TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan – Gray wolves who were taken to Royal Island National Park in Michigan to rebuild their near-defunct population shape social groups, stake and mating territories, promising symptoms despite large herbal losses and fatal struggles. scientists said Monday.
They also achieved a number one purpose of the reintroduction initiative by cutting the park’s herd of suk, which is too giant for its own good, michigan Tech University researchers said.
“They have no problem locating and attacking elk, and that is important,” said wildlife ecologist Rolf Peterson, who has spent decades reading the dating between the two species in the Lake Superior Range of Islands. “I think all the symptoms are positive.
Data from radio transmission collars used through transplanted wolves and photographs of remote cameras recommend that puppies be born in the more than two years, the number is uncertain, researchers from the park and New York State University said.
Wolves are believed to have traveled to Royal Island crossing ice bridges in Minnesota or the Canadian province of Ontario in the mid-20th century. Once established, their number averaged in the 1920s before declining dramatically over the next decade, basically due to inbreeding.
The National Park Service announced plans in 2018 to repair the population, which had been reduced to two. The young took 19 wolves from Minnesota, Ontario and Michigan’s upper peninsula to the island on a series of air bridges, some of them died and at least one returned. to the mainland.
A report released Monday through michigan Tech’s study team, which counted low-level live wolf flights last winter, said 12 had been detected, while two others that had been noticed in the past were not counted, meaning the population can succeed at 14.
Investigators counted 15 live wolves in 2019, when the first newcomer puppy was born, and possibly would have been conceived before his mother was taken to the island, Peterson said.
In another report, the park branch and SUNY scientists stated that images of a remote camera on Royal Island in 2019 indicated that a displaced wolf on Michipicoten Island, Ontario, had probably given birth to at least two puppies. were collected at two sites this summer and lines were found from the length of a small one. Genetic stool research can help know how many were born on the island.
Four social teams gave the impression of taking shape, symptoms of courtship and willingness to mate appear, were not structured enough to be considered herds, according to the Michigan Tech report.
Two territories parked in opposite halves of the main island 45 miles long (70 km long) from the park, while the others attempted to identify spaces for walking and hunting, spending a lot of time on smaller islands.
“The wolf stage on Royal Island remains dynamic, as these wolves continue to paint their relationships with each other,” said Mark Romanski, a Park Service biologist coordinating the introductory program. “Social organization is expected to stabilize, once again, wolves do not meet human expectations. “
The plan calls for 20 to 30 wolves to be taken to Royal Island for 3 to five years, but the coronavirus pandemic has suspended re-locations, spokeswoman Liz Valencia said.
The Michigan Tech team’s eldes census, also based on aerial observations, estimated the population in 1876, 9% smaller than the 2020 animal count in 2019, which scientists say may have been too high.
In any case, the presence of wolves appears to have put an end to a boom that caused the number of elces to increase by approximately 19%, consistent with 2012 last year. days that winter examines according to the year.
The explosion of the eldes broke the vegetation of the park, especially the balsamic fir, its food of choice in the long snowy winters, and killed many mature trees. Last winter, the moose nibbling on almost all of the new expansion that had passed over the snow in a monitored section.
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