Wolf Update From Tom At NPS - March 13, 2008

Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:57:36 -0800> > > Hi Christine, Here's an up-to-date map of the travels of the East Fork wolf since we put the GPS collar on him at the end of November. We captured 11 wolves with a helicopter last week. Five of them were wolves that we'd collared before but either their collars had failed or we expected them to fail soon. One wolf we caught was a gray female from the East Fork Pack whose collar failed recently. We try to keep two collars in each pack so we can find them again if one wolf dies or leaves or its collar fails. But right now we're missing four packs, two on the east end and two out west. We had more collared wolves than usual get killed this winter, some by people and some by wolves. We picked up the collars from five wolves killed by wolves, and all five had been completely eaten up. That's unusual. Usually wolves kill other wolves for territorial aggression, not for food. We've never known a wolf in Denali to be killed by their own pack, always by neighboring packs. When you look at the map of the East Fork wolf's travels, those locations out by the Toklat, and the ones in the east end of the park, represent places where the pack is ovelapping with other wolf packs (the Grant Creek Pack to the west and the Mount Margaret Pack to the east). That overlap is the main reason why these packs encounter one another and kill off their neighbors. Over half of the wolves in Denali end up being killed by neighboring wolf packs. Over the next few weeks I'm going to make this year's map of wolf packs and wolf population estimate, so I'll send you a copy when I do. We have four big packs in the park now, the East Fork and McKinley Slough packs, both with more than 15 wolves. The others are all under 10 wolves. (See attached file: EF wolf Mar 11.jpg) Tom Meier Wildlife Biologist Denali National Park and Preserve