Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Bear Den. I'm Philip Stubley and this podcast is about the American Bear association and the Vince Tutti Wildlife Sanctuary, but also discusses all things bears and, as the sanctuary name suggests, wildlife generally. I've mentioned Voyagers national park briefly in past episodes. It's about an hour's drive away from the sanctuary and I mention it now because the ABA in recent years has had dealings with the Voyager's Wolf Project. They have kindly helped contribute to our internship field program, and Voyager's Wolf Project team lead Tom Gable has also kindly agreed to sit down and chat to me about himself, wolves and the project itself. It was a fascinating chat and there is one part that demonstrates that truly anything can happen when working in nature. I will give a word of warning that since we're talking about wolves and that they are apex predators, we will be covering some grisly details around their hunting habits. It's also quite apt that recently we caught some wolves on our trail cams passing through the sanctuary property. You can see that footage on our social media channels. I also just wanted to prime us with a little background on Voyagers national park before we dive in. To be honest, I thought it was easier if I just relayed some information from the National Park Service website. Voyageurs National park spans 218,000 acres of lakes, forests and streams in northern Minnesota. Established in 1975, the park is named after the French Canadian voyagers who once navigated these abundant waters Waters Voyages national park provides exceptional opportunities for recreation and exploration amidst landscapes rich in natural beauty, history and cultural heritage.
It also lies in a transition area between the southern boreal forests to the north and temperate deciduous forests to the south and east. It is composed of a variety of ecological systems including conifer forests, hardwood forests, bogs, swamps, marshes, rocky outcrops and lakeshore environments. The park is home to over 50 tree and shrub species, over 40 fern and moss species, over 200 grass, sedge and rush species, and over 400 wildflower species. I'll also add that it is certified by the International Dark sky association, making it Minnesota's only international dark sky park. So that means it's good for stargazing and northern lights. Enthusiasts should take note. Now, without further ado, let's hand over to Tom Roll credits.
There is a place in the remote northwards of Minnesota North America. It's located near the town of orr. Population approximately 300. Outside this town is an area where normal rules are put to one side. It's a place where humans and wildlife meet. It's A special place, wholly unique and not without its controversies. This is the Vince Schutte Wildlife Sanctuary, run by the American Bear Association, ABA for short. The ABA is dedicated to promoting a better understanding of black bears and all wildlife through education, observation and experience.
I'm your host, Philip Stubley, and welcome to the Bear Den. How are we doing today?
[00:03:02] Speaker B: I'm doing great. How are you doing?
[00:03:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, always good, Always good. Thanks. So I thought I was going to ask, can you introduce yourself first of all and say where you're talking to us from?
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Sure, absolutely. So, Tom Gable, I lead the Voyagers Wolf Project, which studies wolves in and around Voyagers national park in northern Minnesota. And I'm talking to you here from just south of Voyageurs national park, where it's going to be a ball only supposedly 62 degrees Fahrenheit on this March day, which is very unusual for this time of year.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: Get the flip flops and shorts out, right?
[00:03:35] Speaker B: That's kind of what it feels like.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So what's your background then? Have you always wanted to work with wolves specifically?
[00:03:43] Speaker B: I guess for, you know, once I realized I wanted to go into the wildlife biology field, wolves were an area that I was interested in.
I didn't always know I wanted to be a wildlife biologist, at least not through kind of the beginning of my undergraduate studies. I really didn't know what I wanted to do. But after really thinking about it and realizing what possibilities existed, I realized studying animals in an outdoor environment, it just sounded like a dream come true. And then I was naturally interested in studying wolves. My family has a cabin on the north shore, Lake Huron, in an area near Killarney Provincial Park. And I would go up there in the winter time, and it's pretty remote, there's almost nobody around. And we'd see tracks of wolves. I would, if I'm going with my friends or family. And then that's where I saw my first wolf ever, way across the frozen lake on ice. And that just seemed. They seemed so mysterious and so intriguing at that time because you would see the presence of them everywhere, but you couldn't actually, or you rarely saw them. And so that got me interested in. In studying wolves. And it took me a while to really figure out exactly how, you know, how everything worked out the way it did. You know, I did not anticipate studying wolves. I was interested in it, but there's a lot of folks who want to study and research charismatic animals such as wolves, bears, things like that. So I kind of was like, well, there's. That would Be great if that worked out, but I'm not expecting that. And so I was happy to study all sorts of other species that, you know, maybe I had a better shot at actually getting a job doing that because there aren't that many jobs really available to study wolves.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, fair enough. I guess it's with wildlife, it's always a bit of a journey of discovery, of finding your, your niche or where your way is.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Yeah, it absolutely is.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Where was it that you studied?
[00:05:29] Speaker B: So I studied my. Did my undergraduate career at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, which is a small liberal arts college there, and then, you know, a couple years later, and I won't go through my whole history of how I got there, but I ended up doing my graduate, my master's research at Northern Michigan University. And that's kind of was the beginning of the Voyagers Wolf project when I was studying wolves and wolf beaver interactions in this area. And then a couple years after I wrapped up my master's, I did my PhD at the University of Minnesota where I kind of continued the work I had done in my master's, but then also, you know, sort of elaborated on it as well.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Oh, fantastic. So I wanted to ask as well, just before we got into things like how did you originally come across the Vinci Wildlife Sanctuary? What was your sort of take on it?
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's kind of interesting. So I knew that, you know, I started doing work in the voyagers area in 2014.
Our project, the Voyagers Wolf Project, really sort of kicked off in 2015. And for a long time I knew the sanctuary existed. But, you know, it's a good drive from some parts of Voyagers, you know, an hour or more. And so I'd heard about it and I was like, I should get there. And then I just never, for whatever reason, never ended up happening in part because, you know, when the sanctuary was really open is when we were busy doing field work as well. So timing was a bit tough. And then a couple years ago, we had a GPS collared wolf of ours, actually two of them in the same year, make it their way down to the Vint Schutte Sanctuary. They had left their packs on whatever called extraterritorial forays, which means they're kind of pre dispersal movements, and they've gone through the sanctuary, presumably probably to scavenge the food that the bears didn't eat or, and do things like that. And so that's when I reached out to Steph and asked, you know, would they be willing to let us see what the Wolves are doing there and things like that. And then that led into a conversation where she invited us and our whole team to come out someday to check out the Sanctuary. And so we did that in. That was 2023. So that was the first time I had been there and we had a really nice time and our field crew that works on our project really enjoyed that. And so then last year, you know, we came out again just so. Because every year we kind of get a new group of field technicians coming through and so that they could see that and learn more about it. So that's a sort of long story of how I learned and kind of first visited the Sanctuary.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: I love hearing people's first experiences of them because they always come from different angles, I find.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: Sure. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that's probably one of the more unique angles I would imagine, of how people.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: I know it's because, I mean, I've actually only ever managed to get out to voyages once. I think it was back in 2016. I stayed quite late into the season and because we had time, we like, let's drive out there, I think. Is it Lake Capeta Goma? Is that that one of the lakes that's there?
[00:08:20] Speaker B: You're close, Kabetogama, but that's. Everyone says who's not from around the area. Everyone says Kabata Gama or something like that. And then the locals remind you it's Kabetogama.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Oh, it's good to know.
I'll try and sound like a local next time then.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Thank you. So, yeah, can you give us a quick sort of 101 on wolves kind of behavior, diet, general info that will set us up as we talk about the wolf project?
[00:08:44] Speaker B: Absolutely. So what's important to note is that wolves have varying habits depending where you're at in North America or Europe. So everything I'm going to say is kind of going to be about wolves in our area and might not necessarily apply to wolves in a variety of other places, but in a place like Voyagers, wolf packs are generally small. Five wolves on average. Actually less than that. About four, four and a half wolves on average. Those packs generally consist of two parents and then their offspring. And wolves in our area are generally hunting and killing deer year round. That's their primary annual prey. And then a really important sort of seasonal prey are beavers in our area. And that's because our area has sustained a very dense beaver population.
