Editors' Note
Dean and Dave left Ellesmere last night to begin the first leg of the long journey home. But this year, something's different. The 2009 Ellesmere Island Arctic Wolf Research has not ended!Dean and Dave left a fellow researcher behind to carry
on the important work, a teammate who will report in regularly. Nature has superbly adapted the big male wolf wearing the GPS/ARGOS tracking collar to lead the expedition day and night in the months to come, hopefully for as long as two years! When the e-mails from the ARGOS satellite come in, Dave and Dean will be able to plot the travels of the "researcher wolf" as he wanders and hunts, probably with the breeding female and others of his family, throughout the dark, frozen winter. We may be able to provide updates about this, so don't drop the Blog! Check in from time to time and see if we have posted something new.
While waiting last night at our observation point for a wolf to come by so we could place our second tracking collar, we continued to scan across the fjord for wolves visiting the remains of the muskox kill from 3 days ago. After several hours, we finally spotted first one wolf and then a second heading away from the remains. They approached what, through the spotting scope (from a distance of 4 miles), appeared to be a large, dark rock with several white rocks lined up on either side. There were two wolves that kept hanging around the rock and moving back and forth behind it. We couldn't recall seeing a group of white rocks lined up along the shore quite like this, and we began wondering if they might also be wolves, although for quite some time none moved except the 2 behind the rock. Then suddenly when we took another look, one of the white rocks was gone!That's when we began to see that the arrangement of the whole group of rocks was odd, unless the dark rock was a fresh muskox kill, and the cluster of white rocks was our wolf pack! That turned out to be the case, so we spent the rest of the evening watching at least 8 wolves, including the collared wolf, according to the signal. Unfortunately, a candidate wolf for our second collar never appeared near us, and we resigned ourselves to just having one collar out to follow for the next 2 years.However, we took great satisfaction that we were getting excellent location data from our collared wolf and that the animal is the breeding male of this pack.These facts and what we will learn from them will warm us for the next 2 years as we check and plot the locations e-mailed to us, thus bringing us back to this remote study area and the great time we had.
We homed in on the signal from the collared male via a helicopter currently at the airstrip for use by researchers - and we found the den! We saw 3 adults there, and one pup came out. Two other adults were nearby. But, none of them had a collar even though the signal was strong and nearby.Thus we persisted in homing in on the signal but were puzzled when we could see no other wolves.Then we noticed a crack or dark fissure in the ground, and once we looked for the collared male in it, we were amazed to discover 7 wolves down in the cool shadows of the crack! They sure found a solution to the record heat, and despite some circling with the helicopter, they appeared completely unfazed and never moved from their shaded napping spots (see photo).
The den was not where we originally thought it was, although still far across the fjord, about 18 km (approximately 11 miles) from our observation point and a 27 km (about 17 miles) trip around the head of the fjord. It was fairly nondescript, most probably an old fox den that the wolves had dug out and enlarged (see photo).We also spent several hours watching the muskox carcass we found day before yesterday. Yesterday morning, we saw one wolf there and another about midnight.We still have not deployed the second GPS/ARGOS collar, but we have one more night to do so. Dave & Dean
Editors' Note
Go to the 2008 Blog and scroll down to Day 1 to see a photo of the Rock Den. Dave Mech found this beautiful outcropping of huge boulders and sheltered crevices some 23 years ago. Wolves probably have used it as a den site for centuries. It overlooks a broad expanse of valley where muskoxen graze in the distance.
Several good vantage points have allowed researchers to observe (without intruding) the wolf families with their pups for many years. However, the wolves have not used the Rock Den every year that Dave has been conducting this long-term study. Why is an unresolved question. Maybe ice was still in the cozy cave at the base of the rocks. Some years, no den site and no pups at all were found despite thorough searching. Perhaps in those years, the wolf pack in the area did not have pups because prey numbers were down. An early winter (August!) with heavy snowfall can mean hard months ahead for the muskoxen. A deep crust forms on the snow mantle, and the muskoxen can't get to the plants that nourish them. No muskoxen and hares, no breakfast, lunch and dinner for the wolves!
