Space use of red wolves and coyotes-guest blogger, Dr. Joey Hinton

***Guest Blogger!***

This week, Dr. Joey Hinton, a recent graduate from the University of Georgia, joins us to describe some of his research focused on interactions between red wolves and coyotes in northeastern North Carolina.

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Like many endangered species, we know very little about red wolf ecology because they were reduced to a single remnant population before scientists could study their behaviors. Human-caused mortality and red wolf hybridization with coyotes threaten red wolf recovery efforts. Despite these challenges, successful restoration of red wolves will occur in human-altered landscapes with the presence coyote populations. Therefore, understanding red wolf and coyote ecology is fundamental to successful recovery. Conducting studies on large endangered carnivores is challenging and I was fortunate to collaborate with the

Red Wolf Recovery Program.  This study was conducted in part during my doctoral graduate work at the University of Georgia.

Photos by J. Hinton.

 From 2009 through 2011, I assisted Red Wolf Recovery Program biologists with trapping red wolves and coyotes and radio-collaring individuals with global position system (GPS) radio-collars. GPS collars allowed us to collect locations on red wolves and coyotes 5-12 times/ day. With these data, I calculated the size and habitat composition of red wolf and coyote territories. These data provide insights into how red wolves and coyotes use and move through the landscape. 

 

Dr. Hinton and RWRP biologist fitting an animal with a radio collar.

Both species were mostly nocturnal with approximately 80% of all their movements occurring between sunset and sunrise. We found red wolves and coyotes to use similar habitats and preferred open, treeless agricultural areas over forested areas. Typically, red wolves and coyotes seek cover in agricultural crops (when available), fallow fields with high vegetation, and forested areas during the day. Once night came, both species leave cover and use open fields, forest edges, and dirt roads to hunt and defend territories.

Red wolf with GPS collar. Photo by J. Hinton.

We also found red wolves and coyotes to have two space use statuses: residents and transients. Residents are breeders and their offspring that maintain territories, whereas transients are typically young dispersing individuals with the intent to establish territories and reproduce. Transients rarely have breeding opportunities because they are solitary and nomadic until they find a mate. As a result, transients traverse over larger areas than residents do. For instance, transient red wolves and coyotes commonly traversed areas of 30 to 300 mi² before establishing territories with a mate. This period can be between 2 weeks to 2 years. Once transients became residents, they establish territories that are much smaller. Red wolves typically defend areas about 19 mi² whereas coyote territories are smaller at approximately 10 mi².

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Thank you to Dr. Hinton for sharing! Stay tuned for more research updates soon from our partners!

Adaptive Management Techniques: How coyote sterilization can work towards red wolf recovery efforts

A frequently asked question here at the Red Wolf Recovery Program is “Do red wolves breed with coyotes?” The short answer is yes, they can. Red wolves, gray wolves, domestic dogs, and coyotes are capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring.  While social structures and territoriality usually prevent such interbreeding, the combination of a small red wolf population, a large coyote population, and limited space in the recovery area can result in a breakdown of the natural barriers.

  Coyote. Photo by B. Bartel/USFWS.

During the initial site selection process for the red wolf restoration program, the northeastern North Carolina (NENC) Red Wolf Recovery Area was uninhabited by coyotes.  However, coyotes have expanded their range eastward; individuals were observed in NENC beginning in the early-1990s.  As a result, an adaptive management plan was needed to eliminate the threat of hybridization.  Research has demonstrated that sterilized coyotes remain territorial and continue to defend space. It is this concept of holding space that is being applied to manage hybridization by providing managers time, information, and a higher degree of control over the recovery landscape, while simultaneously providing reproductive advantage to the red wolf.   Ultimately, sterilization is a method that allows territorial space to be held until that animal can be replaced naturally or by management actions. Sterile “placeholder” coyotes are then naturally replaced when the larger red wolves displace or kill the coyote.  Occasionally, we may remove a coyote from an area when we have the opportunity to insert a wild or translocated red wolf into that territory or if we have a red wolf dispersing into that area.  

The bottom line is that space is limited in the recovery area. Ideally, within the restored red wolf population in NENC, that space is initially best occupied by breeding pairs of red wolves, non-breeding mixed (red wolf/coyote) pairs, and non-breeding coyote pairs.  By sterilizing coyotes, introgression of non-wolf genes will be controlled and territories will be unavailable for colonization by breeding coyote pairs or red wolf-coyote pairs.  As the red wolf population grows, having space available for dispersing red wolves becomes increasingly important, and this space is provided through natural interspecific competition and/or management actions.

Currently, in addition to the ~65+ radio-collared red wolves, we are actively tracking and monitoring 50 sterilized, placeholder coyotes.  They are captured, processed, and released similar to red wolves (with the additional step of sterilization at a local veterinary hospital).  

 A coyote being processed and fitted for a radio-telemetry collar. 

Photo by B. Bartel/USFWS.