Wolves are considered, though, highly generalist predators, which means that they will take advantage of a variety of food Sources, particularly in the summer. Summer is when wolves are quite hungry because they're trying to raise their pups and the prey that they rely on. In particular, deer are actually in their peak physical condition in the summer because there's a lot of vegetation, there's no snow, and so wolves have a hard time catching deer, and they certainly have a hard time catching enough deer to keep themselves fed and their pups. And so usually in the summertime, wolves are quite desperate. So they're eating all sorts of unique foods, which is why they likely visited the Vint Schutte Sanctuary to scavenge the stuff that bears typically eat, which is usually not the food that wolves rely on. But because wolves are these adaptable predators, they can take advantage of a variety of different foods when they need to. Like berries. Bear. I'm going to say bear bait in terms of. I know you guys aren't hunting them, but there's a lot of people who do hunt them in the area. They do maintain bear bait piles in the summer, and wolves will go to those and get food. So wolves are just really good at finding where they can find a meal. And so that's part of what we do on our project, is just trying to understand how wolves make a living. Importantly, wolves in, in our area generally have their pups in early April, and then those pups, then through the summer, the wolves are raising them. And typically by usually September, October, those pups are old enough that they can travel around with the pack sort of nomadically. So the pack stops using what are known as den or rendezvous sites to raise the pups, and the pups can start moving. And then once the winter sets in, that pack is then sort of all moving together as a unit, wandering their territory. And during the wintertime, wolves are relying almost exclusively on deer or feeding exclusively on deer in the area.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: In England, I don't know if you're aware, the government have recently approved the reintroduction of beavers into the wild. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, which is a good, positive step for nature recovery. But. So it's probably a good job there's no wolves around here right now. Well, we can get onto that later.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to say that's going to be a lot more contentious if they do that.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: Yeah, but so, yeah, you did mention it. So is there a sort of particular difference in wolf behavior in Minnesota, say to other parts of the US Such as Yellowstone, or is it like you say, it's just dependent? It's kind of dependent on environment.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Yep. So I would say There's a big difference in the sort of structure of a wolf population in a place like northern Minnesota versus Yellowstone. And so there's probably the main reason why you see differences in pack structures. And by, by structure I mean the number of wolves in that pack, the number of like how those individuals may or may not be related to one another, different things like that. You know, when you go out west to Yellowstone you have often these very large packs that might have a variety of wolves that may or may not be related, or some will be related but some might not be. And you'll have sometimes multiple females in a pack producing pups at the same time. So you could have a couple of litters of pups in the same pack territory. And a lot of that's because wolves in places like Yellowstone hunt and kill larger bodied prey like elk or bison or things like that. And when wolves kill an elk or a bison that obviously feeds a lot more wolves than when wolves kill a deer and a deer is, you know, much smaller than a moose or sorry, not a moose, an elk or a bison. And so in a place like Voyagers, where wolves are relying on small bodied prey, they're likely just have different constraints because they can't have big packs because there's just not enough food when they make a kill to go around. And so that kind of then influences all these other aspects of their population dynamics. So I mean behaviorally are wolves probably acting similar, like they're typically probably all doing similar wolf things, but they're adapting to their local environment, to the prey that they've got. And you see that reflected in the way the populations are kind of structured.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: No, that's interesting. I mean obviously I'm always thinking about bears in that way as well. And I suppose it's slightly similar bears in Minnesota, the diets are a little bit different to the ones on the west coast. Say like sort of salmon bears in Minnesota, they're not interested. But of course, you know, everyone loves to see the bears gathering, catching salmon somewhere in like British Columbia, don't they?
[00:13:50] Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah. So, and, and wolves are probably similar to bears in some sense where bears are also quite adaptable. They take advantage of a variety of food sources. You know, obviously when people leave food out they'll figure out how to take advantage of those food sources and things like that. And, and wolves are obviously have different diets, but they are adaptable in that way where they can rely on a lot of different foods.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: Yeah, so it's a bit like obviously we always talk about Unsecured garbage can attract bears and habituate them to people. The same sort of thing can happen with wolves is what you're saying.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: Oh, certainly, certainly. And there's a lot of places, you know, not in, you know, we have, in our area, even though we have relatively low human population density, we still see wolves getting a lot of food that is a result of people often, you know, indirectly. Well, people aren't trying to feed wolves, but they're putting food in the woods that wolves find. So like for instance, if people go fishing, they, you know, fillet their fish and they dump the guts in the woods. Wolves will go there. If people have a barbecue, sometimes they'll just put the bones or whatever is left over in their trap, their fire pit and gonna burn it or something. Wolves will eat those. I mean, so there's all sorts of ways that wolves will come into those areas and get food. Now it's probably not quite the same.
We haven't noticed quite the same issues with, let's say habit, habituation, you know, where wolves are getting habituated to people because of those things. Often because wolves are coming into human dominated areas when there's no people around just to get the food and then they're leaving. But there are stories, many of them, where wolves have been intentionally fed by people and then those wolves through time get habituated. And that's when you start having potential issues and human safety concerns because these wolves no longer see people as a threat. They just kind of disregard them and, or sometimes get too comfortable, you know, or getting too close to them.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: One thing I was gonna ask is though, if am I likely to come across a wolf when I'm out hiking and what should I do if I do?
[00:15:50] Speaker B: Well, if you, if you do see one, you should be very excited because you're not very likely to see one. And you should savor it because it's probably not going to be a very quick, a very long encounter. You know, most wolf sightings in this area happen when you're driving, you know, down a road and you see a wolf cross a road or something like that. It's pretty uncommon to see one when you're just out in the woods hiking. I mean, it does happen, but it's uncommon. And you know, when those moments happen, at least when it happens to me, it's like, wow, that's really cool because like I said, I don't have that. I've spent my, you know, obviously past 10 years studying wolves in this area and the number of encounters that I've Just had while I'm hiking down a trail or something is just very few, you know, maybe, maybe 10. And I'm putting on a lot of miles usually. So if you see one, you should be excited. That's really cool. And then obviously, you know, people often ask if they should be concerned for their safety. And with wolves in our area, that is not something I'm at all concerned about. You know, we. If you see a wolf, it might stare at you initially. It might kind of try to figure out who you are, might be trying to get your scent. And so if it doesn't immediately run off, it's not a sign that it's not afraid of you. It could just be a sign that it doesn't know exactly what it's looking at yet. And it's trying to process that. But, you know, we've. With wolves, they're just very afraid of people and there's. They're not going to come near you. And so when you see one, like, you should just savor it. That's what I would say to folks.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: It's kind of funny like we say something similar about bears because you should be excited when you see one because it doesn't always happen all that often when you're out hiking. But I didn't see a wolf. I saw one in 2016 and that was again, it was from a car kind of down the road. And then we were very lucky. I was very lucky, though, because I think it was the same one.
You know how we've got the cook shack where we saw there was a wolf kind of just wandering around the backwoods there. So I just kind of stared it and thought, I'm not gonna move or do anything this minute. I do anything, it's gonna. It's gonna notice me and probably leave. But it was just going for a good too. Yeah. And I was like, oh, brilliant. Yeah. So do you know if bears and wolves interact all that much or have you seen.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: I don't know how often they interact. I mean, we have learned. We have got. Had a few, I'd say, opportunistic observations on, particularly on trail cameras where we have seen some interactions, but they're really brief and it's hard to know how often those are occurring. I mean, I think wolves and bears have to be encountering each other frequently, but I suspect that in most instances they just kind of each do their own thing.
You know, the. The few instances we've had, you know, probably the, the most interesting encounter we've had is we put trail cameras On a wolf den in our area about this was in 20. I think it was 2020 or 2021. And we, in part because we wanted to view the pups that we had just tagged and to verify that we knew how many pups are in that territory. Well, turns out a couple days after we did that, there's this black bear that I think inadvertently wandered into the den and it quickly found out that was not a friendly place to be because all of a sudden we get this just crazy footage of the. The breeding pair that, you know, basically the parents of those pups come flying and chasing that bear goes flying out of that place, you know, so realize this is not a good place to be. And obviously, I don't think the bear was killed. I think it was just chased off. Right. And harassed and. And that wasn't a spot should be. You know, a lot of our other interactions haven't. They haven't even been direct interactions. We have seen black bears checking out quite a few wolf dens after, sometimes when there's pups in those dens but the parents aren't around. We've never seen bears killing pups, but I don't doubt they would if they could. But we've also seen bears checking out dens shortly after. Like, wolves will move the pups. So, like, the wolves will move the pups to another den and then a bear will come and like, stick it head into the den sometimes. Then the only other spot we've seen any interactions has been on berry patches in the summer. So we've tried. Wolves will spend a lot of time foraging for berries, particularly blueberries in the summer. Obviously bears do too. And so that's probably where you see the most, probably where both of them are going to be interacting together the most or at least coming across one another. And we had one instance where this is probably about four years ago where a female wolf with her pups was kind of coming in and there was a bear. It was just briefly, but we saw that female go chasing after that bear and that bear goes flying, you know, just runs away. And I think the female was just basically scaring because the female then came back was basically just scaring that bear to, you know, get a potential threat to its pups away.
