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Full-Text Articles in Behavior and Ethology
Productivity, Mortality, And Population Trends Of Wolves In Northeastern Minnesota, L. David Mech
Productivity, Mortality, And Population Trends Of Wolves In Northeastern Minnesota, L. David Mech
USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center
Population parameters, mortality causes, and mechanisms of a population decline were studied in wolves (Canis lupus lycaon) from 1968 to 1976 in the Superior National Forest. The main method was aerial radio-tracking of 129 wolves and their packmates. Due to a decline in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), the wolf population decreased during most of the study. Average annual productivity varied from 1.5 to 3.3 pups per litter, and annual mortality rates from 7 to 65 percent. Malnutrition and intraspecific strife accounted equally for 58 percent of the mortality; human causes accounted for the remainder. As wolf …
Wolf-Pack Buffer Zones As Prey Reservoirs, L. David Mech
Wolf-Pack Buffer Zones As Prey Reservoirs, L. David Mech
USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center
Abstract. In a declining herd, surviving deer inhabited overlapping edges of wolf- pack territories. There, wolves hunted little until desperate, in order to avoid fatal encounters with neighbors. Such encounters reduce wolf numbers and predation pressure and apparently allow surviving deer along territory edges to repopulate the area through dispersal of their prime, less vulnerable offspring into territory cores.