State of Wisconsin plans the hunting of 300 Wolves, against scientific advice.

The Wisconsin Natural Resources Board has announced plans to allow the hunting of up to 300 Gray Wolves, Canis lupus, in November this year. This follows a hunt in February in which 216 Wolves were killed (about 20% of the total population), in the first hunt in the state after the removal of the species from the federal Endangered Species Act announced by outgoing President Donald Trump in October 2020 came into force in January. In that hunt, the Board initially set a kill limit of 200 Animals, but the state's indigenous Chippewa (or Ojibwe) people claimed 81 of these, citing a treaty from the 1800s which enables them to claim up to half of any hunt quota, reducing the total to 119; the Chippewa do not usually hunt Wolves as they are considered sacred, so that any Wolf claimed is effectively taken off the hunt's total. However, in the event what was supposed to be a week-long hunting season had to be stopped after three days, due to the large number of hunters that took part in the event; despite the low quota the state sold a total of 1547 hunting permits.

 

A Gray Wolf, Canis lupus. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

The Wolf population of Wisconsin is thought to have hit a high of 1126 Animals in 2020, but, in addition to the legally hunted Wolves, about a hundred are thought to have been killed by poachers between April 2020 and April 2021. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has a population target of 350 Wolves, viewed as being far too low by many environmental groups. Current legislation in Wisconsin requires that the Department of Natural Resources organises a Wolf hunt in any year in which the Animals are not protected by federal legislation; this law was signed into effect by then State Governor Scott Walker in 2012, following the removal of the species from the Endangered Species Act by President Barrack Obama, although the protected status of Wolves was returned by a federal court in 2014.

The Wisconsin Wolf Harvest Advisory Committee had recommended that the quota for the November hunt was set at 130 Animals, but this was set aside by the Natural Resources Board in favour of the higher figure of 300. If the Chippewa people claim half of this (as seems likely), then that figure would be reduced to 150, but the difficulties experienced by the Department of Natural Resources in managing the February hunt makes it likely that a much larger number had will be taken. Pro-hunt activists in the state had called for the higher figure of 500 Wolves, citing fears that President Joe Biden will restore the species protection under the Endangered Species Act. Biden has asked the US Fish and Wildlife Service to review a number of recent policy changes, including the removal of Wolves' protected status, but, as yet, the leadership of the organisation, appointed by the previous legislature, have refused to do so. This raises serious concerns about the extent to which environmental policy in the US has become a partisan issue, driven by the loyalty of officials to particular political camps rather than based upon the best available science.

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Camper attacked by Wolf in Banff National Park.

A New Jersey man is recovering after being attacked by a Wolf in Banff National Park in Alberta Province, Canada. Matthew Rispoli was sleeping in a tent with his wife and two sons at about 1.00 am on Friday 9 August 2019, when a solitary adult male Grey Wolf, Canis lupis, ripped through the side of the tent and seized Mr Rispoli by the arm, initiating a struggle lasting several minutes, during which Mr Rispoli was unable to dislodge the Wolf, but the Wolf was unable to drag him away. This struggle ended abruptly when a neighbouring camper kicked the Wolf, causing it to flee. The Wolf was later shot by trackers from Parks Canada, who were able to confirm its identity using DNA swabbed from Mr Rispoli's wounds.

American tourist Matthew Rispoli, attacked by a Wolf in the Banff National Park. CNN.

Wolf attacks on Humans are exceptionally rare, as we are difficult prey for them, and hard to subdue, with Parks Canada only having recorded two previous incidents, one in British Columbia and one in Ontario. The Wolf in the Banf Park attack is reported to have been severely underweight, at about 35 kg, compared to a typical healthy adult bodyweight of 45-70 kg, and was presumably having trouble feeding by itself; Wolves are pack animals and often have trouble capturing prey on their own.

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The down-side of Animal tagging in wildlife conservation and management.

The advent of satellite and radio tags that can be used to monitor the movement of wild Animals in their natural environment has revolutionised fields such as ecology, conservation and wildlife management, providing insights into the movement and behaviour of many species that have been elusive to Human trackers for generations. However, like all technologies these tracking systems have their potential downsides, particularly in their ability to modify the behaviour of both humans and animals. The potential of such tags to modify the behaviour, or even directly harm, the subjects of these studies was anticipated very early in the use of the technology, and most modern studies consider these possibilities carefully before a single tag is deployed.