So, yeah, but. And then also when bear hunting season comes around, that's one where I know from bear hunters in the area, they've sent us videos and photos of wolves and bears eating bear bait at the same time at these bait piles, which are kind of fascinating videos to see. And then what we start seeing in September, so the bear season starts in September 1st, and then what we start seeing shortly thereafter is often wolves will scavenge the carcasses of black bears that have been successfully killed and then butchered. And then the, the after they get the meat off the bears, you know, the hunters will deposit those, get rid of the carcass. Wolves will eat that carcass. Wolves will find bears that were shot and killed and potentially or maybe mortally wounded, but they'll find dead bears that likely were result of hunting and they'll scavenge and eat those bears because for a wolf, that's like winning the jackpot. That's a huge source of food that they come across. And then every once in a while we've seen wolves killing black bears during that time. Our suspicion is. So most of the times that wolves kill black bears is in September or late August, but it really peaks in September. And our suspicion, which is hard to verify, but is that wolves are probably killing bears that are wounded from the hunting season because we find it odd that basically wolves don't kill bears in any other month that we study them from April until basically September. And then all of a sudden we see kind of a pulse of predation happening then. So like I said, if wolves feel like a bear is compromised and they can kill and eat it, I don't doubt that they will do that.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds like targeting the weak, totally. Right. Yeah.
[00:22:19] Speaker B: And, and like I said, bears start, you know, if you get a, if a wolf kills a bear, you know, especially when that's 200, 300 pounds, I mean, that is a, a huge source of food for them at a time when they're probably the most desperate. So wolves, I think, like if bears weren't a formidable threat to them during the rest of the year, I'm sure wolves would try to eat them. But you know, bears are obviously not very easy to take down. You know, they've got strong claws. You know, wolves aren't going to mess with them, but if they see an opportunity, they're going to go for it.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Let's start talking about the Voyagers wolf project. So what's the, what's kind of the elevator pitch? The 25 word?
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Well, I'll try to, I'll try to make it a pitch, but. Or at least to summarize it. Well, what we do, but we're a University of Minnesota research project. We've been studying wolves for over a decade now in the area. And you know, our big picture goal is to really understand the sort of annual ecology of wolves in the greater Voyagers ecosystem. So we're trying to learn as much as we possibly can about their predation behavior, their pack structure, their population dynamics, and then also what impacts wolves might have on larger ecological predators processes in the area as well. So we're, we're trying to get as much information as we can. We have a lot of different things we're interested in. Like I had mentioned just a little bit ago, we're interested in, in wolf beaver interactions because beavers are an important food source. But we're also really fascinated by wolf deer interactions, how wolves figure out these other unique food sources like berries, bear bait piles. Trying to understand how adaptable wolves are in these systems. We're also trying to understand population dynamics. Why do wolf populations go up and then go down? Why do sometimes pup survival rates, that's the number of pups that actually make it to adulthood. Why are those sometimes really low in certain years and then much higher in other years? So we're trying to measure and study a lot of things at once. And so the big picture summary or pitch is just to learn as much as we possibly can about these animals and to try to share that work as well with the public through social media and things like that.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Oh, that's great. And so. And it's covering the whole park and sort of the outer sort of perimeter of it, is that right?
[00:24:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And actually what's important. So a lot of folks think we study wolves like exclusively or predominantly in Voyageurs national park, and we do study wolves in the park. But actually our study area is about 2,400 square kilometers and only about 800 of that is the park. So actually most of our work is occurring outside of the park as opposed to inside of it. And part of the reason for that is when you look at Voyagers national park, it's got, you know, the park is kind of interesting. It's got a very, kind of unique oblong shape to it. So there's actually very few wolf packs that reside entirely within the park boundaries. There's maybe two packs that probably stay entirely within the park year round, maybe three depending on the year. But there's a lot more packs that go in and out of the park on a regular basis. So like half their territory might be in the park or a third of it, and the rest of it's outside of the park.
So whereas that's different than let's say some other parks, maybe like Yellowstone or Denali, that are these big sort of square like parks where you can have packs that exist solely within the boundaries of the park. The other thing that's important to note is Voyagers national park has four very large lakes that sort of make up big chunks of it. Right. So you can't obviously have wolves in those areas.
So we started really predominantly studying wolves in the park and on the edges of the park. But as we kind of did our work, we realized that they're really. That that national park distinction doesn't matter that much to wolves in terms of. And on a wolf level that the Voyagers national park is very small. It takes a wolf a couple of hours to go from the middle of Voyagers national park to outside of it. And so if we really want to understand wolves of Voyagers national park, we kind of have to understand wolves in the larger ecosystem because what's going on outside of the park obviously is going to influence wolves in the park. And there's just very few wolves that live truly in the park. You know, that, that isn't really a, a thing for most wolves. Most wolves are kind of going or experiencing outside the park a lot and then some inside the park.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Yeah, because I guess borders don't matter to bulls.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: Right?
[00:26:38] Speaker A: I mean, I, I guess, I mean you're not, not all that far from Canada either. I mean, do you have any wolves kind of go up that far or is it. They stay the side of the border, so to speak?
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So they don't care, Wolves don't care at all about borders, as you said. Like they don't care about the international border. They don't care about the Park Service border. You know, wolves care about going to a spot where they can get food and not get killed. And that's ultimately how what they're interested in. And they can live in a variety of different kinds of habitat, whether that's protected mature forest and wetlands or clear cut logged areas. You know, they can in all these habitats they're, they're very good at living in all of them. We do have wolves going to Canada fairly regularly and actually what surprises a lot of people. So wolf management in Canada is very different than it is in the US Right now, or at least in Minnesota. Minnesota wolves are an endangered species and in Canada they've been, they're not an endangered species. And there's been hunting and trapping of wolves basically on the north side of Voyageurs national park for I think, you know, very long time. And so, and that's true of, you know, most of Ontario, Manitoba, places in Canada. You can hunt and trap wolves. So actually 10%, last I checked, which is about a year and a half ago, 10% of all the wolves that we have collared and ear tagged have ended up being killed by hunting or trapping in Canada. And that's because these wolves are, once they leave their packs and wander into Canada, you know, then they're obviously susceptible to those sources of mortality. So that border. Yeah. For wolves just doesn't mean that much. Now we don't have wolves. We've really not documented any wolves that are like part of an established pack in the Voyagers area, get killed in Canada. Usually these are transient wolves that have been part of a pack in our area. Then they leave their pack, go in search of their own territory, their own mate, and that's when they then end up in Canada and get killed.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Well, that's fascinating. Is there sort of a timeline for how long the projects plan to run or as long as there's funding? As long as you're going to keep going? As long. That's basically it, yeah. Oh great.
[00:28:43] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, our goal is really to. Our goal is to keep the project going as long as we can. In part because long term ecological data is very difficult to obtain and also really invaluable because you get to see things and observe things that you couldn't really make sense of on a shorter time frame. So for instance, if we look at wolf population dynamics, you know, why do wolf populations change from year to year and what's driving that? If you do a study for three or four years, you get three or four data points maybe of the populations in those years and it's very difficult to know why things are occurring the way they are. When you have 10 years of data, which is where we're at now, you start to get a little bit better glimpse and start to. It seems like we're starting to understand a little bit more about what's going on. But obviously the more you get data, 20 years, 40 years, 50 years, you know, which obviously very long time, you start to see that then in a lot more detail and clarity and can understand that and can do statistical analyses to make sense of those patterns. And so that's why you see projects like those in Yellowstone national park, which have gone on for decades. Denali, Isle Royale, those are all really valuable projects because they've been doing this work and doing the same data collection year in year out for a very long time. And as a result they've gotten insights that other folks never would have been able to get because the studies just didn't go on long enough. So that's part of our goal, is to keep it going long term. And the other benefit there is a lot of those projects end up having findings or they learn things, you know, when they're 20 years into the study that they didn't even have an idea that they should be looking for when they started because they, they have a. But they do it long enough to say, oh yeah, there's this pattern that we're starting to see. Maybe we should look into that. And then, oh my gosh, we have the data because we've been collecting it for 20 years and now we understand this thing that we didn't even know about when we started. So there's a lot of value to keeping work going long term. And that's really our goal.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: No, definitely. How many people have you got working on the project at peak time?