The old fox den where the wolves have their pup(s) this year seems to us humans far less luxurious than the Rock Den! But it's not a problem for the wolves. Water is nearby, the fissure gives them protection from the heat and the bugs, they can see forever - and the muskoxen are there. Clearly, traveling miles every day is no problem for them. Wolves are built for tireless locomotion!
It is amazing that these great predators are able to dispatch with an adult muskox. Even the youngest calves are strong and present a challenge, but an adult is 400 to 800 pounds (estimates vary) of charging fury. Perhaps the wolves found an adult that was weakened by age or injury, but even so, this reminds us of how difficult it is for wolves to acquire food for the pack, including the ravenous pups, when they have to take on animals that outweigh them by several hundred pounds.
See the 1986 documentary White Wolf for some unforgettable footage of wolves chasing and killing a muskox calf.
The annual Ellesmere Island Wolf Research Expedition includes a muskoxen and hare indexing. Dave and Dean will do a count in designated areas for comparison with past years. This gives them useful data on the fluctuation in numbers of the prey species.
More images can be viewed on our Flickr Photostream.
We began our day yesterday at our observation point overlooking the fjord, but with added interest in learning where our collared male might be now. The 11 muskoxen we saw on Monday re-appeared again as they foraged along the gullies. We heard the VHF signal from the collared male, and he was still across the fjord but much farther east than the night before last. We continued to listen for his signal throughout the day while waiting for wolves to show up - hopefully with one that we could collar. With the spotting scope and binoculars, we scanned the area where we heard the signal. We saw a wolf, but it was challenging to discern what was happening with the heat waves coming off the land. We then saw a second wolf, and Dave was puzzled by what appeared from 4.5 miles away like a dark barrel with some red showing nearby. We observed the two wolves greet each other and then go towards the "barrel." Only it wasn't a barrel! Instead we then realized that this was an adult muskox the wolves had killed, probably last night. We continued to watch the kill site to figure out how many wolves were there and determined that there were five and the collared male was one of them. We will rise early tomorrow morning to continue to watch the kill site. On another interesting note, we learned from the nearby weather station that in over 45 years of weather keeping, today we broke an all-time record for a daytime high temperature at 20.9 degrees Celcius. That is close to 70 degrees Fahrenheit - an arctic heat wave. Dean & Dave
Editors' Note
"Wildlife biologist." Even in a world in which, as Richard Louv (author of the book Last Child in the Woods) put it, children are suffering increasingly from "Nature Deficit Disorder," the notion of a career as a wildlife biologist is attractive to many young people. It may become increasingly so as the condition of our planet continues to deteriorate. The trend toward insulating children from nature may be reversing. As organizations and teachers and parents motivate young people to become engaged in solving global environmental problems and in becoming stewards of our earth, environmental careers in the outdoors may see a spike in popularity. We hope so.
But field work is not, as the International Wolf Center's Web Specialist Carissa Winter says, "as easy as throwing on your flannel shirt and jeans, strapping on your gear and walking into the wilderness to be instantly rewarded." Field work can be brutal - bad weather, biting bugs, exhaustion, equipment that fails, accidents, injury - and long periods when nothing happens and there is no guarantee that it will. It is work that earns tremendous pay-offs and sometimes no rewards whatsoever. It demands patience, persistence, a positive outlook and a thick skin, both against the bugs and against dashed hopes.
Carissa, who designs and oversees this Blog, likens the suspense building today to a soap opera! What will happen? Will Dave and Dean find the collared male and be lead to the breeding female? Will they find pups? Stay tuned!
We can't predict the outcome, but we hope you will stick with this adventure in research for two more days. Dave and Dean will have to head home on Friday, so the pressure really is mounting. Send them your strong thoughts!
The first leg of the journey home is always the most crucial because we must be able to connect with the once-per-week commercial flight from Resolute to Yellowknife. It is also logistically the most difficult to arrange, but we were lucky to get on a twin otter cargo flight complete with 2 ATVs, a barrel of hazardous waste, our gear, and 3 Inuit women. Despite a poor weather forecast, we made it into Resolute 
by midnight and then enjoyed the luxury of a commercial hotel and began our transition back into the rest of the world. All that remains is to catch our plane out of Resolute.