In a paper published in the journal Conservation Biology on 20 February 2017, Steven Cooke and Vivian Nguyen of the Fish Ecology and Conservation Physiology Laboratory at Carleton University, Steven Kessel of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University, Nigel Hussey of the Department of Biology at the University of Windsor, Nathan Young of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Ottawa and Adam Ford of The Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences at The University of British Columbia, discuss a number of examples of how Humans have behaved in response to tagging programs, and the implications of these for people and organisations involved in animal tracking studies.

Firstly Cooke et al. note that there have been a number of attempts to obtain data from real-time tracking systems (systems that constantly broadcast the position of an animal to scientists monitoring it, as opposed to systems that broadcast packages of data at intervals), for the purposes of hunting or otherwise harming the subjects of the studies. 

In Minnesota in 2001 a group of anglers petitioned to be given access to data from a tagging study on Northern Pike, Esox lucius, agruing that since the study was publicly funded, they, as members of the public, were entitled to the data. The case was rejected by the court, on the basis that the data was collected to improve the catch-rates of recreational anglers, but the danger remains that a similar case elsewhere might be more successful. In 2014 White Sharks, Carcharodon carcharias, tagged as part of a study of their spatial ecology with a view to improving conservation planning were targeted for culling by the State Government of Western Australia, which had access to the data as part of the permitting agreement under which the researchers were working, as the government determined they were a threat to bathers on the state's beaches, despite the fact that the species is considered Endangered underh the terms of the Australian Environmental Protectionand Biodiversity Conservation Act.

An additional problem is that members of the public are often able to obtain equipment that enables them to track tagged Animals  directly. Even it this is done with essentially benign intent, for purposes such as photography or wildlife viewing, there can still be negative effects, such as Animals reacting to, or becoming habituated to, the presence of Humans and modifying their behaviour. In one such case authorities at Banff National Park in Alberta were forced to introduce restrictions on the use of VHF radio receivers in the park due to concerns about the harassment of Animals wearing tags. More worryingly in 2013 an attempt was made to hack a GPS system tracking Tigers in the Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, India, apparently with the intention of poaching the Tigers.

Cooke et al. also raise concerns about the deployment of tagging systems for malign purposes. Tagging is generally considered an expensive technique by researchers, as most studies require a large number of tags to gather useful data. However a single tag could potentially be used for the purpose of tracking the movements of a group of social Animals. exposing that population to the risk of hunting, at a relatively low cost.

There is also the potential for the technology to be deployed in order to disrupt studies, for example by deploying extra tags to disrupt data collection. This might seem an obscure threat, but many conservation projects have commercial implications, potentially with vested interests that stand to benefit from undermining the quality of data collection, and some fringe groups are known to object to conservation projects for less definable reasons, for example it has been speculated that Wolves in Yellowstone National Park have been targeted by hunters who objected to the presence of Wolves in the park, and who may have been able to access encrypted data from radio collars worn by the Animals.

Tagged Wolf in Yellowstone National Park. William Campbell/US Fish and Wildlife Service/Wikipedia.

A negative public perception of tagging is also a potential problem, potentially undermining public support for conservation projects using the technology. Cooke et al. note that some indigenous fishermen around the Fraser River watershed in Canada objected to a tagging program targeting Pacific Salmon on the basis that it tampered with a food source (thought the majority of the population was strongly supportive of the project), while in parts of the US visitors to national parks have complained that visible tags on animals detract from the wilderness experience. 

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Photogrammetry as a tool in Morphometric Analysis.

Morphometric analysis is a tool used by palaeontologists, archaeologists, anthropologists and forensic pathologists to analyse and compare specimens. It relies on taking numerous measurements of an object such as a bone or shell, and comparing both these measurements and ratios between measurements to those obtained from other specimens in order to establish relationships between them. Traditionally these measurements have been obtained using tape measures and callipers, but modern scientists often use more sophisticated tools such as structured light scanners, which are capable of building highly detailed three dimensional models of specimens. Photogrammmetry has been used as a tool in landscape analysis since the mid nineteenth century. It relies on taking overlapping images of a landscape, from a number of different vantages, in order to help cartographers and geomorphologists build up a three dimensional model of the landscape. The advent of digital photography has led to a far wider use of photogrammetry in the archaeology and other fields in the past two decades, with it becoming regularly used to build models of archaeological sites or even individual buildings. Recently some scientists have begun using photogrammetry to build models of smaller items, including archaeological artefacts and Human remains.