[00:30:49] Speaker B: At peak time, generally it's about 10 to 11. We have three full time, or sorry, four full time staff right now that are working year round. And then we have somewhere between six to nine grad students and field crew people that come in seasonally. And those are, you know, our peak, sort of our peak field season is from mid April to the middle of November. And so that's when we kind of have a lot of folks out. That's when we're intensively doing field work and need a lot of help to get the work, work done that we need.
[00:31:21] Speaker A: You've talked about, obviously you've talked about trail cams, collars, what other sort of methods have you, do you employ? And like how many trail cams have you actually got set up, you know.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: Trail cameras and collars and then a lot of field work. That's really. What are those are our main methods, trail cameras. We have right now 350 trail cameras set up around our area. So we have a, it's a lot of cameras and we spend a lot of time deploying those cameras and then obviously making sure that they're functioning. Because if the camera is not functioning, it's basically worthless. So spend a lot of time, you know, every month hiking out to all these cameras, you know, checking batteries, swapping SD cards, making sure there's no vegetation that's grown up in front of the camera, making sure a bear hasn't, you know, destroyed the camera or a wolf, either one of those two will like to gnaw on camera sometimes.
So we use trail cameras a lot. You know, the cameras help us identify, well, allow us to identify all sorts of stuff but in particular, they give us a lot of insight into which wolves are in a given pack. And oftentimes we can see them. We see them enough that we actually can identify them based on their physical markings and fur patterns and scars and things like that. That helps us understand how many pups survive to adulthood and all sorts of other really interesting pieces of information that we basically couldn't get if we didn't have trail cameras. In part because seeing wolves or observing them in our system just isn't possible. As we already talked about, you know, you might get a brief sighting of a wolf, but not long enough to really learn a whole lot.
So we use trail cameras and obviously the GPS collars give us a lot of information about where wolves are traveling. That's how we study their predation behavior. Our collars are taking locations every 20 minutes for the, from spring to fall. And so we go to every spot. A collared wolf spends more than 20 minutes in a 200 meter area because those could be places that, you know, basically we're trying to find the spots that wolves stopped and spent some time. And then, because those could be places where wolves have made a kill. So then we hike out to every one of those spots from the collared wolves. We're studying all summer to try to identify and document all of the predation events that, that an individual wolf is making. And that helps us understand their, how often they're killing prey, what prey they're primarily killing. And it helps us also understand the different foods that they're eating too, because like we mentioned, they're eating berries and other food sources like that. And so when we go to these spots, we can determine, oh yeah, this is a spot in a berry patch or like the eating berries or things like that. So, so the GPS collars are also really invaluable. They also, the collars also provide us a lot of information about where wolf pack territories are. And that's very important for population estimates and things like that is to know, okay, this is the size of a territory and where it's located, where the boundaries are in our area. And so we try to keep about 10 packs collared each year so we can have that many territory estimates or territory size estimates for our population estimates.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: I really want to know how we go about collaring a wolf. Is it like when they're denning or like, how does that work?
[00:34:29] Speaker B: So we catch wolves using rubber padded foothold traps. So they're very similar to what you'd see like a trapper using, except that they've been modified in various ways to make sure that we can catch wolves without while minimizing the risk of hurting them. So that once we get them in a trap, we can sedate them and then put a collar on and let them go, and then they'll go back to being a wolf. So these have, like I said, rubber padding around the jaws. And there's several other sort of ways we've. We've modified them. And that's a very typical way for wolves to be collared in, well, I'd say probably the majority of places in North America. You know, the only other way you can really do it is using a helicopter or aerial captures, which are very difficult and very expensive. Not very difficult, maybe, but very expensive.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: That was.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: And it can be difficult in densely forested ecosystems. I mean, if you're out west and it's wide open, pretty easy to see a wolf from a helicopter and maybe come, you know, capture it. Not very easy in northern Minnesota, necessarily. So. So, yeah, so we put these traps all around our area and the various packs that we're trying to collar. And then once a wolf is caught, you know, we walk in, we sedate the wolf, and then once the wolf is sedated, we then, in about 30 to 40 minutes, do a very quick workup where we collect a lot of measurements on the wolf, get some genetic samples and take up their samples, photos, things like that, put on the collar, put ear tags in. And then, like I said, after about 30 or 40 minutes, that wolf is starting to wake up and we basically let it go. It takes a little bit for that wolf to recover. It's probably akin to, you know, if you've had to have surgery or had your wisdom teeth out or, you know, something like that, and you wake up and you're groggy, you're just out of it. It's probably what a wolf feels like when they get done with that experience. So it takes them a day or two to kind of get back on their feet and moving, but then usually they're right up, you know, going back to doing what wolves do, you know, so they'll often go back and to their den, where the pups are at, or they'll go, you know, looking for prey or finding food or things like that very shortly thereafter.
[00:36:37] Speaker A: What's the lifespan on. On one of those colors? Is it like a few years on it?
[00:36:41] Speaker B: Yeah. So how long collars last is generally dependent on the. How you set up the collar to take locations. So the more frequently you take locations, the more Battery you're basically churning through because that collar has to connect with the satellite every time it or it doesn't have to connect with the satellite every time, but it has to be able to take its location all the time and that uses battery and then obviously it has to upload that data once it connects to the satellite. And so more locations means you're uploading the data more means you have less collar life.
So with our collars we're generally happy to get about a year and a half to two years because that's just how we set it up. A lot of people in other areas they don't care about like getting some of the data we do in terms of like predation behavior and things like that. They might just say we just want this wolf to stay collared for its life possibly. So they might set those collars to take locations every four hours, five hours. And then that collar in theory should last five years or something, you know, so they just get basic data. So it's all just a trade off of what kind of information you're looking for. Ours are, are obviously we're trying to maximize the information we get within the first year, year and a half. And then all the collars we use have a drop off mechanism built onto them that at a certain date that it's pre programmed that collar is set to drop off of that wolf. So and that's be, and we're trying there to basically drop the collar before the, the collar runs out of battery so that then the wolf doesn't have to wear the, a non functional collar and we can get that collar back, put a new battery in it and then put it out on another wolf in the future.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: When you mentioned about a full wolf's whole life, like how what is the average lifespan of a wolf as well.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a question we get a lot and it's kind of a tricky one to answer honestly in part because it's so variable. You know, we have on an average people say, you know, biologists often say it's like between three to five years. That's probably a fair sit somewhere in that range. But there's a lot of wolves that don't live very long at all. You know, a lot of wolves that live to be one to two and die. So wolves have a fairly high mortality rate and a short lifespan relative to some other animals like bears, which can live a very long time. That's not the case for wolves. You know, an old wolf is 8 years old, 9 years old, and you Know, there have been some wild wolves that have lived to be like 10, 11 years old. But by the time wolves get to that advanced age, their teeth often are almost completely worn down to the gums from grinding and crunching on bones and things like that.
