During the December unit on wolf research and management each student was assigned to investigate a wolf pack in Wisconsin by recording information from progress reports published by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in their annual and biannual wolf reports from 1995 to 2009.

            Students were encouraged to select a pack that resides close to their “place,” for instance Vilas or Oneida County.  This way the student will have a greater connection to the pack of interest.

            Each student’s job was to find certain details about their pack across the years of its existence. Examples of these details are pack size, pup count, area of territory, depredations by their pack (number of livestock or pets killed by that wolf pack), wolf mortality, movements, and whichever adults that were collared in that pack. If one of the wolves from the pack dispersed and started a new pack, the student researched that pack as well.     

            For most kids, the hard part is keeping track of two different packs at the same time. For example, three students started out with the Bootjack Lake pack in western Oneida and eastern Price Counties. In 1996, a black colored disperser drove out the alpha male. That same year the former alpha found another mate, and started the Wilson Flowage pack. Then, in 2003 the Wilson Flowage pack disappeared, and two years later in 2005, the Bootjack Lake pack went from two adults and one pup to eight adults and three to five pups. One of the students interpreted it as the Wilson Flowage pack had joined the Bootjack Lake pack, their ancestral pack, for at least a short duration.

            While working on this project, I have concluded that wolves have an amazing history of recolonization in Wisconsin.  Despite habitat that was believed to be marginal for wolves, thus limiting the carrying capacity to 350-450 wolves in Wisconsin (Mladenoff et al. 1999), there are currently 626-662 wolves in the state inhabiting areas that some scientists did not believe were suitable for wolves!

            Such is amazing considering the population estimate for wolves in the early 1970’s was zero. To link to the RESA December newsletter, from which the article originally appeared, CLICK HERE