Date: December
21, 2018
Source: University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
A gray
wolf in 2015 on Stockton Island, Wisconsin.
Credit:
Photo courtesy Max Allen/Erik Olson/Tim Van Deelen
Researchers
placed 160 cameras on 19 of the 22 Apostle Islands in northern Wisconsin to see
which carnivores were living there. After taking more than 200,000 photos over
a period of three years, the team discovered that several mammalian predators
are living on various islands in this remote archipelago in Lake Superior.
Reported
in the journal Community Ecology, the study reveals a thriving community
of carnivores, with some doing better than others on islands that differ in
size and proximity to the mainland.
The
researchers put motion-activated cameras on each of the islands studied, at a
density of one camera per square kilometer. Over time, the camera traps
recorded 10 of 12 Wisconsin land carnivores, including American martens, black
bears, bobcats, coyotes, fishers, gray foxes, gray wolves, raccoons, red foxes
and weasels. The cameras also captured images of semiaquatic carnivores mink
and river otters, as well as raptors, small rodents, squirrels, songbirds and
waterfowl.
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