Potential Futures for Coastal Wolves and Their Ecosystem Services in Alaska, With Implications for Management of a Social-Ecological System

• Published in: Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
• Main Authors: Sophie L. Gilbert, Trevor Haynes, Mark S. Lindberg, David M. Albert, Michelle Kissling, Laurel Lynch, Dave Person
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
• Subjects: Tongass National Forest; Alaska (United States); ecosystem service (ES) values; predator-prey interactions; social-ecological systems (SES); Endangered Species Act; Evolution; QH359-425; Ecology; QH540-549.5; Prince of Wales Island; Archipelago; Alaska
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2022.809371; https://doaj.org/article/fae9ff0d9263498eb3eb27c3dc23a262

Carnivores across much of the world are declining, leading to loss of biodiversity as well as the ecosystem services carnivores provide. In 2020, the Alexander Archipelago (AA) wolf was petitioned for protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) for the third time in 30 years. Concerns included habitat alteration from industrial timber harvest and subsequent declines in prey (deer), human-caused mortality, climate change, and genetic inbreeding. However, the underlying biogeography and ecology of these wolves continues to suggest resiliency across the subspecies’ range, even though local populations may go extinct. If local wolf populations go extinct, it will result in loss of their ecosystem services (e.g., interactions of wolves with their prey, which prevents over-browsing and protects carbon sequestration in soils and trees), which will likely have major consequences for the local social-ecological system. Here, we updated a model we constructed for the last ESA listing process (2015) to examine the dynamics of wolf and deer populations on Prince of Wales Island (the primary geographic focus of all three petitions) in response to future environmental and management scenarios developed with stakeholders. Further, we considered how changes in deer abundance impact predation services (prevention of over-browsing by deer). We found that wolf populations generally persisted over 30 years, but dropped below an effective population size of 50 wolves in 10–98% of years simulated. Low wolf abundance resulted in higher deer abundance, which increased hunting opportunity, but also browsing damages (e.g., 19% of areas would be over-browsed if wolf harvest caps are removed, and >30% of areas would be over-browsed if wolves go extinct). Human harvest of wildlife was a key regulator of abundance and ecosystem services within the coastal rainforest social-ecological system; wolf abundance was most affected by wolf harvest regulations; and deer harvest restrictions increased wolf and deer abundances, but also ...