In a paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports on 18 July 2016 a team of scientists led by Allowen Evin of the Institutdes Sciences de l'Evolution at Université de Montpellier, the Department of Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen, and the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the Universityof Liverpool, describe a process by which three dimensional computer models were constructed using digital photographs, and the results compared to the results of a morphometric model made to by structured light analysis.

Evin et al. examined a series of five modern Wolf skulls from the collection of the Muséum Nationald'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, as part of a study into morphometric changes to the cranium during the domestication of Dogs. In order to do this they created two models, one using a Breuckmann StereoScan structured light scanner and the other a model constructed from a series of photographs taken with a an 8 mega-pixel digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) Canon EOS 30D camera, mounted with a CanonEF 24–105mmf/4 L IS USM lens.

In order to take the photographs the specimens were placed on a rigid cardboard sheet with a calibrated referential pattern, and photograped from three different elevations (approximately 0°, 15° and 40°) using a tripod mounted camera, which was moved around the specimen taking images at 10° intervals (i.e. 36 sets of three images in a circle). This was then repeated with the skull the other way up, to give a model of the complete specimen. These images were then turned into a three dimensional model using a VisualSFM software package.

(A) Schematic representation of the set-up and camera positions used for the acquisition of the photographs. (B) Fixed dimensions reference pattern used to scale the models and enhance the performance of key-points detection/matching and camera calibration algorithms. Evin et al. (2016).

The photogrammatic model was then compared to the model made using the Breuckmann StereoScan structured light scanner (which rotates the specimens on its own automated turntable, creating a model using its own Optocat software package) using a computed mesh-to-mesh deviation map to compare the topology of the two models. This found that the two models matched to an average of 0.088 mm, with the only significant differences occurring within the nasal cavity and occipital foramen, areas which are generally considered extremely difficult to measure accurately, and which are not usually included in morphometric analyses.

Models obtained with photogrammetry (top) and the Breuckmann structured light scanner (bottom) with the cloud-mesh distances visualisation (middle). Differences are expressed using the colour scale on the left. Evin et al. (2016).

Evin et al. note the total tine spent with each specimen while capturing the images used to create the photogrammetric model was about 15 minutes, while the Breuckmann scanner required about forty five minutes to scan each specimen, although having scanned the specimens the Breuckmann scanner was able to produce a model almost instantaneously, while the camera method required considerable further input from the users, so that the Breuckmann scanner method took less time overall.

However since the Breuckmann scanner is not portable and is reliant on specimens being brought to it, Evin et al. felt that on the whole the advantages of the camera outweighed those of the scanner, as it could potentially be used in situations where specimens could not be moved, was considerably cheaper and captured additional information about the colour and surface texture of the specimen that were not recovered with the scanner.

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X-ray Computed Tomography studies of two Woolly Mammoth calves from Russia.            The Woolly Mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, is thought to have diverged from the earlier Steppe Mammoth Mammuthus trogontherii in northeast...

Using morphometric analysis to understand the nature of Canid remains from Plio-Pleistocene Hominid sites from East Africa.                                                                        Morphometric analysis is a method used...

Reconstructing the Paluxy River Dinosaur Chase Sequence.                                            In 1940 palaeontologist Roland Bird of the American Museum of Natural History in New York described and partially excavated a sequence of Dinosaur footprints along the Paluxy River at Glen Rose in...

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Cryptic diversity: A new species of Wolf from Africa.

Cryptic species are species which closely resemble other species and which can only be separated by careful anatomical examination or even genetic analysis. In recent years the widespread application of DNA analysis to populations of wild animals  has led to the discovery that many well-known species are in fact clusters of cryptic species, with profound implications for the conservation of these species; a single large widespread population suddenly becoming a number of smaller more localized populations. 

Golden Jackals, Canis aureus, from North Africa have long been noted for being larger and more robust than Jackals from either Sub-Saharan Africa or Eurasia, leading to speculation that they may represent a separate species or sub-species. A study published in 2011 in the journal PLoS One based upon analysis of mitochondrial DNA found that Jackals from Egypt and Ethiopia were in fact not Jackals at all, but were more closely related to the Grey Wolf, Canis lupus, and suggested that these should be described as a separate subspecies of Wolf, the African Wolf, Canis lupus lupaster. A follow-up study published in the same journal in 2012 found that the mitochondrial lineage ascribed to Canis lupus lupaster was also present in Canids in West Africa, among animals considered to be more typically Jackal-like.