And so often if they live old enough, you know, the, the fate that's going to happen for wolf is they're just going to starve to death because they can't get, they can't catch food because they don't have the physical capabilities to do it. And in addition, they're going to not have teeth to chew it. You know, they're going to be worn down. And so that's a, it's really interesting to see. So it's just a very different sort of natural history than other, let's say predator species like bears, where wolves live these fast, hard, intense, short lives. But they're able to reproduce fairly abundantly as well. You know, they can have pups every year, you know, often several pups. And so they can make up that way. Whereas, you know, you have. Bears have a very different reproductive and natural history where they long lived and. But they don't start reproducing until they're several years old. Sometimes you don't see that with wolves. You know, a wolf has to be maybe 2 years old and it can start having pups right away.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: It's like, hey, for a good time, not a long time, in a way. Yep.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, I think that's. That is definitely it is they, they often aren't here for a long time. And I think we've learned that more and more as we do our work is, you know, every year we collar a certain number of wolves and we think, wow, we're really set up to study the wolves this year and next year. You know, we've got these collars out. It's great, you know, because there's a lot of work to getting wolves. Catching wolves is not easy. Wolves don't want to be caught and, and they're very smart. So obviously when we get collared individuals in certain packs, we're pretty happy about that and we hope they stick in those packs. And so every year we think, ah, we're really set. Well, and then by this time of year, so late winter, we, I should clarify, we usually put the collars on in like May, June, July. Right. So usually what happens is you, that's when we have the most number of collars out. And then as the year goes on, what we, what inevitably ends up happening is Some wolves leave, some wolves die. And so by the time we get to now march, we're sitting there going, oh my gosh, we don't have any information on the wolves here. We really got to get some wolves collared. And that's because they inevitably start dying and live these short lives. Even individuals that you're like, this is an individual in the prime of its life. I think this wolf's gonna be around for a while. It's like, oh, nope, they got killed by another wolf or hit by a car or something like that. And you know, that's, that's just the way it goes.
[00:41:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like, well, as with any species, right.
Yeah. It's interesting when you say about the average life because obviously with bears, given the right conditions, yeah, they can live a good while. But when, sometimes when someone asks, oh, what's their average, like an average lifespan for a black bear? It's like, well, it's between like five and 20 years. You know, that's called your, your average.
[00:41:48] Speaker B: Yeah. In some sense it's almost like it's hard. You know, the idea of an average is almost meaningless really. Right. Because there's no, like if you plotted all the like the lifespans of a wolf, you probably wouldn't get a nice bell curve where you'd have a nice average and it would probably be like all over the place, you know, with a lot of deaths when they're really young and things like that. But I think actually the comparison with bears is a good one too when you think about life expectancy. Because when you look at the, like a bear, what they forage on, I mean, I'm going to say particularly black bears, you know, they're omnivorous, but a lot of their diet is going to be plant based berries and things like that. You know, at times they'll take advantage of meat when they can find it.
But like if you think about a wolf, like there's for their meals they have to put. There's a lot of risk associated with getting the food that they're going for. They're trying to catch animals that do not want to be caught. Often animals like deer that are bigger than them. And so wolves are just getting pounded often through their annual life taking on prey. They're getting bitten, they're getting their legs broken, you know, they're getting kicked in the face. All of these sort of things. Right. That something like a bear that's sort of peacefully grazing on grass and berries isn't having that wear and tear on their teeth and their bodies all the time. And so obviously you just don't. You can live a lot longer when you're not getting banged around all the time doing your normal life stuff.
[00:43:15] Speaker A: Feel it bad for them now.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: It's just, it's just the different way they've adapted. Right. Like every species has their own successful way that they've adapted to the environment. And that's just the way wolves have. Have adapted through time to be successful.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. So you were talking, obviously when you're putting all these trail cams out, you're spending a lot of time outdoors in quite remote areas. I mean, how accessible are these areas? And I think Steph mentioned that you had a sort of an unusual story area.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: I might be about the body that I found. Is that an unusual site?
[00:43:50] Speaker A: I think so, yeah. Well, I don't know. Actually, you can tell me.
[00:43:54] Speaker B: Well, I hope that's. I hope we're done with the same thing. Well, I'll start by answering how remote things are. You know, it really depends on your definition of remote. I mean, for probably most people, if you're living in an urban area, basically anywhere you come up in northern Minnesota is going to seem like you're on the edge of the world in terms of. It feels very remote. You know, in terms of actual remoteness, in terms of the time it takes to access an area, you know, we have a lot of cameras that we're checking our places we visit that are not that remote. You know, you can park your car and walk to it in 10 minutes. And by park your car, I mean, you go off the main highway by, you know, 10 minutes, park your car, walk in a few minutes, and you're there. Now other ones, particularly cameras, we have like in the middle of Voyagers national park, those are pretty remote. I mean, you've got a. Those are full day expeditions to kind of get out there, take a boat across the lake, park, bushwhack several miles into the woods to get to a camera. So. So there's varying levels of remoteness, but we're not, you know, I think like if you went into northern Canada or something, that would be truly remote. You know, there's no help, no cell phone service, no one's coming to help you if something happens or it's gonna take a while. Whereas where we're at, you know, something happens, you're really not that far from someone. You know, people could get to you in a couple of hours in pretty much most places you're at.
But we still do find, you know, it's still remote enough. You know, most of the places we're at are maybe accessible through roads and trails, but that doesn't mean there's a lot of people out there. You know, most of the year, we see nobody when we're out because it's a lot of just forest.
So, yeah, a couple. Not a couple of years ago, about eight years ago.
Assuming this is the story, that stuff.
[00:45:35] Speaker A: Well, I was going to say, I actually am sure I know the story. So now I'm intrigued.
[00:45:38] Speaker B: Well, I'll tell the story. So, like I mentioned, we study the predation behavior of wolves by, you know, searching their. These locations from their collars to try to find where they've made kills and. And what else they're doing. So in 2017, that's what I was doing. We were following a wolf that was up in the area of Kabetogama. And we were walking around, or I was by myself, sorry. And I was going into a cluster. Pretty typical. Nothing unusual. As I started showing up. It was. It was August, or maybe it was July at that time, maybe June, I can't remember. Sometime in the summer. And it was a real warm day out. And as I got close, I could smell something dead. And I was like, okay. And often that isn't uncommon. We go to these spots in the summer. You know, wolves are often scavenging stuff that's dead for various reasons or, you know, even their kills will smell. So you kind of have that. Just that, like, oh, yeah, it smells like a kill or something like that. So I was walking in, nothing abnormal. And as I got closer, I kind of looked down, and it took me a while. I was like staring at my feet, and I looked down and there was this piece of clothing. And then in it was a rib cage with the grayed, rotting flesh around the ribs. And it took me a while to process what I was looking at. And then all of a sudden, I kind of looked up and sort of strewn in the woods ahead of me were a bunch of clothes, and I could see other bone fragments. And then there was like a little cabin structure. And this was like just off trail in the middle of nowhere. Really weirded me, obviously. Weirded me out. So I immediately went. Just got out of there because I don't know, did I just find someone who got murdered or, you know, I don't have any idea what I just stumbled upon. And this was where the wolf was spending time. So I ran out of the woods, called night or called my supervisor at the time, and. And, you know, law Enforcement and ended up taking back some folks from the. The sheriff's office to the site who then did a detailed, you know, collecting of samples and all the things that they needed to do to. Once you find a dead body. So. And what it turns out is that some. There had been a missing person. They were able to identify who it was because there was a. Through the teeth and there had been a missing persons report I think, in a couple counties over, something that hadn't been resolved. And it turns out that this person had come and built this little, like, makeshift shack and kind of must have been the winter or something like that, or late spring. And then it appeared he had killed himself. And then what had happened is the animals, the shelter had appeared to kind of collapse. And as it started collapsing, you just smell of a rotting body in there. And so the animals, likely, I'm guessing bears and then probably wolves as well, started, you know, getting into that. And. And like I said, I know wolves for sure consumed it and I bet bears and other animals did too.
So that was pretty. So that took me, you know, that was a tough one to kind of. Wow.
[00:48:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:37] Speaker B: For a while. What freaked me out more than just like, you know, we see a lot of dead things on our work. And so that. That's something I can. You can kind of sort of wrestle with that. But the idea that thing was the. The freakiest was to think, oh, there was someone out in the woods, you know, in some random place. And it's like, what if you run into, you know, who else is out there that I don't know about, that we're going to run into who might not want to be found? And we haven't had any incident like that since, thank goodness.
But, you know, that does kind of get you weirded out a little bit. And just the whole experience was just kind of surreal.
Yeah. So that's definitely the strangest thing that I've encountered doing my work.
[00:49:20] Speaker A: Well, I hope it doesn't happen to anyone else or to you. Again, have you sort of put any measures in place for that kind of thing? You've got like a. A buddy system or something going on.