Views from telemetry flights

Currently the Red Wolf Recovery Program is monitoring ~65 red wild wolves and ~50 sterile coyotes in the field.  To track these radio-collared individuals, we use both aerial and ground telemetry techniques.  Telemetry flights are typically performed 2-3 times/week weather-permitting.  These efforts allow us to identify where collared animals are (and who they're with) on the landscape.  Our field coordinator, Art, snapped a few interesting photos last month during flights: Photo 1) shows the congregation of migratory tundra swans (Cygnus columbianus) on Pungo Lake (Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge) for the winter. At some points during the season, this lake and surrounding area (including Lake Mattamuskett) serves as vital feeding areas for 30,000+ swans.  Photo 2) shows an adult male wolf (shown in red square) resting near a white-tailed deer kill (shown in red circle).  These are tricky to see, but go to show how vigilant and alert the wolf biologists are to monitor from the air!

Photo Credits: A. Beyer/USFWS

So you want to be a vet?

[The following blog was written by Alayna McGarry, a former Red Wolf Caretaker intern with the Red Wolf Recovery Program. Currently, Alayna is a Biological Science Technician with the Bureau of Reclamation in New Mexico.]

Whenever I have told people that I want to work with animals, they automatically ask me, “So you want to be a veterinarian then?”  I’ve always replied that I just wasn’t interested in that aspect of animals.  I would much rather go out into the wild and study their behaviors.  Of course they look at me like I’m crazy!  But after an incident at the vet’s office I now know that I’ll never be a vet, even if I wanted to!

One morning I was out at Sandy Ridge feeding the captive red wolves when I received a call from Michael, one of the Red Wolf Recovery Program biologists.  He told me he was planning to take a female coyote to get sterilized at the veterinarian’s office.  He asked for help capturing her, and since I had nothing else on my schedule I tagged along for the experience!  I had never actually watched a live surgery, but I love Grey’s Anatomy so I thought it would be similar.  Boy was I wrong!  I was in the operating room with the coyote on one table and a golden retriever being neutered on the other.  I was intrigued at what they were doing to the coyote but I tried not to pay too much attention to the retriever!  The coyote was only getting her tubes tied so it wasn’t a very invasive surgery, unlike the neutering.  Luckily, I had Michael there to distract me from what was going on.  While I watched from my peripherals I started to notice different body parts being pulled out of the retriever.  I started to think to myself, "That just isn’t natural."  We started to talk about the music that was on the radio and before I knew it I had forgotten about the surgeries.

After talking about random stuff for ten minutes, Michael said he would be right back.  "This isn’t going to be good," I thought.  I had nothing to distract me.  I didn’t want to pull out my cellphone because I didn’t want to insult the doctors.  I tried to watch the surgery and look as if I was interested in what was going on.  I’m sure they could tell by the look on my face that I was more disgusted than I was interested.  I started to focus on the retriever’s surgery and couldn’t get myself to stop watching.  The doctor was pulling out the different body parts and shoving them back in! Gross!  Next thing I knew, I started to get really warm and light headed.  I realized what was happening and pulled out my phone to try and distract myself.  It didn’t work.  I started to stare into space and lean to one side.  Just at that moment, Michael came back in and grabbed me.  He said he was trying to figure out what I was staring at when he realized that I was about to pass out.  He took me outside to get some fresh air and I felt much better!  I eventually went back into the OR to finish out her surgery but I made sure to stay distracted.  I was really embarrassed that I didn’t have the stomach for the surgery, but they invited me back!  Maybe I’ll eventually be able to watch the whole thing without a problem.  At least when someone asks me now if I want to be a vet, I can give them a good story as to why that will never be my profession!

Here’s a picture of me with a red wolf and one of the veterinarians that came out to Sandy Ridge for the annual checkup of the captive wolves. I was fine that day because there wasn’t any blood! -- Alayna

Gunshot Mortality of Red Wolves

The following blog entry about gunshot mortality of red wolves is excerpted from a chapter in the forthcoming book entitled "The Secret World of Red Wolves: A True Story of North America's other Wolf," by T. DeLene Beeland (University of North Carolina Press, coming early 2013), and is reproduced here with the permission of the author. CAUTION: Images included in this blog may be disturbing to some readers.

Since 2004, an average of 6.5 red wolves die each year from gunshot wounds. Studying years past, it is easy to see an emerging trend: between 1987 and 2003, twenty-eight red wolves were shot. But between 2004 and 2010, the number of gunshot red wolves rose to forty-five confirmed cases. By the end of 2011, the total number of gunshot wolves have increased to fifty-two. In other words, 65 percent of the known gunshot red wolves occurred in the most recent eight years of the twenty-five-year-long program. Six were shot in 2004; five were shot in 2005; four were shot in 2006; nine were shot in 2007; six were shot in 2008 (plus two confirmed poisonings); seven were shot in 2009; eight were shot in 2010; and another seven were shot in 2011. The killings are akin to death by a thousand slices to the population as a whole.

[Number of red wolves killed by gunshot, 1987-2011]

Unfortunately, the breeders are hit disproportionately according to the red wolf team. Since 2004, the biologists calculate that breeding individuals compose 73 percent of the wolves shot illegally. Losing a breeder busts up packs which in turn leads to single wolves becoming vulnerable to intraspecific aggression. The loss of a breeder can also equate to pups or pre-dispersing age juveniles losing parental protection. Most worrisome to the red wolf field team, losing a breeder puts that pack's territory at risk: they had too often observed fertile coyotes move into territories shortly after the disruption of a breeding pair.