In a paper published in the journal Current Biology on 17 August 2015, a team of biologists led by Klaus-Peter Koepfli of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Theodosius Dobzhansky Center for Genome Bioinformatics at St. Petersburg State University and John Pollinger of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles publish the results of a much wider study of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA from populations of Golden Jackals from across Southern Europe and the Middle East, as well as Israel, Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Senegal and Kenya, and discusses these results and their implications for the classification of African Jackals.

All of the African Jackals were found to be a separate species from the Eurasian Jackals, and more closely related to the Eurasian Grey Wolf. However these African Wolves appear to have separated from their Eurasian cousins over a million years ago, and were judges sufficiently genetically distinct to be placed in a separate species. Examination of taxonomic records for Canids revealed that the French biologist Cuvier had described a ‘Jackal’ from Senegal as a separate species, Canis anthus, in 1820, an analysis that was rejected by subsequent biologists who failed to spot any significant morphological difference between African and Eurasian Jackals. For this reason Koepfli & Pollinger et al. suggest that African Golden Jackals henceforth be referred to as African Golden Wolves, Canis anthus, rejecting Canis lupus lupaster as a valid name.

Phylogenetic Tree Based on Mitochondrial Cytochrome b Sequences and Sampling Localities of Golden Jackals Used in This Study (A) Maximum-likelihood phylogram of 104 cytochrome b sequences (1,140 bp). Haplotype number is shown next to taxon name and locality. Accession numbers indicate sequences downloaded from GenBank. Haplotypes without accession numbers are novel sequences generated for the present study. Asterisks at nodes indicate bootstrap support R80% based on maximum-likelihood analyses (500 pseudoreplicates) and R0.95 posterior probability from Bayesian inference. Canis spp. from Egypt are indicated by thick arrows. Haplotypes labeled as Canis lupus lupaster refer to the African wolf. The tree was rooted using Sechuran Fox (Lycalopex sechurae) as outgroup. Scale bar indicates the number of substitutions per site. Photo credits: left, Golden Jackal from Senegal (CIBIO/Monia Nakamura); centre, Mexican Gray Wolf (Tom and Pat Leeson); right, Golden Jackal from Israel (Eyal Cohen). (B) Map of geographic localities showing where Golden Jackals were sampled. Relative number of animals sampled from each locality is shown. Hatched lines indicates geographic range of Golden Jackal based on International Union for the Conservation of Nature distribution. Koepfli & Pollinger et al. (2015).

Morphologically the African Golden Wolf and Eurasian Golden Jackal are very hard to tell apart, other than the distinct largeness of the North African specimens; the African Wolf was, on average slightly broader in the snout than the Eurasian Jackal, but not distinctively enough for this to be used as a reliable feature to distinguish the species.

The Golden Jackal samples from Israel were found to be mostly hybrid animals, containing DNA from Eurasian Golden Jackals, Grey Wolves, African Golden Wolves and Dogs. Two Golden Wolves from Egypt were found to have mitochondrial DNA (which is passed through the female line without recombination) from Eurasian Jackals and Grey Wolves, suggesting that hybridization was occurring here too, though whole genome analysis of Egyptian samples was not carried out.

Comparison of the genomes of African Golden Wolves and Dogs suggest that a small amount of Dog DNA derives from African, rather than Grey Wolves; this is roughly comparable to the amount of Neanderthal DNA found in modern Humans, with two groups of Dogs, the Basanji (African Laughing Dog) and Dingo, having higher levels of Golden Wolf DNA than other groups.

This scenario suggests that Africa has repeatedly been invaded by different Canid lineages from Eurasia. Koepfli & Pollinger et al. suggest that this relates to the changeable climate of the Pleistocene Era, with warmer wetter periods when it was possible for Canids to move between Eurasia and Africa, and cooler dryer periods when these populations became reproductively isolated.

See also…

Using morphometric analysis to understand the nature of Canid remains from Plio-Pleistocene Hominid sites from East Africa.

Morphometric analysis is a method used by palaeontologists to sort bones and shells into taxonomic and ecological groups. It relies...

A new species of Fox from the Pleisticene of Gauteng Province, South Africa.

Foxes (Vulpini) are a subgroup of the Dog Family, Canidae, found in North America, Eurasia and Africa (South American Foxes are a separate group, more closely related to True Dogs than to other Foxes). The...

The origin of domestic dogs.

Dogs are our oldest domestic animal, and the only one which predates the adoption of agriculture. This has led to a great deal of study of the origin of domestic dogs over the years. Despite this we are still not entirely sure where dogs were first domesticated. We are now confident that domestic dogs are descended from a...

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