Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Study: Wolves and Elk Birth Rates

Here is an interesting article on the effect of wolves on the birth rates among Yellowstone elk.
http://www.montana.edu/cpa/news/nwview.php?article=7324

Let me guess - elk and wolves were holding hands and singing Kumbaya.................

I guess I'll have to read it.

RedRabbit: Interesting hypothesis. Need to see if it proves out in other regions.

Interesting theories.

And seemingly much greater compound impact than simple depredation by predators. 16,000 to 6,000 elk is a hell of a decline.

A couple of related "findings" that bother me a bit:

1. There are more wolves than estimated/projected,
2. The presence of wolves in combinaton with depredation is far worse than mortality solely due to depredation.

How do you correct for that? And why do we continue to try to "adjust" nature?

Not sure about the wolf/elk relationship, but I would suspect it is similar to the wolf/deer/moose issues around Algonquin Park in Central Ontario. After years of studies the general conclusion is that the low recruitment rate is due to the wolves and bears preying heavily on the newborn to 90 day old fawns and calves. It's not so much pressure on the adults that cuts the population, is the killing of up to 95% of the young of the year in the first few months of their lives.

Ponder this:

How much meat would it take to feed 6-8 150 lb dogs and their puppies for one year?

If you turn loose a pack of wolves in the wild, any moron with even a thread of common sense could figure out that deer, moose and elk populations are going to have to supply that meat.

Oh yea...I forgot they only kill the old and sick.

The old timers had this figured out 100 years ago. But I guess we are a lot smarter now

Bwinters: Try this article on for size (regarding numbers of Elk reduced by the over-abundance of Wolves!).

Link: http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2005/01/12/news/01elknumbersrise.txt

If the link does not work the gist of this article is the Elk went from over 19,000 in this area to 8,335 several years after the Wolves became over-populated thereabouts!
Thats a decline of about 11,000 Elk!!!
The article also quantifies the amazing amount of lost human Hunting opportunities.

Thanks for nothing rmWf!

Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I hear on the radio, low birth rate due to lack of nutrition.. For some reason the elk are not eating properly..
I wonder if you could eat while you are running for your life...

Those dumb ashes....

Any stockman that has wolves around knows this without a study by biologists cows exhibit the same problems the only good news from the article is they acknowledge theres a problem, now how to fix it, they'll probably say they need to give all the cows progesterone shots or anything but what really needs to be done. danny

Interesting and good article--but I'm not sure their conclusions are anything new--they were teaching us the same theory 10 years ago when I went back to college about the effects of predation on prey birth rates. The article/researchers neglects to note what a "normal" birth rate in Yellowstone elk is to begin with. An exceptionally high birth rate in the absence of significant predation wouldn't be normal to begin with, so one has to look at the baseline/control data with a "critical eye". I also question if a possibly higher quality of feed for the elk in Yellowstone, because of the presence of wolves, may offset lower calf production by increasing calf survival in their first year of life.

I always go back to Banff National Park, where the elk population deals with a full suite of large predators, had very little sport hunting harvest (protected by the park and ex-urban development), has a lower birth rate then most elk populations in the lower 48, had individual elk that appeared to live to a older age than their counterparts in the lower 48 (which the above study seems to suggest will also happen in Yellowstone) had significantly higher bull to cow ratios, and had a much higher proportion of older bulls in the population.


Casey