Wolves
Wolves roam just east of Stony Creek in the Denali National Park and Preserve.
Posted: Sunday, June 8, 2014
FAIRBANKS — Visitors to Alaska’s most famous national park might be disappointed this summer if they had their heart set on seeing a wolf
The National Park Service says the number of wolves in Denali National Park and Preserve is the lowest it’s been in almost 30 years. Park biologists counted only 50 wolves inside the 6-million-acre park during an aerial survey in March. That’s five fewer than last year and the lowest number since biologists began tracking the park’s wolf population in 1986. The lowest spring wolf count inside the park previously was 53 in 1987.
The low number of wolves in the park continues what has been a decade-long decline, the park’s head wolf biologist, Steve Arthur, said. The park’s wolf population in 2006 was estimated at 116, more than twice what it was this spring. It has declined almost every year since. While it’s not unusual for the park’s wolf population to fluctuate, the current decline is the longest biologists have seen since 1986. “I wouldn’t say it’s a steep decline, but they’re showing no signs of an increase,” Arthur said.
Not surprisingly, the low wolf numbers inside the park have coincided with a decline in wolf sightings by tourists the past four years, according to Park Service statistics. Last year, only an estimated 4 percent — or around 8,000 — of the approximately 200,000 visitors who traveled the park road in shuttle buses reported seeing wolves. It marked the fourth year in a row that the number of park visitors who saw a wolf declined, from 44 percent in 2010 to 21 percent in 2011 to 12 percent in 2012.
Cause for concern
Park superintendent Don Striker is “extremely concerned” about the decline in the park’s wolf population and wolf viewing opportunities in the park.
While seeing a wolf in the wild may not be the primary reason most people visit Denali — seeing a grizzly bear and Mount McKinley rank a bit higher — it is one of the potential highlights, Striker said. Wolves are considered one of the “big five” wildlife species tourists go to Denali to see, he said. The others are grizzly bears, moose, caribou and Dall sheep. “Congress established Denali in 1917 to preserve and protect wildlife, and providing the opportunity for out visitors to witness natural processes including wolves fulfills this mission while creating stewards for Denali’s future,” Strike wrote in an email to the News-Miner.
It’s too early to tell what the low wolf numbers will mean for wolf viewing opportunities in the park this summer, said Arthur. Tour buses started hauling visitors into the park on May 20 and Arthur said he hadn’t heard of any wolf sightings yet. The park is conducting a research project to determine how closely wolf viewing opportunities are tied to the number of wolves in the park. There are several factors involved, Arthur said.
One of the biggest is whether any wolf packs choose to den near Denali Park Road, the only road leading into the park. While visitors are allowed to drive their own vehicles as far as 15 Mile of the 92-mile road, the only access beyond that point is on park shuttle buses, and that’s where the majority of wolves are seen. If a wolf pack dens near the road, it greatly increases the chances that visitors riding those buses will see them, Arthur said. “We’re hoping at least one pack will be near the road this summer,” Arthur said.
Smaller numbers
Last year, no packs denned near the road until the tourist season was almost over, he said. The Grant Creek Pack moved into a den close to the road in late August and early September but most of the tourists were gone by then, though many people who drove into the park during the Denali Road Lottery in mid-September reported seeing wolves.
There are other factors in the wolf viewing equation, too, such as where the majority of wolves are located in the park and how many and which wolves are trapped or shot when they venture outside the park, where they are free game for hunters and trappers.
Most wolf sightings take place along the road in the eastern half of the park, where the majority of the wolf packs call home. But if that were to change and the wolf population migrated west for some reason, it would mean fewer viewing opportunities for the public, Arthur said.
And while only a few park wolves are killed by hunters and trappers each winter on state land around the northeast corner of the park near Healy and in the preserve portion of the park to the west where hunting and trapping is allowed, that could potentially have a major impact on wolf viewing, Arthur said.
For one thing, wolves in the northeast corner of the park are the wolves that are most likely to be seen by tourists, he said. If that number is reduced, so too are potential viewing opportunities.
