddenly jolted awake when an adult wolf and five pups appeared along the shore less than 100 feet away. When they went ashore the following day they found wolf trails crisscrossing the tidal flats, dozens of headless salmon strewn along the riverbanks and a plethora of other wolf sign. Now we were back to find the wolves, and it appeared they had found us first.
The coastal wolves we had stumbled upon are a bit of an enigma. The animals that inhabit the isolated rainforests and shores from Canada's Vancouver Island north to Yakutat Bay in Alaska differ in subtle ways from their interior cousins. For several decades, scientists have been unable to agree whether these wolves should be classified as one or several distinct subspecies. Currently most wildlife biologists lump them together with the so-called "plains wolf" of interior North America. Dairmont and other researchers along the Pacific coast are gathering data about these wolves in the hope of "shaking things up"--providing evidence that these animals are unique. And, perhaps more important, they are hoping to publicize the threats to the ancient rainforests where these and many other exceptional creatures live.
In the rugged, rainy and largely roadless terrain where coastal wolves live, traditional methods of data gathering--tracking animals by foot, truck and plane--are difficult. So Darimont (a doctoral student working under the supervision of biologist Paul Paquet at the University of Victoria in Canada) and his crew are using transport usually reserved for marine biologists--a 54-foot sailboat. Plying the Pacific shores, the researchers disembark frequently to comb the shores and cool rainforests for wolf signs--tufts of hair and bits of scat--from which they can extract DNA. In four years of work, they've combed 25,000 square miles and collected more than 4500 samples.
From their observations and the work of other scientists, the researchers say that Canada's coastal wolves generally appear smaller than their continental cousins. This may be because their primary prey, the Sitka black-tailed deer, is much smaller than the prey of wolves living elsewhere. Coastal wolf hair also appears to be coarser and better at shedding water, perhaps an adaptation to the heavy rainfall in the region, the researchers speculate. Coastal wolves
also behave differently. They feed heavily on salmon during the fall and can swim across sizable saltwater channels to find prey or new territories. Darimont's team has found evidence of wolves on Dundas Island, which is nearly seven miles from other islands. In another instance, a radio-collared wolf on the Alaska Panhandle swam at least seven miles across Clarence Strait, between two islands. "There's some big water out there--tides, large swells and powerful currents," says Darimont. "These channels are obviously a barrier to movement, but how much of a barrier?"
A key question for scientists, conservationist and government officials is whether coastal wolves are different enough to warrant classifying these animals as one or more unique subspecies. Darimont's team has sent wolf scat and hair samples to scientists at the Conservation Genetics Laboratory at the University of California--Los Angeles for DNA testing. The results so far indicate that coastal wolves of Canada have several unique genetic sequences, or haplotypes, in their DNA strands. "What's exciting about coastal wolves is that we've identified several haplotypes which haven't been identified anywhere else on the continent," says Darimont.
This information adds credence to the argument that coastal wolves are unique, and may have been evolving in isolation over several millennia. It may, for example, undercut the belief common among many scientists that interior wolves repopulated the Pacific coast about 8000 years ago, after the glaciers of the last ice age retreated. An alternative theory, put forth by biologists Tom Reimchen and Ashley Byun from the University of Victoria, is that several large ice-free refuges on the Pacific coast may have allowed groups of wolves and other animals to evolve in relative isolation for as long as 360,000 years.
As important as these questions are, they become merely academic if there are no more coastal wolves to study. Although there aren't good estimates of the total population of wolves in coastal British Columbia and Alaska, experts estimate that wolves in southeastern Alaska's vast Alexander Archipelago number fewer than 1000. And conservationists worry that logging of the ancient coastal forests poses a threat to these animals and other wildlife in the region.
One problem with logging is that it requires an extensive network of roads, which in turn bring hunters and poachers into previously undisturbed areas. Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Dave Person has studied the effect of roads on wolves, and what he found was disturbing. "During the study, 35 out of 70 of my radio-collared wolves were killed by hunters, and half of the 35 were shot illegally," says Person. "If people have access to a territory, even if you have laws that restrict the killing of wolves, people are going to kill them because they see them as competition for deer." In some logged regions, Person found that 30 to 40 percent of the wolf population was killed.
Person, who has also been studying wolf-deer interactions on the Alaska Panhandle, points to another longer-term problem with logging. A few years back, protecting old-growth forests for the sake of deer might have seemed absurd. It was common knowledge then that deer benefited from the spurt of edible forage that grows in an area after the timber has been taken out. Person has since learned, however, that although deer may enjoy a smorgasbord at first, in the long run they're getting a raw deal. The new trees that eventually grow in cut sections are spaced much closer together, blocking the sun and choking off the low-growing vegetation on which deer depend for food.
Person has found that old-growth forests in the area support 40 or 50 deer per square mile, while 40-year-old "second-growth" forests only support about three deer per square mile. Fewer deer inevitably means fewer wolves. "Clear-cut logging sets in motion a pattern of change that upsets predator-prey dynamics several decades into the future," Person says.
U.S. Forest Service officials respond that they are addressing these concerns. "The good news is that our thinking has changed up here," says U.S. Forest Service biologist Tom Hanley. "The Forest Service isn't just interested in growing wood fiber anymore. We want to improve wildlife habitat." Hanley points to forest-management programs to encourage red alder (which foresters used to kill as a weed) and other species of 'wildlife friendly' undergrowth to thrive in cut forests.
Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that the Alaska Panhandle has already been heavily logged. More than 400,000 acres have been cut in the Tongass National Forest (which covers most of the south- eastern Alaskan Panhandle), and 3000 to 4000 miles of logging roads have been built. Another 600,000 acres have been logged on private lands. In 2002, the Forest Service spent $36 million taxpayer dollars on the Tongass timber sales, and made only $1 million. "If the free market system was allowed to function, it's doubtful that logging would even occur on the panhandle," says Tom Waldo of Earthjustice, a California-based nonprofit environmental law firm. "But with government subsidies it becomes a whole different story."
Despite these issues, the government continues to move ahead with logging in the Tongass. Over the next decade, for example, the Forest Service has plans for 40 timber sales in previously unroaded areas. In coastal British Columbia, logging is also proceeding apace. Although the provincial government recently agreed to protect 20 percent of their coastal rainforests, the important island habitats were largely overlooked. "There seems to be this convergence between the needs of wildlife and the greed of industry," says Darimont. "If we don't do something to resolve it, history has shown us that wildlife will lose."
And what of the wolves on the far side of the river? For now they are living in a pristine, unroaded territory, their greatest disturbance a couple of unwanted visitors. When Darimont spotted us crossing, he quickly waved us back to the near shore. My colleague and I executed an abrupt turn and forded back to where, we hoped, we would no longer pose a threat to the pack's young pups. We can only hope that others will learn to offer coastal wolves the same respect.
Defenders of Wildlife Magazine Winter 2005 Edition
