i just read an article how combined Idaho and Wyoming have an estimated wolf population of 1,900 animals. Idaho is 83,569 sq miles Wyoming is 97,914 sq miles for a total of 181,483 sq miles. Wisconsin has a population of aprox 1,000 wolves and is 65,498 square miles. But yet some how they are endangered here? Court fights go on and on what baloney
Wisconsin Hunting Reports/Discussion
Wolves per sq mile
Displaying 1 to 15 of 22 posts
Trouter, That stabilized population you speak of is undoubtedly courtesy of the SSS method. I've said it before- the reason land values are high in rural areas is because of hunters and the whitetail deer. Is farm ground in Buffalo County so much better than anywhere else in the state? No. Its because of the deer. I'm not against wolves however I am against zero wolf management. I can't understand the wolf protectionist views. Wildlife needs to be managed
Carrying capacity in relation to wolves is interesting. Since there are different regions to our state, the localized carrying capacity will differ from area to area.
In Adams County, there are around 20 wolves. Citizens seldom see or hear them. They have a minimal impact on farming and hunting. Since the deer herd is steadily growing, our local wolf population has no impact on the deer population. Based on that, our population could double without seeing any impact.
We have had wolves at our place off and on for over 20 years without any negative impact. They are one of the critters in the forest.
I thought the point of a conservation approach was to make a stable population. Nature's course, do nothing, would be more swings in population, high and low, controlled mostly by starvation and disease.
That's the way I think of things I guess. They can die a lot slower if we let them be, or we have a season and keep the numbers healthy and get some benefit out of it. Whether that be less human impact, generate revenue, etc.
Basically what we do with deer right now, the difference being that more people see deer and could be impacted by high numbers. Whether its car collisions, ag damage, etc. Most people have never seen a wild wolf so its all emotional thinking.
Carrying Capacity is (primarily) a function of available food supply, social structure of the packs and suitable habitat.
Management comes into play when other variables such as agricultural interests, hunters, wildlife watchers, general safety interests, etc. recognize problems when a wolf population gets anywhere near its actual Carrying Capacity. As such, saying the Wolf population has "stabilized" is meaningless to anyone who is remotely impacted by the present population.
I
Far north,
This is info that was given to me from former wolf management guy, Dave McFarland?? I will use round numbers easier for me.
If we have 200 packs, only the alpha male and female breed, that’s 200 litters. Only 2 pups on average live for a year+. So that’s 400 new wolves a year. Now some will die from various reasons.
But in my opinion if we don’t kill 300 + a year we are only slowing the growth.
JamesD - I think I'm familiar with what you saw, the GPS locations of wolf packs turned into a map by the Voyagers Wolf Project. It's the only one I know of, and was somewhat recently released. Except it wasn't 3 packs it was 7. Also, there were 3 additional packs in that area that weren't collared (for a total of ten packs in the study). Also, it wasn't over a huge area as you described. I'll provide a link to that below so you can see it again, maybe refresh your memory.
Also of note: Wisconsin does not count, estimate, or include lone and dispersing wolves in any way. Those have no consideration at all in the WI DNR's population modeling. If a wolf isn't a pack member it doesn't exist in the eyes of the DNR. This was discussed at length in one of the recent WI DNR Wolf Management Plan Committee meetings (which are all available to watch online if you have an interest).
Two posts for Noknot, who's got something of a bologna sammy going on here. There was a wolf pack study in the arrowhead of Minn. They collared some wolves to track their movements and found three packs ranging over a huge area. There was little, to no overlap between the packs but the areas they covered ranged all over, one group looping up into Canada. Found the satellite maps in a local magazine in Grand Marais MN. where we fish each summer. Enough factoids about canines ....now, back to emotional rants.
So, I stand corrected. DNR is in the process of validity-testing a recently developed formula to estimate the population.
"WDNR scientists used a recently developed occupancy modelling approach to estimate total wolf abundance from 2019 – 2020 track survey data. The approach divided the surveyed area into a hexagonal grid of sample units, and then estimated abundance as ?? = ∑ ???????? ?? ?? ??¯/h¯, where ???? was the probability of occupancy in sample unit i, ???? was the area of sample unit i, h¯ was the mean home range size during the sampling period, ??¯was the mean pack size, and K was the total number of sample units. The approach does not rely on subjective pack assignments and accounts for the fact that wolves may be present, but undetected, in a sample unit. The final 4 estimate also accounts for the uncertainty in all model parameters, including mean home range size and pack size. Landscape covariates (forest, agriculture/developed land, and road density) were used as predictors for ???? , and detection probability was a function of survey effort. The resulting posterior mode (the most likely value) for total wolf abundance for the 2019 – 2020 overwintering period was 1195 wolves, and the credible interval with the highest probability density was 957 – 1573, which includes the statewide minimum count described previously."
Getting back to Noknot's original comment, it really is a simple reason why "people" consider them endangered in Wisconsin and not Idaho or Wyoming.
Idaho and Wyoming are NOT full of people who want to do away with all hunting.
Alaska has an estimated wolf population of 7,000 - 11,000 wolves and a size of 663,207 square miles. This is a density of 66 sq miles per wolf.
Wisconsin has an estimated wolf population of 1,000 (debatable) and a size of 65,500 sq miles. This is a density of 65 sq miles per wolf.
These densities are very similar, however I'd say 99% of Alaska is suitable wolf habitat. I'd argue less than 20% of Wisconsin is suitable wolf habitat. After this is taken into account, the densities become very skewed (WI having a 5x higher density for the suitable habitat).
Alaska harvests roughly 1,200 wolves per year to MAINTAIN their population.... just shows how far Wisconsin is behind.
Displaying 1 to 15 of 22 posts