[Red Wolf on left; Coyote on right. Photo credit: red wolf, Crawford/USFWS; coyote, USFWS]
A study published in 2011 in PLoS-ONE by Dennis Murray and Amanda Sparkman from Trent University, and Lisette Waits from the University of Idaho, was the first to address the issue of how anthropogenic killings affect the red wolf population. The researchers tested two ecological theories: one proposed that human-caused killings have an “additive” effect which reduces a population’s overall survival rates, while the second proposed that human-caused killings trigger a “compensatory” effect which makes up for unnatural losses, possibly by reducing the natural mortality rate which then balances the overall survival rate.

The researchers divided the red wolf population growth into two major time periods, from 1990-1998 and 1999 to 2006, and classified the first timeframe as having a low population density (when the reintroduced population was still growing) and the second as having a high population density (when the recovery area began to approach being full). They found that at low population densities, the red wolf population experienced a strong additive effect from human-caused killings. But at higher densities, they found evidence for both additive and compensatory effects. They hypothesized that as stable red wolf packs dissolved due to human-caused killings, it freed the surplus breeding-age red wolves to either begin breeding with the surviving mate, or to take over the territory of a dissolved pack and form an entirely new breeding pair...

[Red Wolf. Photo credit: Nordsven/USFWS]

...A second study with insight to how anthropogenic killings affects red wolves took the form of a dissertation under the tutelage of Lisette Waits, a wildlife geneticist at the University of Idaho. (Waits is also the person responsible for testing the blood samples of the red wolves for the genetic markers that qualify them as true red wolves.) Waits and her then-student, Justin Bohling, examined characteristics of individual red wolves that were involved in hybridization events verified to have occurred. They discovered that the majority of the red wolves that crossed with coyotes did so under similar circumstances.

“A high proportion of these hybridization events were occurring after the disruption of a stable breeding pair,” Waits said. “Particularly, it’s been a problem associated with gunshot mortality during the hunting season, and the hunting season precedes the breeding season.”

[Red Wolf. Photo credit: Nordsven/USFWS]
Waits and Bohling pored over breeding records and the individual life histories of red wolves known to have been involved in hybridization events between 2001 and 2009. They studied twenty-one hybrid litters and ninety-one red wolf litters and examined them for correlations with age and breeding experience, if the animal had a mixed red wolf/coyote ancestry, birthing location within the red wolf recovery area, and whether pack disruption was a factor leading to future interspecies crosses. They found that the hybrid litters clustered toward the western side of the Albemarle peninsula, and that the average age of female breeders who birthed hybrid litters was slightly less, at 4.2 years old, than the average age of female breeders who birthed red wolf litters at about 5.4 years old. But perhaps the most interesting result was that thirteen of the twenty-one [62%] hybrid litters were produced after a stable breeding pair of red wolves were broken apart. Seven of these dissolutions [54%] occurred because a breeder had been shot and killed, while two more involved the death of a breeder from poison or trap injuries—in all, nine of the thirteen [69%] broken pairs were attributed to human actions.

[Percent mortality of red wolves, 1999-2011]
In the eyes of the red wolf field team, Murray's study described the past but they felt the spike in gunshot mortality they had observed since 2004 significantly altered the possibility that the compensatory effects would continue to balance the additive effects. They also countered that the study failed to capture the level of management effort that the team had to invest in fostering new red wolf pairs each time a pair dissolved; not to mention their efforts to trap, sterilize and monitor new coyotes that moved into a former pack's territory. They had increased their management effort in step with the uptick in illegal killings since 2004 and they felt that Murray's conclusions, that the additive and compensatory effects would continue to balance each other out at high population densities, omitted how an increased rate of killings stretched their management workload to the point of bursting. They believed Waits and Bohling's study accurately described the scenarios they had witnessed time and time again when a pack dissolved largely due to human-caused reasons and hybridization often followed.

The red wolf recovery program hinges upon successful field work, and in order to grow the population the biologists believe their breeders need to maintain stable territories and stable packs that regularly produce puppies each spring. But the illegal killings, whether accidental or not, are possibly curtailing the program’s success including the field staff’s ability to control hybridization issues by using coyote sterilization as a management tool.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the suspected illegal take of several red wolves found dead in the Red Wolf Recovery Area (Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell, Washington, and Beaufort Counties, NC). Contributions from various organizations and individuals have resulted in a reward of up to $15,000 for information directly leading to an arrest, a criminal conviction, a civil penalty assessment, or forfeiture of property on the subject or subjects responsible for the suspected unlawful take of these red wolves. The red wolf is protected under the Endangered Species Act. The maximum criminal penalties for the unlawful taking of a red wolf are one year imprisonment and $100,000 fine per individual. Anyone with information on the deaths of red wolves is urged to contact Special Agent Sandra Allred at (919) 856-4786 or North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Officer Robert Wayne at (252) 216-8225.