Gray wolf scat, courtesy of Oregon Department of Game and Fish.
When Mexican gray wolves prey upon cattle in the southwest, they do more than just bovine harm — they become public enemy Number One to the area livestock growers. Typically, the numbers of cattle losses to Mexican gray wolves are inflated by ranchers, and down-played by wolf advocates. The truth lies somewhere in the murky middle. And so a team of researchers delved into that murky middle and studied the scats of Mexican wolves during two summers (2005 and 2006) to piece back together what the animals were actually dining upon.{1}
The team, led by Jerod Merkle, picked up scats along roads and hiking trails in the New Mexico and Arizona reintroduction area. They also followed cues from radio-collared wolves and sought out dens and rendezvous sites, where they collected even more scats. All in all, they picked up 165 scats from den sites, 109 from roads, 17 on trails and 7 at rendezvous sites (6 were gathered from other places) for a grand total of 304 poop samples. Using a previously established method for determining the mass of prey from the hairs and bones present in the fecal matter, they parsed apart what each wolf had consumed. The team tracked the samples by pack territory, and linked pack territories to the region’s predominant grazing practices: seasonal grazing, or year-round grazing. (For background on the Blue Range Wolf Reintroduction Area, see my previous posts here, here and here which both describe the wolf program in the context of the active federal lands grazing practices.) Continue reading
