| | In the picturesque Pincher Creek area, where mountains surge up from prairie without a foothill in sight, wolf habitat overlaps prime cattle country. Now wildlife managers, in cooperation with local stakeholders, are using improved tracking technology that could help maintain wolf populations while minimizing the depredation of cattle.
Dr. Carita Bergman, an Area Wildlife Biologist with Alberta Sustainable Resource Development (SRD), says research in other regions shows that many wolves do not kill cattle. An accurate tracking system would allow her to identify which packs may be responsible for depredation so that prevention and control measures can be targeted to those specific packs. Limiting the loss of those wolves that are not causing problems is essential to allow wolves to fulfill their vital role in the natural ecosystem.
Placing a collar with tracking device on a captured wolf and then releasing the wolf back into the wild is not new. “In the past, we’ve used VHF – ‘very high frequency’ – transmitters to track animals that we release,” explains Bergman. “Those transmitters send out a beeping signal that we can pick up with a receiver.” However the transmitter’s weak signal often makes it difficult to find the collared animals from the ground. That has prompted SRD to try Argos satellite collars.
Bergman says the Argos collars are different from the more common GPS (global positioning system) collars. A GPS collar receives signals from several satellites, uses that information to determine the collar’s location and stores that information in the collar. The problem with using a GPS collar to track a wild animal is that you need to find the animal with its collar to retrieve the location data. If you can’t find the animal, or if the collar is lost, or if the GPS unit malfunctions, you don’t have any data.
The Argos collar avoids these pitfalls. It works by transmitting a signal to a single satellite. The signal’s pitch, as heard by the satellite, changes as it passes overhead, just like the sound of an ambulance changes as it approaches and then moves away. The satellite uses the changing pitch to calculate the wolf’s location and then it sends the data to earth. Bergman receives the location on her computer within an hour of the collar transmitting a signal.
That means she doesn’t need to spend money and time conducting aerial searches for the animal just so she can extract the data from the collar. As well, if the collar is eventually damaged or lost, she will still have the data until that point. And best of all, with real-time data, she can inform ranchers about current pack locations and identify which packs might attack cattle. This opens the door to more selective and effective prevention and control measures.
Bergman receives suggestions on how to reduce wolf-human conflict from a multi-stakeholder committee called the Oldman Basin Carnivore Advisory Group. It has representatives from the Alberta Beef Producers, Federation of Alberta Naturalists, Alberta Trappers Association, the M.D. of Ranchlands, the Defenders of Wildlife Canada, and producers from the local ranching community.
“The stakeholder committee supports using this technology to gain knowledge of wolf movements, to increase prevention and control options, and to avoid removing entire packs,” she says. “Where we do have significant problems, we try to reduce the pack in a selective fashion so that we can maintain some wolves in the landscape, rather than perhaps losing them all.”
Better information on wolf movements can help ranchers prevent cattle depredation. “Proactive measures include moving cattle to a different pasture, running cow-calf pairs instead of yearlings in high-risk pastures, or changing the timing of when specific pastures are used,” notes Bergman. “Or if you have a pasture that you’re worried about, you could check it more often. The increased human presence may deter wolves from starting to kill cattle.”
Along with the stakeholder committee, local trappers are also key partners in the management effort, using their expertise to conduct live captures so wolves can be collared. SRD, Alberta Community Development, and the Defenders of Wildlife Canada provide funding.
Says Bergman, “The collars will help provide information that we desperately need to begin moving in a positive direction, rather than living in fear of wolves killing cattle.” |
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