[00:49:29] Speaker B: We don't have a buddy system necessarily, but we do have. Everyone on our project has emergency locator beacons that they can hit a button right away and get help from emergency services. We do have cell phone service in most of our area, or at least good enough to send a text out if you need help or assistance or things like that. And we generally know where everyone's at. So you know, I'd be very surprised. We've done now going on 11 years of work and we've not had another instance even remotely close to that. So likely was sort of a one off thing. Right. And hopefully we don't see it again. But it was one of those things that kind of, kind of sticks with you. And it took me a while to kind of get back to like not being afraid. I mean it freaked me out a bit obviously and it was kind of surreal. You know, when I took the sheriffs back there I said calm down and you know, there's a lot of other folks around and I kind of stood there on the edge while they investigated because they needed me to show them where it was and how to get in there. And you know, it's just kind of surreal. I was just standing there and you're just looking like, oh, there's the guy's leg bone right there, you know, and there's his rib. And you know, it's just stuff you just don't see. Right. And it's just like almost hard to compute what you're looking at.
[00:50:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, you definitely have to process that.
[00:50:46] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:50:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So thank you for that. Thank you for sharing that. So yeah, I was actually going to say I found myself losing a couple of hours just looking at the project website in preparation for this and going through the publications and news articles covering findings and it was all really fascinating. I just wanted to hear from you the most exciting results that you've gotten so far.
[00:51:10] Speaker B: Trying to think, well there's a lot of them. I mean it all is fascinating to me in its own way because each one is sort of like a piece to a piece puzzle. And you know, like the puzzle will never be complete, you'll never have all the pieces, but every piece gives you a little bit better understanding of what it's supposed to, you know, what the puzzle total might look like completely. You know, I think some of the work that's been the most interesting is the work we've been doing on or the most satisfying findings have been the work to understand wolf beaver interactions. Because like I said that it's a folks of our work and it's something that's been just really not examined very actually really at all at least in terms of wolf predation on beavers. And so we've learned a lot about how wolves go about hunting and killing them through ambushing strategies, how wolves pick their ambushing spots, how wolf predation on beavers influences various ways beavers engineer ecosystems, wolves Influence where beavers sometimes can create wetlands, how far from water beavers are willing to cut trees and therefore impact from forests.
And that kind of just puts wolves, it kind of shows just their sort of role in the larger ecosystem in this area.
And, and obviously beavers are very impactful species in terms of their ecosystem engineering abilities. And so wolves, by basically stopping beavers from engineering as much as they would otherwise, then have a sort of indirect impact. So that's been very fascinating to document. And then, you know, we're starting to do a lot more or starting to get close to publishing a lot more on information on wolf pup survival rates, why many pups in our area just don't make it to adulthood. We're learning about the reasons for that, that a lot of it seems to be based on the inability of adult wolves to get enough food to provision the pups. And we've had some work that's been able to show that, you know, when food gets scarce, adult wolves become more selfish. They're not as willing to share their food with the pups, probably because they're prioritizing their own well being over that of their pups, because they can always have pups again the next year. But, you know, if they die, they're. They're dead. So they become sort of selfish as prey gets less available and more generous as prey becomes more available. And then that influences how many pups survive, which influences how big packs are, which influences how big the population is. And so that's been really fascinating stuff to really get our hands around because that was an example of something that when we started, had no idea we'd be able to figure that out or learn that. So each one, I guess I don't have something that to me is like the biggest discovery. People often ask us that. And I think it's. All of it to me is just, like I said, a piece to the puzzle. And all of it's interesting when viewed in its own lens, in its own and kind of what we were looking at for that particular time.
And each one just helps us get a better understanding of wolves in the area. And so I think each one's valuable and interesting in its own way.
[00:54:10] Speaker A: No, Yeah, I like that. Was it, am I correct you captured footage of a black wolf at one point as well? And I mean, that's, that's. I'm guessing that's quite rare in our area.
[00:54:19] Speaker B: Black wolves are pretty rare in certain other areas. You can think out west, Yellowstone, Alaska, things like that. You'll see black wolves a Lot more often they've linked the prevalence of black wolves in populations. Well, two things worth noting. The reason there's black wolves is because way back when, and I'm not read anytime recently, the black color actually comes from domestic dogs. So domestic dogs and wolves bred and that has sort of stuck. Has been sort of a remnant or a relic in wolf populations that you have some wolves that have retained that the gene that gives them the black color. And there are certain benefits that come along with being black for a wolf. And I'm trying to remember what they are, but it basically has increased disease or particularly into parvovirus. I think it's. They have. What is it they're less susceptible to being. To the impacts of parvovirus, which is sometimes can be a devastating disease for wolves and other canids in our area though. And they also tracked like the prevalence of, or I shouldn't say the prevalence, but the proportion of a population that are black wolves is also varies depending on how I think prevalent that disease outbreak is, from what I understand. And so in places like Minnesota, we don't have a lot of black wolves because we don't have a lot of that, that disease breaking out throughout the population. And so we don't have a lot of wolves that end up becoming black. And I might have just totally butchered that. There was a very big paper that came out a couple years ago that actually did a very nice job kind of explaining why there's likely black wolves. Why the. The presence of black wolves varies across North America. So in our area though, the estimates are that somewhere between 1 to 3% of the population are black wolves. I'd say in our Voyagers area, it's probably even less than that. I mean, we do get them coming through our area on camera, but we've studied, you know, for the past couple years, 20 to 26 wolf packs and not one of the members of any of those packs has been black. And none of the pups that we've tagged ever on our project have been black pups. So. So it's very uncommon in our area.
[00:56:32] Speaker A: How are you engaging with the public? With outreach and education.
[00:56:36] Speaker B: So we engage primarily through social media, you know, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter X YouTube and Threads. You know, we share a lot of the same content on all of them. Just kind of trying to make it accessible for whatever platform people like to follow. What we try to do is share as much information as we possibly can based on stuff we're seeing in the field, stuff we're learning, sharing neat trail camera Images and videos that we collect with the goal of trying to just make the work accessible. And then we try to, when possible, answer the questions that people post in the comments and things like that so that folks feel like they have access to the people doing the work. Oftentimes people feel like there's a barrier sometimes between researchers, particularly when it comes to wolf research, and the public. And we try to the best of our abilities, you know, make ourselves accessible so that if anyone wants to talk to us about something on some more information, you know, we'll try to answer and interact with them and have a dialogue with them about their questions. So obviously it takes a lot of time to do that effectively. I mean, that's been one of the other things is we've not only wanted to share our work, but we've really wanted to think through what are effective ways to disseminate that information. Because you could put, you know, really scientific jargony stuff on social media and people would just be bored and not have any interest in it. So we've spent a lot of time thinking through how do we package this in a way that people are interested in it, that they want to learn more and how do we make it so it's easy for anyone to understand, not just someone who, let's say, has a background in science or biology or something like that.
[00:58:13] Speaker A: Going back to when we obviously I just mentioned about how beavers are being reintroduced into the UK and there have been debates going back years about reintroducing wolves into Scotland, but obviously nothing's really came with that due to negative public perception mostly I think. And so just linking to that, like what are the public concerns about wolves and the myths and misconceptions you kind of find yourselves addressing?
