After hours of watching Yellowstone elk herds through a spotting scope, Scott Creel noticed a few interesting things. When wolves appeared, the elk turned skittish. They spent more time on alert – heads in the air, ears pricked – and less time eating. They also left prime winter range to take cover in forested areas, where less food was available. Even when wolves were nearly two miles away, the vigilant behavior persisted, said Creel, a Montana State University ecology professor. Creel and fellow researchers linked the altered elk behavior to lower calf production. As their body fat drops, cow elk have difficulty staying pregnant through winter. They grow emaciated and abort, the research concluded. The work helps answer questions about low elk calf numbers in some herds in Yellowstone National Park, said Creel, the lead author of a study that appeared last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It indicates that wolves affect elk populations in subtle but important ways beyond direct kills, he said...more
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Elk reproduction woes tied to wolves
After hours of watching Yellowstone elk herds through a spotting scope, Scott Creel noticed a few interesting things. When wolves appeared, the elk turned skittish. They spent more time on alert – heads in the air, ears pricked – and less time eating. They also left prime winter range to take cover in forested areas, where less food was available. Even when wolves were nearly two miles away, the vigilant behavior persisted, said Creel, a Montana State University ecology professor. Creel and fellow researchers linked the altered elk behavior to lower calf production. As their body fat drops, cow elk have difficulty staying pregnant through winter. They grow emaciated and abort, the research concluded. The work helps answer questions about low elk calf numbers in some herds in Yellowstone National Park, said Creel, the lead author of a study that appeared last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It indicates that wolves affect elk populations in subtle but important ways beyond direct kills, he said...more
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At a recently held horse sale in Montana I was involved in a conversation with a young outfitter. His company was in the Dubois Wyoming area. Now he was selling all of the horses he used in his outfitting business because there were no longer enough elk in the area that he could honestly sell a hunt to people with the good chance of harvesting an elk. Thanks to the wolves that have decimated the calf crop each year.
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