wolves | Paula Wild

August 20, 2019August 26, 2019

Wolf attack at Banff National Park, Alberta

Around 1:00 a.m. on August 9, Matt and Elisa Rispoli jolted awake when they felt the side of their tent move violently. Matt assumed it was a black bear so yelled and struck the tent where the animal was pushing on it. The animal bit Matt’s hand and proceed to tear open the tent. As their shelter collapsed around them, Elisa threw herself over the New Jersey couple’s two young sons.

Through the new opening in the tent, Matt saw a wolf about a metre (three feet) away. Then it lunged at him, grabbing him by his upper right arm. Matt, tried to punch the wolf in the throat but that didn’t deter it. As the wolf tugged the police officer out of the tent, his wife grabbed his leg and tried to pull him back.

The screaming woke up the Fees who were camping nearby. Russ’s wife handed him a lantern and he sprinted toward the noise. The Calgary resident saw what looked like a large dog and using the momentum of his run, kicked it in the hindquarters. The animal let go of Matt but didn’t leave.

With blood running down his arm, Matt crawled out of the ruined tent, brandishing a tent pole. The two men threw rocks from the fire circle and yelled at the wolf until it backed off enough for the Rispole family and Russ and his wife to seek sanctuary in the Fee vehicle. The wolf followed Matt but the two men were able to keep it at bay.

Wolves are often wary of people but can be curious or even bold. They have entered tents — with and without people in them — but until this attack at Banff National Park, have always been attracted to food or personal belongings of people — not the people themselves. Although the wolf in this photo taken by Paul Sokoloff on Ellesmere Island did damage the tent, no people were injured.

Both families were badly shaken by the ordeal and Matt is recovering from bite marks and puncture wounds to his hand and arm. The next day a park employee found a wolf about a kilometre (half mile) from the attack site. When he got out of his vehicle the wolf approached him and was shot and killed. DNA revealed it was the wolf that had attacked Matt.

Although wolves have attacked people in two Canadian provincial parks and elsewhere in Canada, this is the first documented wolf attack in a Canadian national park. And the incident has wildlife officials somewhat puzzled. There were no significant attractants in or near the tent at the Rampart Creek Campground and no reports of a food-conditioned or habituated wolf in the area, which are the primary cause of negative human/wolf interactions in North America.

Results of a necropsy described the condition of the wolf as old, extremely emaciated (35 kg/78 pounds) and with worn teeth. Unless further evidence of a conditioned/habituated wolf comes to light, the motivation for this predatory attack appears to be starvation.

The Rispoles and Fee did everything right. They made lots of noise, aggressively fought back and got to a safe place. Based on evidence available at the time of this posting, this was an extremely unusual situation that no one could have foreseen.

Two tools that may have stopped the altercation sooner are bear spray and/or a fixed blade knife. (It’s illegal for anyone other than staff to carry firearms in Banff National Park.)

There have been some complaints about the wolf being shot. But, the reality is, the wolf would have been a danger to any human it encountered. And shooting it meant a quick death, rather than a long, lingering one.

This unfortunate incident is a good reminder to be prepared when in wild areas and that wolves are large, strong predators that can, on occasion, be dangerous to humans.

June 22, 2019July 1, 2019

Small but big difference between wolves and dogs

There are, of course, many differences between wolves and dogs. Some are cognitive, such as a wolf’s willingness to be trained, while others include physical traits such as the predator’s extraordinarily long legs and huge paws.

A lot of physical characteristics have been specifically cultivated in dogs to enhance their appeal to humans. For instance, many people are attracted to dogs with floppy ears and short muzzles so breeders have selectively encouraged these traits. Wolves have these endearing features as pups but, as they mature, their ears become erect and their snouts lengthen.

A recent study found another small but significant difference between wolves and some dogs – their eyebrow muscles.

Whether they own a dog or not, many people are familiar with that sad sack stare some dogs seem to be able to summon at will. This is the look guaranteed to tug firmly on the human heartstrings. And to often foster forgiveness for any transgressions that may have occurred.

This imploring gaze is generated by a dog’s ability to move a prominent muscle that runs along the outer edge of the eye up and inwards.

Dr. Juliane Kaminski, a psychologist at the University of Portsmouth in England, discovered this while trying to understand why some dogs are adopted from animal shelters sooner than others. Apparently, it’s all in the eyes. Those who used their levator anguli oculi medialis muscle were first out the door to a new home.

Researchers then studied the facial musculature of cadavers of several breeds of dogs, as well as those of wild grey wolves. They found a pronounced eyebrow muscle in all of the dogs but not the wolves.

This arctic beauty has a typical wolfish gaze and no sign of sad sack eyes.

Unlike short snouts and floppy ears, the eyebrow muscle was not intentionally introduced by humans but evolved naturally over 20,000 years or more of the human and dog relationship.

Kaminski, who has conducted several studies on the ways humans and dogs communicate, notes that eyebrows play an important role in human body language. And though it’s not known if dogs move their eyebrow muscle on purpose, the result definitely appears to attract humans.

May 27, 2019May 27, 2019

When wolves kill sheep

One morning earlier this month a Wisconsin farmer discovered three dozen of his sheep had been attacked by wolves. Some were lying in the pasture; others had been carried over the fence. Some were dead; some had to be euthanized.

