Wolf

Canis lupus

Description
History
Range
Habitat
Life History
Relationship With People

Description

The wolf is the primeval wild dog, long a hunter alongside people, ancestor of our most faithful domestic companion. Wolves vary widely in appearance, from lightly built and often white in the Arctic to larger, and mostly dark in more southerly areas.

History

Wolves arose in the middle of the great Ice Age about one million years ago from a lineage of smaller doglike forms native to Eurasia. They spread to North America across the Bering land bridge early in the Ice Age when it was bared by falling sea level, and renewed contact with the American population each time the bridge re-emerged. As a result, Asian and American populations have not evolved separately for long enough to become distinct species.

Range

Today wolves are distributed across the northern portion of both continents and more sporadically to the southward. They can be found throughout Beringian except for many islands. Six thousand individuals have been estimated to inhabit Alaska at densities varying from 39 individuals per 1,000 square kilometers in richer, more southerly habitats, to six per 1,000 square kilometers in coastal and northern tundra. A study of wolves in the remote Anadyr highlands of Russian Beringia determined an intermediate density: about ten wolves per 1,000 square kilometers.

Habitat

Wolves once occupied a vast array of habitats well into the temperate and even subtropical and desert areas. Now, however, they are generally rare or absent except in northern forests and arctic tundra.

Life History

Wolves lead a complex social life. They form groups called "packs," which are typically composed of a dominant mated pair, their offspring , and an assortment of other adults, often with some genetic relationship to the "first family." In May or June the dominant female bears a litter of up to ten pups in a den in some secluded location. Life in summer centers around this den site. The whole group assists in the upbringing, helping to feed the mother and young with prey from the hunt, acting as "nursemaids" when the mother herself goes hunting, and guarding the area from predators like grizzly bears. By fall the pups are able to roam freely and the group may become more nomadic.

The life of the pack is finely tuned to the hunt. When moose or caribou are abundant, wolves live in larger groups to enable pack hunting. A pack uses a distinct territory, which it defends against other wolves. During winter wolves may travel long distances, especially when the main prey is a migratory species such as caribou. In some areas of northeast Asia, wolves have come to prey heavily on reindeer, with the result that predation pressures have lessened on caribou stocks. Many other foods will be utilized if available, such as moose, mountain sheep, marmots, ground squirrels, hares, mice and even spawning salmon.

Relationship With People

Wolves and people evolved in Ice Age Eurasia and spread throughout a large part of the world in each other's company. Hard times must have occasionally thrown them into severe competition, but the wolf human relationship was governed by mutual tolerance and respect. This changed when humans assumed pastoral and agricultural life-styles and began campaigns to exterminate their old competitor to make the world safe for large numbers of domestic animals, or to divert the wolf's share of wild meat to an ever- increasing human population. The result has been the elimination of wolves almost everywhere that people dominate the land.

In today's increasingly crowded world wolves are valued as a symbol of wilderness, and of ecosystems healthy enough to support large predators. People in regions with wolf populations are coming to recognize a special responsibility toward these creatures.

Along with new appreciation has come disagreement about wildlife management practices for wolves. Some hold that no wolves should be trapped or hunted. Others emphasize traditional use by rural people of both wolves and their ungulate prey (caribou, moose, etc.). Yet others, recognizing the pressure that wolves can put on prey populations, argue for deliberate reductions of wolf populations under some circumstances. And the need of reindeer herders to protect their herds remains a dilemma for wolf management.

The State of Alaska recently convened a wolf management planning team representing the wide diversity of opinion. The team found that wolves must be considered in the context of the entire ecosystem, recognizing the interconnectedness of wildlife users, prey, predators and habitat. Wolves depend on large tracts of habitat and substantial populations of their principle prey species; moose, caribou and mountain sheep. All these are threatened by human population growth, development, habitat conversion and fragmentation and over-hunting. Wolves must also be protected from mechanized harassment, and even from disease and genetic alteration through breeding with dogs if they are to survive in the wild. A public process to develop specific management policies based on these principles was underway in 1992.

The Alaska planning team recommended that these issues be addressed through a coordinated strategy of public education and changes in management. All human uses of wolf habitat must balance the needs of wolves and people, the team felt. For instance, when wolf populations decline drastically because of low prey availability, human hunting of the prey stocks should be curtailed. On the other hand, temporarily reducing wolf populations might sometimes be desirable to allow depressed prey populations to rebound.

Modern reindeer husbandry conflicts with healthy wolf populations. Consequently, populations of wolves are low in central Beringia. For example, in 1989 the number of wolves on the Seward Peninsula was estimated at only 50 to 150 individuals.

In Chukotka recent decades have seen an official policy of shooting wolves from helicopters to protect reindeer herds, but there seems to be a shift away from this policy. It is said that in olden times wolves and people worked out a balance, with wolves taking what they needed from the herds, and Chukchis hunting only individual wolves that had become wasteful killers. Is it possible that such balances as these can be reestablished, not only in reindeer husbandry but all human endeavors, so that the song of the wolf will always be heard in Beringia?

From:
Beringia Natural History Notebook Series - September, 1992
National Audubon Society
Alaska-Hawaii Regional Office
308 G. Street, Suite 217
Anchorage, AK 99501
Tel: (907) 276-7034
Fax: (907) 276-5069

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URL: http://www.nps.gov/bela/html/wolves.htm
Last Updated: 22 December, 1995