Killing beavers impacts wetlands. Who knew? Can someone please do their dissertation on that? It’s especially dire when there aren’t very many of them I would think. Wouldn’t you? The research out of voyageurs national park always centers on how delicious beavers are to wolves. Little appetizers with tails. Apparently some wolves like them more than others.
Wolves impact wetlands, have unique hunting abilities, researcher tells Nature Club
MANITOULIN – The Manitoulin Nature Club was established in 1979 to increase knowledge of nature for its members and to support the preservation of elements of natural history, many of which are unique to Manitoulin. Members meet monthly to share observations and host guest speakers on topics of interest and recently had a look into the secret lives of wolves with a presentation by Thomas Gable, project lead on the Voyageurs Wolf Project. The project addresses the question, “what do wolves do during the summer in a forested ecosystem?”
Mr. Gable recently completed his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. He’s been studying wolves in the greater Voyageurs ecosystem since 2014, when he started his masters at Northern Michigan University. He’s particularly interested in wolf-beaver interactions and his graduate work was focused on trying to understand this predator-prey dynamic. Much of his early interest in wolves stemmed from encountering wolves, wolf tracks and occasional kills while exploring the wilds of places around his family’s McGregor Bay cabin. His research includes things not currently known about wolf hunting behaviour, wolf diet and how wolves impact larger ecosystems in the northern woods of Minnesota.
Those beavers are so delicious. A wolf can’t eat just one. But it’s the funniest thing. When a wolf cleans out a beaver pond all the wildlife that depended on that pond disappears too! It’s like the opposite of a keystone species. Gee do you think that when humans trap beaver that happens too?
During the summer, wolves are focused on two main things: having and raising pups and hunting and killing prey so they can feed themselves and provision their pups. To have a really detailed understanding of wolf ecology in the summertime, there needs to be a really detailed understanding of both of these facets of wolves, he explained. The VWP uses remote trail cameras and GPS collars to track the wolves.
One thing that makes the park unique is the abundance of beavers there. “It likely has the highest beaver densities in the lower 48 states and probably rivals even the highest densities in parts of Canada,” said Mr. Gable. One survey last winter identified 1,100 beaver lodges. “Compared to a place like McGregor Bay or Manitoulin Island, those would have substantially fewer beavers than we have here by a significant margin. Voyageurs National Park has a lot of mixed forest habitats and interspersed amongst those are a lot of wetlands and beaver ponds.”
Before VWP started there were no estimates in scientific literature on how many fawns and beavers a typical wolf kills in the summertime, despite hundreds of thousands of hours of wolf research in places like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba. “Because we don’t know really how many fawns and beavers a wolf is killing, we don’t understand what effect wolves are having on prey populations during these periods. It’s really hard to know how wolves might be impacting the beaver population if you don’t know how many beavers,” he said.
Sure but they’re just rodents right? No matter how many you eat they’ll always make more?
They’ve found that the typical wolf in the project area is killing between 13 and 15 deer fawns and 12 to 14 beavers in the summertime but there’s a wide range. “We’ve had one that killed only one beaver and last year we had a wolf that was sort of a beaver specialist and killed 42 beavers. To put 42 beavers into perspective, a typical beaver colony in our area has five beavers so that means that one wolf by itself killed eight-and-one-half colonies of beavers which is quite astounding.”
One of their most significant documented findings is how wolves actually alter wetland ecosystems. “Wolves impact wetland creation through a very simple, straightforward process. Wolves prey on beavers. Beavers create wetlands. By default, wolves impact wetlands by preying on beavers,” he said.
They found that wolves are impacting the creation of 88 ponds or wetlands in the Voyageurs area. “That is really just a drop in the bucket when you look at the ecosystem but when you look at this over multiple years then the impact becomes more substantial. If in year one wolves impact the creation of 88 ponds then the next year 88 ponds then the next and the next, then all of a sudden wolves are responsible for impacting the creation of over 400 ponds or wetlands,” Mr. Gable continued.
CAN WE PLEASE SAY THIS AGAIN only not about wolves? Can we say it’s what happens when HUMANS trap beavers? I mean the effect is EVEN MORE DEVASTATING when you are in a habitat that is surrounded by other beavers and other ponds. Wiping out one beaver family might wipe out the entire ecosystem for miles around.
“Another way to think about it is when a beaver creates a single pond in a localized area it radically transforms that area from forests or meadow into a thriving wetland that’s doing all sorts of things like nutrient cycling, carbon storage, water storage, and providing habitats. Wolves that prevent that habitat from forming are then connected to all of these wonderful ecological processes that beaver ponds are responsible for. What we’ve been able to document is that wolves are very connected to wetlands, streams and riparian habitats. It’s such a simple process; all they have to do is kill a young beaver.”
By the very same extension, Mr. Gable, human trappers whether for fur or sport or depredation do EXACTLY THE SAME THING and impact wetlands the very same way. Will someone one please do a dissertation on that?
