Years ago, Ripple revealed that aspen trees began to die off in Yellowstone following wolves’ slaughter in the 1920s. State policies in the northern Rocky Mountains - where wolves do not have protection - recently expanded hunting.ĭespite the political battles, other research has suggested that wolves can have an outsized, positive role on ecosystems. This year, a federal judge reversed the Fish and Wildlife decision in that case, restoring protection in many areas. The Trump administration removed gray wolves from protection in most of the U.S. The federal protection status that has kept the species off-limits to hunting has seen dramatic changes in recent years. In some states, poaching and poisoning cases are not uncommon, and wolves are killed by state wildlife managers after they attack livestock. It just so happens they will take more prey that are diseased than by chance, and that has strong evolutionary implications for natural selection.” “The wolves don’t just randomly take prey. “This is a good example of how the predator is actually helping the moose population,” said William Ripple, a professor and ecologist at Oregon State University, who was not involved in the research. It follows similar research in deer, which show wolves can help dampen the impacts of easily spread infections like chronic wasting disease. The study hints that wolves could play an important role in controlling genetic diseases by removing unhealthy animals from the population. To kill a moose, a wolf must attack an animal about 10 times its size with only its teeth, so it makes sense that wolves would succeed in taking down those unable to move well, Hoy said. Rates of arthritis in moose grew during years with lower kill rates from wolves, the research says. Wolves didn’t appear to target moose in their prime ages, unless the moose were affected by severe arthritis, the study found. More than 38 percent of the 1,572 moose skeletons they examined had signs of osteoarthritis.Īnalysis of wolf kills suggests they preyed more frequently on old moose. In the recent Frontiers study, researchers evaluated the bones of moose killed by wolves over a 32-year period from 1975 to 2007. They crash, and then it starts all over again,” Smith said. “The moose eat themselves out of house and home, literally, and then they have a massive die-off. ![]() ![]() Their population settled into a boom-bust pattern. A few animals likely swam (Moose are unsteady on ice) more than a dozen miles to the island in the early 1900s, Smith said. Moose are thought to have arrived on the island first. “It’s the longest-running predator-prey study in the world,” said Doug Smith, a wildlife biologist who has worked on Isle Royale in the past and now operates a wolf restoration program for the National Park Service in Yellowstone National Park.įor more than a century, scientists have observed dramatic shifts in the seesawing populations of wolves and moose. A researcher's paradiseįor scientists, Isle Royale has long been a fascinating fishbowl for research. The research could offer data for fresh arguments in the divisive debates over wolf management roiling many communities, where some ranchers view the creatures as a threat to their livestock and livelihoods. The moose on Isle Royale might need wolves, the study suggests, to keep their populations healthy from disease. Wolves take down moose with arthritis and kill them at an outsized pace, according to the study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |