Wolf Country

by John Theberge

  When the trapper returned, he invited us in and explained where and when he had caught the wolves. He conveyed no animosity towards either wolves or us, and was interested in our study. He showed us wolf pelts with colour variation and we discussed whether coyote genes might be present. He was the first resident of the area to show an interest in wolves, and he has offered us his assistance since then.

  Autopsy was performed at the University of Guelph by veterinarians Karrie Rose and Dale Smith on March 26, 1993. Lack of edema around the neck showed that he had not been in the snare long, just long enough for some fluid accumulation in his lungs, when the trapper arrived and clubbed him over the head, crushing his skull. On the autopsy report is the comment that he carried a “moderate to marked number of cestodes (tapeworms) in the duodenum and jejunum,” not uncommon for Algonquin Park wolves and not disabling.

  Nine days later, Graham radio-located the three surviving wolves, all females, back on territory in the park. Like the Travers territory, their land became packless. Grand 3 went off the air in the spring, possibly a battery failure. Basin 9 showed up on territory periodically that summer, then dispersed northwest into vacant Grand Lake West territory. She was alive and back in the deer yard early the following winter, but then she vanished for good. For two years we collared single, transient wolves as they passed through the old McDonald Creek territory, but they all moved on. Only McDonald 5 stayed to carry on the lineage. She is alive as I write, recollared by helicopter netting on Grand Lake in January 1998.

  We lost the Grand Lake East pack that winter too. That pack consisted of eight wolves including radio-collared female Grand 2, on the air since summer 1988, giving us almost five years of data. She may have been the architect of the split in the Grand Lake pack. After she lost her mate the year before, she had restaked a territory at the east end of Grand Lake, abandoning her den in the esker by the fast creek.

  The pack gave us an off-territory winter’s day of tracking in late February 1993, close to Highway 62, north of the town of Killaloe. This was to be the last time Mary and I tracked them. We parked our truck on the shoulder of the highway and snowshoed into a woodlot. Eight wolves had bedded in a hollow only thirty metres from the road. They had no deer carcass, so it appeared that the pack was just resting.

  The next day they moved closer to the town of Killaloe, not suspecting the snares strung in a brushy fenceline along a snowy road. Periodically the trapper had made an opening in the brush, an invitation for any wolf travelling along to leave the road for the fields behind. A few days later, Graham found five of the snares and pulled them; on a road allowance they were illegal. But it was too late for most of the pack. After that, Grand 2 was with only one other wolf, and then she was alone.

  She stayed near the spot where her pack had died for two more days; we were learning that such behaviour was typical. She was in heat judging by the spots of blood in her bedding sites. A wolf in heat is rarely alone. A few days later her collar fell silent.

  Never the following year did we find wolf tracks or hear howls in the hills around and beyond the east end of Grand Lake, despite much time spent in the area. As I write, five years later, there is still a wolfless hole in the western quarter of the Grand Lake East pack’s land. Wilderness violated.

  Jocko 2 was a large yearling male that Mary and I collared on the west-central part of the old Foys Lake pack’s territory in the summer of 1992. We named him Jocko because a new pack was forming near the lake with that name. After collaring, however, he never associated with the Jocko pair or its first set of pups. He must have been a disperser from another pack. We could not identify him from genetic affinities.

  After the capture he moved east, then for a time the forest swallowed him up. We listed him as missing but still had him programmed into our receivers in case he ever showed up. He did early one morning near the end of the summer, twenty kilometres east at Basin Lake. When the sun was just up, he and his packmates walked along the road, then stopped and howled. He was ensconced in a new pack that we later learned lived to the south, outside the park.

  There are other gaps in our data for this wolf, likely because we were not flying far enough south, but periodically he appeared in the deer yard. Then, on March 15, 1993, halfway between the villages of Round Lake Centre and Killaloe, he put his head through a noose. We did not know that, however, when Graham located him from the air and reported that his collar was giving a regular signal.

  Late that afternoon Mary and I tracked him. At first his signal was weak but strengthened as we snowshoed over a series of hills. We picked our way through cedar woods heavily trampled by deer, then across a small bog, and a larger one. Ahead we heard the sound of branches breaking that initially we thought was caused by a bounding deer. Through the trees we saw something moving, then Mary recognized it as a wolf. With our hearts pounding, we snowshoed towards him until we could see him clearly. He lunged repeatedly, sprang into the air, and fell back into the snow. As we approached, we saw the wire noose attached to a dead tree that gave him about twenty centimetres of play. We thought each leap would be his last. The ratchet on a neck snare moves only one way — tighter — and locks, an ingenious little contrivance, an icon of human cruelty. The wire threatened to slice the skin of his neck and cut his trachea. We remembered the Billy Lake wolf from several years previously, its neck one-third severed.

  As we watched him struggle we felt helpless. We had no syringe, drugs, poke stick, or other equipment to handle a wolf. Because there were no human tracks around, we concluded he had been snared elsewhere, had broken the wire, and had become hung up on the tree. He had pounded a pit in the snow on the side where the snare had tangled. A spattering of blood lay crimson on the snow. About five metres beyond were the body imprints of two of his packmates who had been lying beside him while he fought for his life.

  Suddenly he stopped struggling and lay still. His back was towards us; the snare did not give him enough slack to turn around.

  At first we thought he was dead, but then he moved his head and tried to face us. We approached very slowly, and I gently placed one snowshoe along his back. He did not move. I applied more pressure in case he lunged, but he lay still. I knelt down, gradually inching my hand forward until I could grasp his radio-collar. We knew we could save him.

  Mary eased her way in front of him and knelt in the snow to hold his attention. Feeling along the collar my hand came to the taught steel cable-wire and I followed it to his throat. Pressing, I managed to get my fingers into the noose, but the wire was so taut I could not enlarge it. Taking the risk that the wolf would lunge, I lifted my snowshoe off his back and, holding his collar, pulled him towards me. His body was limp, his attention focused on Mary, who by this time was taking pictures.

  I eased my hand back to the snare and this time was able to open it. The wire had caught across the radio-pack on the lower side of the collar, and that had saved his life. In one swift movement before he had time to react, I pulled the noose over his face. He lay there in shock.

  He let us examine him as if he had been drugged. We felt all around his neck; only a small amount of blood came away on my fingers. The skin on his right hind leg, however, was cut all the way around as if someone had used a knife. During the struggle, the wire had become wrapped around his leg but only briefly. The same thing had happened to the Billy Lake wolf, that time the wire cutting through flesh and bone leaving the leg dangling from a thin piece of skin. Fortunately, while Jocko 2’s Achilles tendon was completely exposed, it was not severed. Mary photographed the glazed look of despair in his eyes, the resignation. Then we drew away, giving him room to run, but he just lay still seemingly too stunned to move, not realizing he was free. I poked him in the back with my snowshoe, but still he did not move. I did it again. No reaction, so I reached down, put my arms under him, and flipped him over. He looked up at me then and suddenly he understood. Bounding to his feet, he ran away.

  As we snowshoed back to the tru
ck, we talked about wolf snarers who lived nearby and might have done it. But what did that matter? Snaring is legal in Ontario. It is illegal, considered inhumane, in most of the United States and even parts of Africa, but not in Ontario. Fair game. Mostly we talked about the real culprits, the office-insulated park and wildlife officials whom we had informed about the inordinate amount of killing but who refused to act.

  The next day Graham located Jocko 2 from the air four kilometres from the snare site, and that night we heard his signal from a road nearby. Mary howled, and sure enough he was with his pack. They gave us a serenade of joy, or at least that is how we interpreted it.

  We could not find Jocko 2 at the beginning of the spring field season and speculated that he may not have survived the winter. But the following January he showed up with his pack in the deer yard again. We tracked him to the carcass of a big buck out behind a farmer’s barn. He was on the air until early March when either his collar failed or he was killed. He had lived at least another full year; that was worthwhile.

  We lost 55 per cent of the wolf population that winter, all but one to human killing. Between 1988 and 1993, the wolf population on the east side of Algonquin Park had dropped 43 per cent. Lost were entire packs: Travers, Grand Lake East, Grand Lake West, Foys Lake, McDonald Creek. Where they had lived, there were now only gaping, wolfless holes.

  BUREAUCRATS, BIOPOLITICS, AND THE WOLF-KILLING BAN

  NOT ONLY data accumulate in any good study, so does animosity. Although not as neatly recorded on data sheets or organized in computer files, ill will invariably piles up like manure in a barnyard. If it doesn’t, you are not addressing real environmental issues. Somebody or some department, division, branch, or organization always has a vested interest in keeping things the way they are.

  While it seems noble to attempt compromise with those who hold different opinions, often beneath the surface are totally different world views, different perspectives on the central purpose of nature. Are we owners or tenants, proprietors or lessees?

  Early in the research we aroused the hostility of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH). We did not intend to; after all, many of its members champion the outdoors and some are sensitive to nature. As well, we struck the tender nerve endings of some tourist operators who cater to non-Canadian hunters coming here to live out their frontier fantasy.

  People who kill wildlife for sport, meat, profit, ego enhancement, or hate have almost all of Canada to do it in. While there may be justifiable debate about whether people living in an urban society should be killing wildlife, there can be no argument about this imbalance. Almost all provincial, federal, and territorial Crown land is open to hunting and trapping, and that makes up more than 80 per cent of Canada. Wilderness parks, in contrast, encompass less than 6 per cent, far less than in many other countries of the world, far below the internationally accepted target of 12 per cent. Even much of Canada’s “protected” land is hunted, including more than half the national parks. Game laws do not reflect public attitudes nearly as well as they do an exploitive past and inertia.

  ON THE MOVE

  The Jack Pine pack, March 1998.

  (Photo by Michelle Theberge)

  WOLF PREY

  White-tailed deer are the preferred prey species of Algonquin wolves.

  WOLF PREY

  Moose are hunted successfully by Algonquin wolves in all seasons.

  WOLF PREY

  Michelle examines a moose carcass, February 1998. Two different packs, both trespassing, fed on this moose within one day.

  Colin Fabian digs into the ice to recover the femur of a moose that froze into a lake and was being fed upon by the Zigzag Lake pack.

  John drags a deer kill off thin ice covering Basin Lake.

  Typical winter distribution showing wolf migration outside park. We make computer-generated maps like this on a regular basis.

  Tracks in the snow on Feely Lake, made by the trespassing Pretty Lake pack, lead to a deer carcass, December 1991.

  THE DEER YARD

  Farm near Round Lake, immediately southeast of Algonquin Park, where deer and wolves migrate each winter.

  THE DEER YARD

  Local residents frequently put out food for deer in winter, a practice no longer favoured by the Ministry of Natural Resources.

  McDonald 4, killed in defiance of the wolf-killing ban, in March 1994. This act of violence marked a turning point in community attitudes.

  Jocko 8, killed by strychnine poison just outside the town of Round Lake Centre, February 1996.

  Jocko 2, found alive in a snare and successfully released, March 1993.

  Not all wolf deaths are caused by humans: Foys 3 dead from rabies in March 1991.

  Grand Lake 5, Travers 5, and another wolf snared near Round Lake in the “winter of death,” 1992-93.

  Camp among the red pines.

  We attracted public attention in the fall of 1988 and again in the spring of 1989 because of the Little Branch wolves, one snared inside the park and left to rot, the other shot by a bear hunter from a tree stand just outside the park. After Graham met with the chief conservation officer, showing him photos of the dangling neck snare and the pile of wolf fur beneath it, the MNR felt obligated to comply with its own policies, which forbid wolf trapping and snaring inside the park. This development was not well received by local trappers. Nor were Graham’s comments to a large public meeting in Toronto in June 1990. He said that so many park wolves were being killed outside the boundaries of the park that a buffer “no-kill” zone for wolves might be necessary if such deaths were to be prevented. Significantly, as it turned out later, the MNR’s Algonquin regional director, Al Stewart, was in the audience.

  These two events caused a flurry of correspondence within the MNR that was leaked to us later. Confidential correspondence in a government file can be like a time bomb waiting to explode.

  Jack O’Dette, a secretary treasurer of the OFAH, wrote to Algonquin Park superintendent Ernie Martelle, with a scattering of carbon copies, on September 4, 1990: “The work of Dr. John Theberge and his wife with some assistance from Graham Forbes was not well planned and probably would not stand up to good scientific analysis and as such would have limited value. It was also our understanding that there was the possibility of a seven mile buffer zone being requested around the park. We know of Theberge’s anti-use leanings and would suspect that this might just be an attempt to expand the no-hunting or no-trapping zones and we would strongly object to this.”

  In reply, to his credit, Martelle explained that no one had approached him about a buffer zone, but that “if in the future my staff biologists determined that the wolf packs were in trouble in that part of the District outside Algonquin Park and needed protection we would take the moves necessary to protect them as we would any other species.” He added, ironically, “I’m sure your organization would support such a move,” then, “One of the purposes of Theberges’ research is to hopefully educate people about wolves and their role in the ecosystem.”

  Taking a lead from its parent organization, the president of the Whitney Fish and Game Club, Doug Harper, wrote to Al Stewart, referring to “the questionable conclusions of a study on wolves in Algonquin that led to the end of trapping in the southern part of the park,” and, he went on, “there does not seem to be a scientific balance to the harvest of renewable resources viewpoint expressed by Graham Forbes.” Then Harper, whom we have never met, disconnected his brain from his pen and wrote: “It appears to be quite possible, even likely, that ‘research’ information is being massaged to support the pre-determined personal viewpoints of these government funded anti-use advocates.” Like O’Dette’s letter, carbon copies were distributed within the MNR, making both of these letters dangerously libellous. Again, a copy was leaked to us.

  There are some who say with good reason that the OFAH exerts an overrepresentative influence on MNR wildlife policy, even though less than 10 per cent of Ontario residents of hunting age a
ctually hunt. So, these letters were disturbing. Al Stewart, instead of objecting to this sort of letter, wrote an appeasing reply. He stated that the MNR had just put our research under review, and that had led to “total restructuring of Mr. Theberge’s and Mr. Forbes’ wolf research activities. The new experimental design will focus on two discreet pack territories.… ”

  It was true. Only a month after Graham’s public address in which he made his comment about a buffer wolf protection zone, Mary and I were out of the park one day for gas when we received a note from the MNR asking for a meeting. We had no idea why. Innocently, we did not make the connection with Graham’s presentation. We closed up our field work and drove to Huntsville.

  It was a hot summer day, and the windowless MNR boardroom was stuffy. Brought in from the research branch was the MNR’s wolf biologist, George Kolenosky, who had stopped field work on wolves and switched to black bears many years before. Selected members of regional and district staff were also present. Only a few minutes into the meeting, we realized that we were under attack. Kolenosky affronted us by advising us to get on snowshoes and track the wolves, as if we never had. Director Al Stewart shocked us with the statement that one condition of our continuance was that we stop causing the MNR problems. He must have been thinking about the hemlock embarrassment and the unenforced trapping ban in the southern part of the park. He made it clear that our funding would be withdrawn if we did not immediately refocus our research to study just two packs. His viewpoint was seconded by all the MNR officials present. They were not bothered by our objections that doing so would destroy the design of Graham’s Ph.D. research based upon a comparison of packs with and without deer throughout the park, with its two years of field work already complete. They gave us a week to change everything. We had no choice but to drive home to Waterloo and do it.