For more than two decades, Gilbert Proulx has spent countless hours in an enclosed wooded compound, monitoring foxes as they hunted rabbits and squirrels, then setting what he thought were the perfect killing snares on the foxes’ favoured pathways. But the wildlife researcher, who has been looking for more humane ways for trappers to capture animals, said that when his perfectly set snares were sprung, they rarely caught the foxes in a way that would quickly bring death.”If you want to have a perfect kill, you have about a one-centimetre target zone right behind the animal’s jaw,” said the science director for Alpha Wildlife Research & Management, a consulting firm based in Sherwood Park, Alta. “But hitting that is like waiting to win Lotto 6/49 – we found it was impossible,” said Mr. Proulx, whose studies have proved that snares rarely work the way they are supposed to.

Source: Use of snares in Western Canadian wolf culls fuels ethical debate – The Globe and Mail

New research has found some carnivores in Kananaskis Country have altered their behaviour in response to the presence of humans.The results come from a University of Victoria master’s student, who studied data from motion-triggered cameras in Kananaskis and the more remote Willmore Wilderness Park north of Jasper.Sandra Frey says she noticed wolves in K-Country became more nocturnal so as not to bump into people during the day.

Source: Wolves adjust sleeping habits to avoid human contact, research suggests | CBC News

Ontario Hubs field producer Jeyan Jeganathan visits Algonquin Park, one of only a handful of places the Algonquin wolf calls home.

Source: The Survival of the Algonquin Wolf | TVO.org

A wilderness protection agency says Ontario’s Algonquin wolves are quickly disappearing because hunting, trapping, road building and increasing breeding with coyotes that dilutes the gene pool.Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society is urging the provincial government to eliminate hunting and trapping of Algonquin wolves within a recovery zone as well as protect its habitat by limiting and reducing roads.

Source: Algonquin wolf population declines due to multiple threats | NCPR News

Facts about Baffin Island Wolfs. “Scientific name for Baffin Island Wolf is Canis lupus manningi”. The Baffin Island Wolf is a sub variety of Gray Wolf that belongs to the genus Canis of the Canidae family. The Baffin Island Wolf can be commonly called the Baffin Island Tundra wolf and they mostly survive on the Baffin Island and on a number of nearby islands. Until 1943, the Baffin Island wolf breed was not officially acknowledged as a sub variety, where it was given its taxonomic categorization by the State of Anderson. Early reports and proofs suggest that the Baffin Island Wolves migrated in western Greenland from Baffin Island, and hence, they are the successors of the subspecies of the Baffin Island Wolf. The Baffin Island Wolf is categorized as an endangered animal, owing to home obliteration, like the rainforest, introduction of disease, exotic species, water contamination, global warming and excessive use of natural resources.

Source: Baffin Island Wolf – Knowledge Base LookSeek.com

Apparent competition is an increasing problem, causing endangerment and extinction of native prey as abundant species colonize new areas in the wake of human-caused change to the environment. This is exactly what is happening to the iconic woodland caribou across North America. Prey like moose and white-tailed deer are expanding in numbers and range because of logging and climate change, which in turn increases predator numbers (e.g. wolves). With all these additional predators on the landscape, more caribou become by-catch, driving some herds to extinction.A short-term solution would be to kill wolves but this can be seen as just a band aid, and is no longer politically acceptable in many jurisdictions. As a more ultimate solution, Serrouya and colleagues used a new government policy and treated it as an experiment, to maximize learning. The new policy was to reduce moose numbers to levels that existed prior to widescale logging, with an adjacent reference area where moose were not reduced. The results of this research are published in an article titled “Experimental moose reduction lowers wolf density and stops decline of endangered caribou,” and is published today in the peer reviewed and open access journal PeerJ.

Source: An alternative to wolf control to save endangered caribou: Researchers study the effectiveness of a new government strategy to stabilize the caribou population by focusing on the reduction of invasive moose populations, indirectly lowering the density of the caribou’s primary predator — ScienceDaily

Source: Wolf.pdf