Management

Wolves, like caribou, are the responsibility of the provincial government. But in a province where human interest and industrial development take precedence in all land-use decisions, the wolf has rarely been treated as an important member of the province’s rich wildlife heritage. Throughout most of the history of formal management of the wolf, it has been targeted as vermin and a problem animal.

Even today under Alberta’s new Woodland Caribou Recovery Plan, wolves are being pursued and shot from helicopters and left in the woods either dead or crippled. New poisoning campaigns are being contemplated if the helicopter cull does not show positive results for caribou recovery. In essence, twenty-first-century wolf management differs little from that of two centuries ago.

However, unlike the similarly persecuted but slow-breeding grizzly bear, the wolf is resilient, and if conditions become favourable, it has always been able to bounce back to healthy numbers in a matter of only a few years.

Summary of Wolf Management

The Current Situation

• Viable populations are key to maintaining wolves. The long-term Alberta goal is to develop an annual wolf inventory and to sustain a mid-winter wolf population of 4,000 animals.
• To maintain this number of wolves, healthy populations of hoofed mammals are required. It is estimated that at least 200,000 ungulates are needed to supply 30,000 prey animals annually to a population of 4,000 wolves.
• The challenge facing this management plan is mainly the low and locally declining populations of elk, moose, and especially woodland caribou. Also, because wolves inhabit forested areas, they are hard to observe, making an annual inventory difficult or impossible.
• To keep the wolf population under control, Sustainable Resource Development has suggested an annual removal of a maximum of 1,200 wolves, mainly through hunting and trapping. Trapping would be the prime consideration. Strategies for wolf harvesting include the following:

• improving wolf trapping through education
• providing trappers with road-killed game for bait
• supplying trappers with subsidized traps and snares.

• But there are complications with this strategy.

• Wolf pelt quality is often poor because of coarse haired specimens and the prevalence of mange, a skin parasite that can cause bald patches on hides.
• As well, the current demand for wolf pelts is limited, especially for the black ones so prevalent in Alberta.
• Recreational hunting of wolves is currently somewhat profitable for the province, as there is no bag limit on wolves – hunters can take as many as they want. However, hunting is an inefficient way to reduce wolves especially in forested region.
• Where wolf reduction by hunters and trappers is impractical but ungulate populations are considered in need of bolstering, the Alberta government intends to control wolves through eradication programs. Wolf management will be implemented where predation is considered a major restriction to ungulate population recovery. The Alberta Woodland Caribou Recovery Plan: 2004-2014 has been set in motion, and one aspect of the plan is wolf control on prime winter habitat and breeding grounds. In 2005, 89 wolves were killed during the winter as a result of this plan.

• Wolves have been targeted for killing livestock ever since Europeans settled the prairie in the 1800s. This is the reason the first wolf bounties were instituted, and many ranchers still encourage wolf hunting on their private and leased lands. The Alberta government will attempt to lessen wolf threats to livestock and pets through the following:
• using wildlife management issues as a part of land-use decisions, especially concerning grazing
• educating ranchers as to better animal husbandry
• removing wolves that have killed livestock
• continuing compensation for confirmed livestock kills

• Another official Alberta goal is to improve the conservation, research, and wildlife management of the wolves by these means:
• creating a sighting registry
• joining studies with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• protecting/introducing approximately 50 wolves into southwest Alberta (this will support the continuing efforts for wolf recovery in the northwestern states)