Another factor is which wolves are killed, Arthur said. “Some wolves may be more or less weary (of people) than other wolves,” he said. “If one of the wolves that is less weary of humans ventures outside the park and gets trapped, that could have a larger impact than if a more unweary wolf is trapped.”
The same is true if the alpha male or female in a pack is trapped in the spring before or after mating season. “We know the trapping of dominant, reproducing wolves in the spring before denning means that pack is less likely to produce pups,” Arthur said. “The next step is to see if that translates to reduced opportunities for viewing.”
The Park Service doesn’t know how many wolves were trapped on state land around the park this winter because harvest figures from the state aren’t available yet. Arthur said he is not aware of any collared wolves that were killed this winter or spring.
At this point, though, Arthur said that hunting and trapping doesn’t seem to be the thing that is driving the wolf population down. “That doesn’t mean it’s not contributing, but it’s not the main, driving factor,” he said.
Buffer zone
The National Park Service and citizens groups have repeatedly asked the state to create a protective “buffer zone” on state land along the north and eastern boundary of the park, specifically the Stampede Trail near Healy that parallels the northeast park boundary. The concept is a controversial and polarizing one that has gone back and forth for decades.
The state Board of Game, which sets state trapping and hunting regulations, established a buffer zone in 2000 that covered approximately 122 square miles along the Stampede Trail and Nenana Canyon areas.
The buffer zone remained in place for 10 years until the board voted to eliminate it in 2010, saying it was an emotional, not biological, issue. At the same time, the game board established a six-year moratorium on any future proposals pertaining to a buffer zone.
Since then, the game board and Gov. Sean Parnell have repeatedly denied requests, including one from park officials, to close trapping and hunting of wolves along the northeast boundary
The case for a buffer zone is “fairly simple,” Striker, the Denali superintendent, said. When the buffer zone was in place, approximately 45 percent of visitors to Denali saw wolves, he said. Since the state removed the buffer zone in 2010, the number has fallen to 4 percent. “The former Stampede wolf buffers clearly increased the likelihood of visitors seeing wolves in Denali,” Striker said.
The Park Service has “consistently emphasized” the value of the park’s wolves for wildlife viewing to state wildlife managers and Striker said he will continue to advocate for a buffer zone “I understand that some folks hope that the aggressive removal of predators like wolves will net financial gains via increased sport hunting; however, I will continue to work with state agencies and the Alaska Board of Game to advocate for the appropriate conservation of predators around Denali and the for the local jobs that such conservation ensures,” Strike wrote in an email.
Ups and downs
The wolf population in the park has fluctuated greatly since biologists started tracking wolves in 1986. Back then, the population wasn’t much higher than it is now. Biologists estimated there were only 61 wolves in the park that first year and that number dropped to 53 in 1987.
But the population grew during the next five years as the Denali Caribou Herd flourished, Arthur said. The number of wolves estimated in the park peaked at 134 in 1991. That’s also about the time the caribou herd’s population crashed. As a result, wolf numbers in the park dropped slightly but continued to fluctuate in a range between about 80 to 115 wolves during the next 17 years. Biologists estimated there were 96 wolves in the park as recently as 2008.
Since then, however, the population has dropped precipitously. Biologists aren’t sure why but the population seems to have bottomed out and stayed there.
Biologists monitor wolves in the park using radiocollars they put on the animals and then track from the air. The Park Service currently has collars on 19 different wolves in the park. There is at least one member of all 13 packs that use the park fitted with collars, Arthur said.
Fifteen of the collars are equipped with GPS, which provides a location of the wolves either daily or every three hours, and the other four are VHF collars that biologists locate about every two weeks.
This year’s average pack size was only 3.9 wolves, the smallest since the Park Service began collecting wolf data in 1986. Six of the 13 packs monitored by the Park Service had four or fewer wolves, including one pack that consisted of a lone wolf and two that had only two wolves.
From a research standpoint, the low wolf numbers are “definitely a concern,” Arthur said. “We want to understand what’s happening,” he said. “Most of the park is managed as wilderness where we don’t take an active role in manipulating the wildlife population, but we do try to understand what’s going on. “Monitoring wolf abundance is one of the important monitoring standards that we have in Denali,” Arthur said. “In that respect it is a concern.”
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