[00:58:36] Speaker B: Well, we could probably spend about 8, 10 hours talking about that topic. That's a, that's a big topic. And there's lots of misunderstandings and misconceptions and intentionally exaggerated claims, I think, about wolves on both sides of the, the spectrum. You could say people who aren't, let's say, big fans of wolves and people who think wolves are just the best thing in on earth. Wolves are maybe singularly unique species, I would say, in terms of their, the emotional, the way that they stir emotions in people about various topics. And often wolves are a symbol for a lot of people of these larger sort of socio political issues that are going on in society. And I'm not going to get into all of that, but I think it's good to know and I'm sure anyone who's lived in an area where there's wolves knows exactly what I'm talking about. You know, in our area, you know, the biggest thing right now is, well, there's a couple things which aren't, aren't related to us so much. But, you know, wolves are an endangered species per the. They're listed on the Endangered Species act or Endangered Species list. There's a lot of talk. People have been, every, basically every presidential administration from since the early 2000s has tried to delist wolves, and that has not been successful. Oftentimes when wolves have been delisted, there's been then judicial reviews that have been put wolves back on the endangered species list. So there's a long history here. And in a lot of places like in northern Minnesota, people want, I'd say probably the majority of wolves of citizens want wolves removed from the endangered species list so that then they can have sort of state management and there's benefits that can come with that. You know, you can. If a wolf is, let's say, going after your dog or killing your livestock, you're able to take action and remove that wolf if you can. Whereas right now that's not something that would be technically legal. The other thing is that folks are concerned that wolves are having an impact on deer populations in the area. And this is not at all unique to Minnesota. Basically, anywhere there's wolves, you'll find people who are upset that are convinced that wolves are having an impact on the prey populations in that area. And that's partly, probably the reason wolves were removed from a lot of their historical range was because of that. So that's a highly contentious issue. That also would take a long time to really dive into the details because wolf prey populations are complex, they're dynamic, they depend on a lot of different things. But those are, you know, some of the big issues. And probably the big issue that will be the biggest conflict in Minnesota right now. People suspect that wolves are likely to be delisted by the Trump administration in the coming year. I'm not involved in that stuff, so we'll see if that happens. If it does, that will probably. Then that means that management will go back to the state of Minnesota, at which time the state will have to determine how they're going to manage wolves. And that will spark probably a very large statewide discussion on whether there should or should not be a wolf hunting and trapping season in the state. That's not something we get involved in, not something we're going to ever comment on, but that will be, I think, that will be the next big step in what's. Like I said, with wolves, there's just never. Nothing's ever straightforward low key. Everything's big and emotional. And so these are topics that, that will be big and emotional in northern Minnesota and in other parts of the Great Lakes region.
[01:02:07] Speaker A: I suppose it's a case of just time will tell, I guess what happens.
[01:02:11] Speaker B: Time will tell. And like I said, you know everyone, there's lots of folks who think they know what's going to happen. But I feel like with wolves, there's been so many times where it's like, oh, this is going to happen and then, oh, no, some curveball comes, some change happens. And so that's kind of where we're at is like, whatever happens, we're just going to keep doing our work. It doesn't, you know, there's still going to be wolves in northern Minnesota, probably similar populations to there are now. And regardless of what happens and we're just going to keep doing our work.
[01:02:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm glad there's people like you out there doing it. So you've covered the public perception concerns on a sort of wider scale there. Are there any issues in the study area or with, with particular issues, any locals that you've had to sort of deal with?
[01:02:54] Speaker B: I think it's like anything. We meet a lot of folks, you know, so we work with for our project. We have permission from over 200 different private landowners in our area to do our work on their property. So by and large, we've had really positive interactions with local folks. And that doesn't mean that all these people like wolves necessarily, but they're willing to work with us and we're happy to share information with them.
So I'd say, by and large, like, we've had really positive interactions with people and this doesn't mean that everyone's going to. Going to say that they think wolves are just. Are great. Like some of them might not like wolves at all and that's okay. Like, that's really fine. I don't need, we don't need folks to, to think wolves are great. We don't even care. You know, we've had people who let us on their land to do work and they're like, if I see one of these wolves, I'm going to shoot it. Like if there's a legal season. And I said, all right, like, that's, that's fine. Like, it's. If that's a legal thing, you're allowed to do it.
[01:03:47] Speaker A: You do you. Yeah, yeah.
[01:03:49] Speaker B: And So I think for us, like, of course there's some people who are very unpleasant that we've had to deal with, you know, some people screaming at us and you know, that just kind of comes with the territory. I think with wolves, like being highly emotional, I mean, it's unfortunate, I think, when we can't have, let's say just pleasant civil conversations with people about topics. A lot of times people are convinced we have some alternative agenda that we're trying to promote protecting all the wolves and we're against, we're an anti hunting organization and all this sort of stuff which isn't at all close to the truth, but that's how it's framed. And sometimes we get folks who are just convinced we're the reason why there's, you know, a bunch of wolves in the area and you know, why there's not a hunting season and all this sort of stuff. And you know, we have no say in virtually any of that. We don't help the wolf population in any way. We study them and that's about it. So, you know, we, we do have a variety of things like that. And then we have some folks in the local community who think that what we're doing is awesome and they help us out and they send us images. So you just have a wide diversity of people with different perspectives and values and that's okay. And we just try to work, you know, our general goal is to try to do our work and be as kind and, and nice to people regardless of their perspective on our work. Because ultimately I think that's just the way you should be about any topic, whether it's wolves or other things, is try to find ways to discuss things. And even if there are disagreements, you know, we can have disagreements and, and be pleasant and it's still okay. And I think that's one of the, the biggest, maybe challenges with studying wolves is oftentimes there's very few folks who sometimes can see. There's very few folks in the middle, right, who are just kind of like, you're not on one extreme or the other because usually you hear the loudest, the loudest people screaming about an issue are the people on the far extremes. And there's, it's nice to be able to have conversations with people who might be in the middle and, or at least a bit more reasonable to have those conversations with. And what I've told people, and I think it's definitely true, is we've met a lot of people who, let's say don't, maybe don't like wolves maybe would like to have a hunting and trapping season who are genuinely very nice, kind people and very nice, kind, caring people. And we've met some who are very unpleasant as well. And similarly I've met people who are, would call themselves wolf advocates or wolf lovers or things like that. Some of which are very nice, wonderful people and some of which are very unpleasant. And so you have nice, great people on both sides and some unpleasant people on both sides too. And that's just the nature of where we're working and we try to just work our way through that.
[01:06:29] Speaker A: No, you've put it very well. I mean there's a lot of similarities. I can draw with a lot of what you said to the, the sanctuary about, with the bears.
[01:06:36] Speaker B: I'm sure there are. Yeah, I'm sure there are. I don't know a lot about it, but I, I can just imagine there's a lot of parallels and I think wildlife just especially charismatic wildlife just draw especially ones that can cause issues for people. You know, bears and wolves don't. Let's. Most of them will never cause issues for people, but some do and they can be difficult to live with sometimes and that can cause strong feelings. And so I think that, you know, users, I just don't think you'll ever get to a point where people don't feel that way about the animals and, and organizations that are working around those animals. It's just bound to happen.
[01:07:16] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean one of our main missions is trying to teach people how to co, how to coexist with nature in a way. There's bears and wolves out there. We're gonna, we're gonna have to live with them.
[01:07:26] Speaker B: Sure. So, yeah, and, and I think, you know, that's a good, I mean we do a lot of work. We've got a large cattle ranch in the middle of our study area. We've done a lot of work. They, the rancher there had had a lot of issues with wolves killing his livestock for many years and as a result wolves would be killed there in response to basically remove wolves that were causing issues and that had gone on for a long time and we've been working there to then implement sort of proactive non lethal solutions to kind of really permanently resolve that issue. Because I do think that generally is beneficial for everybody, regardless of your perspective is, you know, like there's no point doing something year in, year out knowing it's never going to solve the problem and yet we're still just going to have death after death after death. Of both cows and wolves. So maybe we can do something different. But I do think, you know, there are instances where some animals, and I'm speaking specifically to wolves, but I'm guessing it probably applies to bears as well where like there's just some individuals that you're probably going to have to remove. Like if you want people and wolves to share landscapes, you have some individuals that just cause problems and there's no feasible way to resolve that problem otherwise other than removing that problem animal. And that's not going to be most of the animals, but that will be some. And I think that's at least with wolves. And I imagine bears aren't too dissimilar. When wolves figure out that they have a really easy food source, let's say like cows, it's very difficult to stop a wolf that realizes cows are food from coming back and killing more cows because they're smart. And oftentimes the only way to resolve those issues is by removing those individuals. And I think not that that's the ideal way you'd want to have wolves and humans interacting. I think it is sort of a necessary thing if you want wolves to be around.
[01:09:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean we always talk about, yes, you might, you might be able to remove the individual, but if you don't remove the attractant, another individual is probably just going to come along and do the exact same thing and then with the cycle will just start again.
[01:09:26] Speaker B: Probably for bears that's true. It certainly is a bit harder when you have livestock, you know, because it, I mean that raises a challenge. But it's, it's the same premise in essence. Right? I mean, in essence a lot of what we've done on this ranch is basically tried to make the livestock inaccessible.
