The predator-prey dynamics of wolves and moose in the northern Columbia Mountains: spatial and functional patterns in relation to mountain caribou decline

• Main Authors: Shannon Stotyn, Bruce Mclellan
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Columbia Mountains; caribou
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1040.4488; http://www.sgrc.selkirk.ca/bioatlas/pdf/The_Predator_Prey_Dynamics_of_Wolves_and_Moose_in_the_Northern_Columbia_Mountains.pdf

Summary Considerable effort has been made to quantify prey selection by wolves and to estimate kill rates to determine the effect that wolves have on ungulate populations, and therefore guide management decisions and direct conservation efforts. However, the majority of wolf-foraging studies occur in winter, when snow tracking enables researchers to more easily find kills from the air or on the ground. Investigating wolf prey selection and kill rates in other seasons may be important as studies have shown shifts in diet composition, greater prey diversity, and higher predation rates when compared to winter. Furthermore, there is the greatest potential for overlap between moose (the wolf's primary prey in the Columbia Mountains) and endangered mountain caribou during non-winter seasons. As a preliminary study, we used the GPS location data (May -August 2004) to determine the feasibility of quantifying summer predation patterns from GPS locations. Potential kill sites were identified from GPS clusters having ≥2 points that were <200 m apart. Of the 25 GPS clusters sites investigated, we found evidence of a large mammal predation event at 40% of the sites. The probability of a large mammal predation event being present at a GPS cluster site increased with the number of days a radio-collared wolf spent at the cluster and decreased if the cluster had been revisited over a number of nonconsecutive days. Developing techniques that link GPS collar technology and animal behaviour could be important to increase our understanding of complex systems for the benefit of conservation and management efforts. Although wolf foraging behaviour can be explained using kill rates and prey selection, landscape patterns can have important effects on the foraging efficiency of predators and can influence anti-predator strategies of prey. We compared locations of moose killed by wolves in winter to telemetry locations of live moose during winter, to identify landscape patterns that were associated with locations where wolves were ...