Scenes like this aren’t unusual when it comes to wolves and livestock. Depending on the size of an operation, losing thirty animals, half a dozen or even one can severely affect the profit margin. Finding injured or dead animals takes an emotional toll, too. There’s also the reduced sale value of other animals due to stress-related weight loss, the time spent treating injured animals, livestock that don’t conceive or abort due to stress and so on.

Hunting is learned behaviour for wolves. Killing livestock is much easier than taking down wild prey and once done, is likely to continue. Sometimes guilty pack members can be destroyed soon enough to prevent other pack members from learning bad habits but often the entire pack needs to be destroyed.

The problem is killing wolves doesn’t always work. Killing one or both of the breeding pair of a pack can splinter the social order, which may result in more animals breeding and lead to more wolves, not less. Eliminating the entire pack simply opens up the territory for a new one to move in.

And killing wolves is complicated or impossible if a farm is located in areas where wolves are considered endangered and are thus protected by legislation. But some farmers are successfully raising livestock in wolf country; they rarely have problems but neighbouring ranches do.

A key element of their success appears to be livestock guardian dogs (LGDs). But there needs to be enough of them and a variety of breeds.

Liesl Lockhart, co-owner of Candll Lamb & Cattle Co., raises sheep and cattle in northern Saskatchewan near Prince Albert National Park where wolves are protected. The Lockharts usually have around eleven LGDs, a mix of five breeds including Great Pyrenees, Kangals and Anatolian shepherds.

“If a predator’s close, one dog will sound the alarm in the pasture,” Lockhart explains. “The Pyrenees will gather the flock together in a tight group. They’ll stay with the sheep and bark. Then there’s a staggered line of dogs moving away from the sheep to create a buffer zone. The Kangals are the ones that go out the furthest and chase the predators.”

The Lockharts have lost LGDs to predators, especially in the beginning when they didn’t have as many dogs or breeds as they needed. As well as purchasing additional LGDs, they began using spike collars. These, they found, protect the dogs from that often fatal bite to the throat.

LGDs aren’t enough on their own; other strategies are also required. These can include electric fencing, fladry (red flagging) and noise makers like radios. Some ranches employ old-fashioned range riders who keep the herd close together and whose very presence can deter a predator. Sometimes a government agency will monitor a collared wolf in a nearby pack and let a farmer know when they need to step up their protection.

Louise Liebenberg and her husband raise sheep, cattle and horses on Grazerie, Canada’s first predator-friendly ranch. Liebenberg gives presentations throughout North America and Europe on raising LGDs and co-existing with wolves.

The ranch has lost one ewe and one calf to wolves over the last ten years, mostly due to a human management error. Liebenberg usually understands why an incident has occurred and alters their management plan to prevent it from happening again.

“You can’t just use one management system all the time due to habituation; you need to combine various methods,” she says. In 2017, a wolf gave birth to seven pups in the middle of the farm. “It was very stressful and we had to be super vigilant until the fall when the pack moved on. Now I have to change my strategy to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

“In Switzerland they have an emergency program to help farmers experiencing problems. A team of people show up with electric fencing and LGDs and support the farmer until the wolves move on. They also teach the farmer different ways to protect their livestock.”

As wolf populations rebound, many farmers are dealing with the predator after an absence of 50 or 100 years. It’s a new era in livestock production that often involves a steep learning curve, as well as time and money to work out the kinks. Ranches that abut forested land will have more problems and small operations will take a harder hit. As long as there are wolves, predation will be a problem.

There’s no one solution that fits all; each ranch needs a personalized predation program and must be prepared to modify it over time. Fortunately, most, if not all can obtain financial and/or physical support from organizations such as Defenders of Wildlife and the USDA Wildlife Services.

Photos courtesy Liesl Lockhart.

May 5, 2019May 7, 2019

Wolves share more than dogs

When it comes to generosity, wolves win tales down. A scientific study led by Rachel Dale, animal behaviour specialist at the Wolf Science Center in Vienna, Austria, determined that wolves are more apt to provide treats for other wolves than dogs are to other dogs.

The Center hand-raises wolves and dogs and then conducts tests involving coöperation and cognition in an effort to understand the differences and commonalities of the two species.

A recent study testing coöperation placed a wolf or a dog in a room with a touch screen containing a couple of images. Another wolf or dog was placed in an adjacent room that was visible to the animal being tested.

When the test animal pressed the “giving” symbol, their partner in the other room received a treat. Wolves nudged the symbol with their nose far more often than the dogs.

As a control, sometimes the partner was placed in a room where it wouldn’t receive a reward even if the giving symbol was pushed. Wolves pressed the symbol less under those circumstances.

But they pressed the symbol even more if they knew the wolf in the adjacent room and saw it get a treat. Dogs were less generous on all counts.

The results of the study indicate that domestication may have allowed dogs to lose their coöperative nature as they depend on humans for food, not other dogs.

Although the wolves used in the study are fed by humans, their genetic makeup is much closer to that of wild wolves and they appear to have retained their close bonds with and reliance on pack mates for survival.

Photograph by Rooobert Bayer, Wolf Science Center, Austria