[01:09:43] Speaker A: Is it like an electric fence?
[01:09:44] Speaker B: It's not electric, but it's a, it's not an electric fence. It's a four, four foot high woven wire fence. It's all around the perimeter of this ranch. And basically wolves just don't go past it. And we also have livestock guardian dogs on the ranch as well. So you kind of have a, the dogs are kind of this proactive deterrent. You know, a wolf comes by, those dogs are going to respond to that. And then the fence keeps wolves, you know, sort of a physical barrier that's hard for wolves to get past. And then the dogs are like an extra layer of protection on top of that physical barrier.
And that has worked, worked pretty well for us.
[01:10:20] Speaker A: That's good to hear. It's good to know that there's non Lethal solutions, which is always preferable. Any advice for budding wolf ologists?
[01:10:30] Speaker B: Well, I would say that for anyone who wants to study wolves, and if you're a young person, the best thing you can do is obviously go to college, get a degree in some sort of biological sciences. It could be biology, zoology, wildlife biology, natural resource management. There's all sorts of degrees that are probably similar, ecology that are good to get into and then you know from there. While you're in college, the best thing you can do is try to give experience doing various things, working at nature centers, volunteering in a professor's lab to understand and help out with their research. They're doing finding a summer, maybe an internship or a summer research position, working on a research project or something like that. So you try to get experience in part because that's what helps you determine what you enjoy doing and also because that then makes you a better candidate when you're out of undergraduate to get a job. So that's where I would start. And then obviously once you get out of an undergraduate degree, you know, then you're trying to accrue more experience. And if you want to study something like wolves, you don't necessarily have to get all of your experience doing wolf related internships and things like that. A lot of the the skills needed to study wolves are the same skills you need to study deer, bears, snowshoe hares, you know, a variety of wildlife species. You really need to understand the methods and be able to do research well. That means being able to collect data systematically, being careful, being able to enter that data clearly, being able to just be in the field, find your know how to navigate in the field, have the physical capabilities of traveling long distances in the field to get places. So there's a lot of ways that you can end up studying wolves. And there's a lot of people who ended up studying wolves who weren't doing wolf related work their whole career, especially when they were young. They might have been working on, let's say an elk research project or a deer research project or maybe a bear research project. And then they get experience working on other research projects. So they get these sort of short term experiences that help them build up their skill set that then allow them to study wolves someday or be a good candidate for when a position comes available to study wolves. The other thing that's important to note, particularly if you want to do wolf research, is getting a master's degree at a minimum is probably a requirement. Now there are some people who have done it without that, but it's very difficult to do. And so at least a master's degree in some sort of, you know, biological sciences is needed. And if you want to lead a research project someday or be sort of, you know, your own boss in a lot of, in a sense of the word, you know, you need to have often a PhD so you can be an, an independent researcher who knows how to write peer reviewed publications, do data analysis, write grants and all sorts of things like that. So obviously that's a long road. And again there, you know, people do Master's research and PhD research on animals that aren't wolves necessarily and then can study wolves because if you show you're a good scientist studying some other species, you're probably going to be a really good scientist studying wolves as well when you do that. So I would say for people who are doing it, you know, just try to get as much experience as you can and seize the opportunities you want. And also be persistent. That's the biggest thing. There's a lot of people who want to study wildlife and certainly charismatic species like wolves and bears and moose and things like that. And so be persistent. Knock on doors. Don't let some rejection slow you down. You know, it's very common. When I was starting, I had lots of jobs. I never even heard back on the position when I applied sometimes or was just no, you know, and that was a lot of getting started. But every experience you have, every position you have makes it a little bit easier to get the next one and to get the next one. And so it starts off maybe slow and takes a lot of work, but it gets easier slowly through time and you learn a lot about how, you know, you improve your abilities to, let's say, apply for jobs and you build your skill set and things like that. But I think persistence is probably the best one in general is that it's going to take some time. Don't get discouraged if things don't go the way you wanted right away because a lot of people can, can do that and that can be, that can be unfortunate.
[01:14:57] Speaker A: Stay in school, kids. That's what I'm hearing. No, if you want to study wolves.
[01:15:00] Speaker B: I think that's the only route that I'm aware of to do that.
[01:15:05] Speaker A: Yeah, one to end on. I just wondered what's the best movie featuring a wolf in your opinion, can be fact or fiction?
[01:15:13] Speaker B: Well, there's a lot of fiction movies out there. I'll take one that's sort of a blend of fact and fiction. There's a movie in the night, I think it was the 1970s, called Never Cry Wolf by Disney, and it was based on a book by Farley Moat. Now the book.
So if you've ever heard the, the idea that wolves can rely on eating mice or small rodents, it came from that book and then the subsequent movie. The Story is Not True, the real story, which came out later. So Farley Moat claimed that the story was a real life account when he first wrote it, but then about wolves. And he was studying wolves in the high Arctic area at the time. The government wanted him to understand whether or not wolves were killing or having an impact on the caribou. He went up there and said, oh, actually they're eating small animals like rodents and things. And that was his attempt to stop the government from killing the wolves by saying that they're actually not going after the caribou. Well, turns out he later admitted, from what I understand that that was not true, that he basically did make that up, in essence to protect the wolves. So I want to preface that by saying I know the story is not true. So don't watch the movie and say this is just true story. But as a movie, as a, as a, as a young biologist, when I first watched that movie, you can't help but be somewhat inspired by it because it's a story of a, you know, a biologist who goes out to this desolate, remote area, lives in this beautiful landscape where there's caribou and he's living next to a spot where the wolves are denning. And it's basically just his story of this biologist studying wolves in a stunning landscape. And it's got that old 1970s, 1980s, sort of like the old, like the, the old days of research, right, when they didn't have all the technology we have now is just, you know, in the fields, studying them, observing them. So I think that's a really great movie. I will still watch it from time to time and can still appreciate the, the sentiment in it of the, the experience, while also understanding it's totally fictional, by and large. But I don't know, nonetheless, it's, it's pretty cool.
[01:17:20] Speaker A: I don't think I've ever heard of it, so I'll check it out.
[01:17:22] Speaker B: If you watch the movie, I think you'll be impressed. It's actually, like I said, it was a Disney movie. It was well done. It's not some. Sometimes there's been some.
I watched a few. I don't even know the names of movies throughout the years about various wolf stories. And they're kind of hokey and and this was done at least I thought very well. Right? It feels very they did it with a lot of skill and I think that's what makes it it really nice.
[01:17:45] Speaker A: Thank you for agreeing to come on and thank you for your very thoughtful answers. I've I've really enjoyed speaking to you and I'm very appreciative of you giving your time.
And just to demonstrate my dedication to this podcast, I did in fact go away and watch Nevercry Wolf and I can confirm it is jam packed with sumptuous vistas and a compelling story that does harken back to a simpler time filled with a pioneering spirit. You'll find links to the project's website, voyagerswolfproject.org and social media channels below in the episode Description Next time we'll be continuing our Founders Tales series where we invite ABA co founder Clarie Lee into the bear den. Her empathy and desire to make a difference is quite infectious. It's not one to miss.
Until then, I'm gonna go away and practice on how to say that lake's name. See you then.
The Bear Den the American Bear Association Podcast was written and presented by me, Philip Stubley. The music was composed by React Music. Thank you to everyone who has helped make this podcast possible, including Karen Housman, Bill Lee, Clary Lee, Stephanie Horner, Donna Brzinka, Ross Coyer and Angie Page. You can find out more about the American Bear association at www.americanbear.org. you can find Vince Shookey Wildlife Sanctuary on Facebook and Instagram. You can ask questions and submit comments about the podcast to pswamericanbear.org the ABA is a special circumstance. We do not condone feeding wild animals. If you enjoy this podcast, help support the ABA either by donating, becoming an ABA member, symbolically adopting a bear, or come visit the sanctuary during the season and say hello. And if you do enjoy this, please do us a favour and I'll barely take any of your time, I promise. On whatever platform you're listening to this on, please either follow us, click the bell for updates Notifications Please share with family and friends and rate the podcast as it all helps us grow and is greatly appreciated.
