Are wolves protected? 

 

Canada provides one of the greatest opportunities worldwide to ensure that wolves continue to thrive as part of a functioning predator-prey ecosystem. ​ Large carnivores are declining across Canada and the globe. Presently, even the largest North American parks are inadequate in size to fully protect wolves (1,4,7,8). ​

 

Even though large carnivores such as wolves are protected within national parks, these predators are threatened by stresses such as human use and development inside parks, as well as hunting, land development, transportation routes and other pressures that occur outside park boundaries. ​ From Ontario eastward, wolves are gone from all national parks except Pukaskwa and La Mauricie. In the west, wolves have disappeared from Elk Island and Grasslands national parks. In several national parks, wolf populations are low and have a low probability of persistence. (16)

 

Wolf ecologists Paul Paquet and Lu Carbyn, who have been studying Canadian wolves both inside and outside of protected areas for several decades assert that the ‘effectiveness of existing reserves that are too small, or have unsuitable configurations, could be improved by the creation of buffer zones’.(8)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many Canadians, as well as people around the world, are under the impression that Canada remains a vast wilderness with ample protection for wolves and other large carnivores.  National Parks are still viewed by many as safe-havens where ecological integrity is the priority. The unfortunate reality is that protected areas in Canada are not large enough for multiple wolf families to live safely removed from human threats.  Renowned large carnivore expert Dr. Paul Paquet and others describe this in their Summary Report on the Effects of Human Activity on Gray Wolves in the Bow River Valley, Banff National Park.   

 

Learn more about Conservation Biology and Carnivore Conservation in the Rocky Mountains which has documented the Mountain National Parks (Banff, Jasper, Yoho and Kootenay) to be acting as a sinkhole for wolves rather than a source.   Caroline Callaghan of the Central Rockies Wolf Project completed her PhD thesis on this topic in 2002, titled The Ecology of the Gray Wolf, Canis lupus, Habitat Use, Survival and Persistence in the Central Rocky Mountains, Canada.  This research documented that out of 12 packs, only 1 pack remained within a completely protected area and that although 10 out of 12 wolf packs occupied protected areas, 11 packs lost members to humans beyond park boundaries or even within protected areas, and that 5 out of 6 packs who had territories in parks lost members to auto or train collisions.  READ MORE.

 

To avoid the extinction vortex often faced by small isolated populations of a species, habitats and regions must be interconnected to allow for genetic exchange and dispersal over long-distances. For wolves, whose territory requirements can be up to 3,000 square kilometers for a single pack in the Central Rocky mountains, there is no exception. Rather, by protecting the habitat requirements of wide-ranging species such as wolves, ecological integrity can be maintained throughout the functioning ecosystem. Learn more about the Extinction Debt of Protected Areas in Developing Landscapes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park Buffer Zone Success Story Sets an Example for the rest of Canada

 

Wolf biologist Dr. Linda Rutledge has been researching eastern wolves in Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park since a permanent harvest ban on wolves and coyotes was implemented around the provincial park in 2001. Her findings show that: “allowing wolves to express their natural social behaviour benefits ecosystems”(5). The harvest ban, or buffer zones, prevent the harvest of wild canids in every township surrounding the park. It resulted after decades of research by John and Mary Theberge indicated that the wolf population in Algonquin relied on unprotected wolves outside of the park to keep the population stable. The exploited wolves had smaller territories, more dispersers, less cooperative hunting methods, and mixed family relations compared to post-ban wolves who functioned more as a family unit, shared bloodlines and died from natural causes (5).

 

Thanks to scientific research and public pressure, the ban was imposed and has proven to be a model for protected areas in North America, with biologists from Yellowstone as well as the Canadian Mountain National Parks recognizing the need to follow suit. 

 

Current wolf research indicates that protection of wolf habitat beyond park boundaries is critical, as indicated by Linda Rutledge and her team in 2009:

 

      “Legal and illegal killing of animals near park boundaries can significantly increase the threat of extirpation of populations living within ecological reserves, especially for wide-ranging large carnivores that regularly travel into unprotected areas”(5).

 

​ Since the harvest ban in townships surrounding Algonquin Provincial Park, (ie. the establishment of buffer zones), wolf density has remained relatively constant even though human-caused mortality has significantly decreased (5). The study done by Rutledge et al. in 2009 is evidence that​:

 

     “even in a relatively large protected area, human harvesting outside park boundaries can affect evolutionarily important social patterns within  protected areas. This research demonstrates the need for conservation policy to consider effects of harvesting beyond influences on population size” (5).