Local wildlife biologists use late winter to examine wolf populations

April 3, 2014 

By MARCY MISNER
Staff Writer

CHIPPEWA COUNTY — Department of Natural Resources biologists are using this year’s snowpack to learn more about wolves in the Upper Peninsula. It’s part of the annual winter survey.

 

DNR Biologist Kristie Sitar shows how the toes on a coyote track differ from that of a domesticated dog.
(Photo: Marcy Misner)

It’s too early to tell if there’s been any change in wolf behavior since the state’s first wolf hunt ended Dec. 31, but biologists say they can still tell plenty from what they find, or don’t find. “So yeah, there is some kind of pee there. We can hop out,” said state DNR biologist Kristie Sitar recently. We’re out, somewhere in the Eastern Upper Peninsula looking for wolves – or at least, wolf tracks – in the snow.
Wildlife biologists in the UP were conducting their annual winter wolf survey recently. This is how they get an estimate on the number of wolves in the UP. Last year’s estimate was 658 wolves.

It turns out the wolves use plowed roadways as much as people do.  It’s easier for them to travel. So roads and railroad tracks are often-used corridors for wildlife of all kinds to travel by. “The foresters will sometimes let us know where they’re seeing sign of wolves and that just helps us refine what we’re looking for or gives us a heads up on where to go and look,” Sitar said.

Along a railroad track, we examine the wingtips of a raven or crow that was searching for something under the snow. We had seen the bird touching down repeatedly into the snow from the truck and we walked down the tracks to investigate.
(Photo: Marcy Misner)

Sitar said late winter is a good time to look for wolves for a couple of reasons.  For one, it’s the breeding season, and, she said, wolves stick together more. It makes it easier to get a head count. Or a foot count, as it were.  She also said it’s easier to find signs of wolves in the snow – urine markings, tracks – they all stand out against the white background. That wouldn’t happen in a summer meadow.
Sitar and I just found a dark yellow sprinkle on the side of a snow bank. We hop out of the truck to get a closer look. “It’s definitely a mark of a wolf or a coyote. And we call those an RLU, a raised leg urination. That’s what male canines do. So your dog, your male dog, has a raised leg urination and so does a wolf and a coyote,” Sitar explained.

Sitar said this particular marking is a few days old. She explained how a marking ended up in this spot. “Basically in this vicinity you could look on either side of the road. Because maybe the wolves have come across from a trail over here, marked up a snow bank and continued down the road,” she said.

So we, too, continued on down this road, and many others this day. We found plenty of tracks: coyote, deer, even a female bobcat in heat.  Sounds pretty specific, doesn’t it?  Sitar pointed out that the urine was in the middle of a plowed turnout – not on the bank, as a male cat would spray. And it had some blood in it. She said she expects that this time of year, since it was breeding season when we were out.

Railroad tracks are commonly used corridors for wildlife to travel by. Not too far from where a raven or crow was landing in the snow, a coyote also had checked for something of interest.
(Photo: Marcy Misner)

Sitar was working with another biologist out of the Sault Ste. Marie office. On this day, he was out on snowmobile scouring another part of the EUP.   They were hoping to find evidence of three separate packs in the area.

The information helps the DNR keep track of which wolves may be causing problems around humans or livestock – and which are not.  It also helps the DNR track the success of the population over time.
“In this more northern area where there’s a lot of deep snow, we wouldn’t expect to see wolf tracks up here. It’s not impossible but it’s not as likely because there aren’t deer up here. The snow is too deep for deer; they’ve all migrated to southern areas so it’s likely that we’re not going to encounter wolf tracks here,” she said.

More roads, a stop for sandwiches. Then, finally, success – but not for us. The other biologist found tracks to the north of us and radioed the news.
Radio:

31: Looks like 2.
Sitar: Okay, and that kind of jibes with what you had before, two animals there.
31: Affirmative. I’m going to follow them for a ways and see if they turn into more.
Sitar: That sounds like a good idea. And are they fresh tracks?
31: Very fresh.
Sitar: Excellent. So I just need to concentrate on finding this pack down here.  That would provide us some good separation between the animals you just found and the pack I’m hoping to find to the south. So that’d be great.
31: Okay. I’ll give you a bump on the radio later on.
Sitar: Thanks, 30 clear.

On this day, Sitar’s search came up empty.  She summed up the day’s events. “We didn’t find fresh tracks of the potentially new pack but we did find fresh tracks of the Kinross pack, which is a pack we were looking for and hoping to make that distinction with. We found old places where wolves had marked where we knew wolves have been in the past but we didn’t find fresh tracks today. So they were in a different part of the home range today that we didn’t get lucky enough to find them in.  So what it means is in order for us to call this new pack as a new pack we’re going to need to go back again,” she said.

And go back she did. Sitar went back out on another cold, clear day and she found the evidence she needed of the three separate packs. Biologists in other areas of the UP have been conducting similar surveys.  An estimate of the UP wolf population should be available in the coming weeks.

source