Coastal Wolves of The Great Bear Rainforest…

“Wolves hunting for fish in British Columbia. Photo by Ian McAllister”

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Videos: YouTube Courtesy PacificWildLive

Photo: Courtesy Ian McAllister

Posted in: gray wolf, biodiversity

Tags: Great Bear Rainforest, coastal wolves, British Columbia, salmon, Old growth forests, trophic cascade, habitat destruction

The Coastal Wolves of the Great Bear Rainforest…

Can you see why wolves should never be hunted? Wolves are not game animals. They were not put on this earth to be tortured with traps, snares, rifles and arrows.  Hunting destroys wolf families and causes immense suffering.  It separates mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. Wolves live for their families, it is everything to them. Wolves are highly intelligent, social animals and should be treated as such.

Heavy hunting of wolves also destroys genetic diversity, discussed in part three.  The narrator explains that these coastal wolves have more diversity in their genes than any other wolf population. She further states that “genetic diversity gives a species the ability to adapt to changing environments, including new climatic conditions and diseases.  Genetic diversity is lost when a population is reduced to low numbers.” Another reason wolves should not be hunted.

There is so much we can learn from wolves if only the persecution and scapegoating would stop.

The coastal wolves of the Great Bear Rainforest are a true treasure, even more so because they’ve escaped many of the tortures other wolf populations have had to endure.

As the narrator so eloquently states:

“While most gray wolf populations were hunted to near extinction, here in the remote reaches of the Great Bear Rainforest the wolves escaped heavy persecution and maintain an ancient, unbroken link to their past.”

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British Columbia’s Wild West-coast Wolves

Posted by: Dr Reese Halter | June 3, 2011

http://drreese.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/british-columbias-wild-west-coast-wolves/

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From the LA Times:

Great Bear Rainforest protected from heavy logging

March 31, 2009

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2009/03/great-bear-rainforest-protected-from-heavy-logging.html

Video: Courtesy PacificWildLive

Photo: Courtesy LA Times

Posted in: Coastal Gray Wolves, biodiversity

Tags: Great Bear Rainforest, wolves, salmon, biodiversity, old growth rainforest, threatened habitat

Brown Bear Webcam, McNeil River State Game Sanctuary

I created a page devoted to the McNeil River Brown Bears in Alaska.  Every year people come from all over to view these bears fishing for salmon. The webcam streams live from early June to late August, when the salmon run, which attracts the largest gathering of brown bears on the planet. 

At this time the webcam is showing reruns from last year but still are fun to watch.  I’ve also added a few other videos of the bears fishing for salmon.

Click here to go to the page located at the top right hand side of the blog.

 

Posted in: Brown Bears

Tags: salmon, brown bears, McNeil River State Game Sanctuary

Wolves Would Rather Eat Salmon

Wolves prefer salmon over deer in British Columbia, when salmon are available. They actually abandon deer as preferred prey and head to the salmon runs.

From Science Daily:

“Although most people imagine wolves chasing deer and other hoofed animals, new research suggests that, when they can, wolves actually prefer fishing to hunting. The study shows that when salmon is available, wolves will reduce deer hunting activity and instead focus on seafood.

Chris Darimont from the University of Victoria and the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, Canada, led a team of researchers who studied the feeding habits of wolves in a remote 3,300km2 area of British Columbia. As Darimont describes, “Over the course of four years, we identified prey remains in wolf droppings and carried out chemical analysis of shed wolf hair in order to determine what the wolves like to eat at various times of year.

For most of the year, the wolves tend to eat deer, as one would expect. During the autumn, however, salmon becomes available and the wolves shift their culinary preferences. According to the authors, “One might expect that wolves would move onto salmon only if their mainstay deer were in short supply. Our data show that this is not the case, salmon availability clearly outperformed deer availability in predicting wolves’ use of salmon.”

One of the explanations for wolfy fishing is pretty evident. It’s a heck of a lot safer. Salmon don’t deliver kicks to the head resulting in skull fractures or blows to the ribs but are just as tasty and full of fatty calories.  Those benefits alone are worth dining on fish. 

The authors explain that the wolves’ taste for fishy fare is likely based on safety, nutrition and energetics. Darimont said, “Selecting benign prey such as salmon makes sense from a safety point of view. While hunting deer, wolves commonly incur serious and often fatal injuries. In addition to safety benefits we determined that salmon also provides enhanced nutrition in terms of fat and energy”.

Just when we think we have wolves figured out, they surprise us.  Salmon anyone?

 

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Posted in: gray wolves/canis lupus, biodiversity

Tags: wolves fishing, salmon