Hunting wolves near Denali, Yellowstone cuts wolf sightings in half

Date: April 28, 2016

Source: University of Washington

Visitors to national parks are half as likely to see wolves in their natural habitat when wolf hunting is permitted just outside park boundaries.

That's the main finding of a paper co-authored by the University of Washington appearing April 28, 2016 in the journal PLOS ONE. Its authors examined wolf harvest and sightings data from two national parks -- Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska and Yellowstone National Park that straddles Wyoming, Montana and Idaho -- and found visitors were twice as likely to see a wolf when hunting wasn't permitted adjacent to the parks.

"This is the first study that demonstrates a potential link between the harvest of wildlife on the borders of a park and the experience that visitors have within the park," said lead author Bridget Borg, a Denali wildlife biologist who completed this research while earning her doctorate from the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The researchers looked at the dynamics between hunting and viewing wolves at these two national parks because they are the only ones where visitors have a good chance of seeing a wolf. Both parks have long-term monitoring programs that have collected years of data on resident wolf populations, including years when wolf harvest was permitted and years when it was prohibited near the borders of both Denali and Yellowstone.

Adjacent to Denali, wolves are primarily trapped during legal harvests, while states adjacent to Yellowstone permit shooting wolves during hunting season. Wolves have always existed in Alaska and are generally regarded as an important part of the state's ecosystem -- by trappers and wildlife enthusiasts alike.

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