New research shows how humans are a substantial source of mortality for wolves that live predominantly in national parks — and more importantly, that human-caused mortality triggers instability in wolf packs in national parks.
New research shows how humans are a substantial source of mortality for wolves that live predominantly in national parks — and more importantly, that human-caused mortality triggers instability in wolf packs in national parks.
Published today in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, the study was led by Kira Cassidy, a research associate at Yellowstone National Park, and included co-authors at five national parks and University of Minnesota Voyageurs Wolf Project researchers Thomas Gable, Joseph Bump and Austin Homkes.
“For gray wolves, the biological unit is the pack or the family. We wanted to focus on the impacts of human-caused mortality to the pack, a finer-scale measure than population size or growth rate,” said Cassidy. “We found the odds a pack persists and reproduces drops with more human-caused mortalities.”
Read more at: University of Minnesota
Trail camera footage of the Shoepack Lake Pack walking along a sandy beach in Voyageurs National Park in the Fall. (Photo Credit: Voyageurs Wolf Project)
