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Wildlife experts looks for new ways to count wolves in Alaska

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

There's a common problem in wildlife management - to know how many animals you can hunt, you need to know how many animals you have. You'd think that problem might be easier to solve in an enclosed environment like an island, but on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska, getting an accurate count of wolves has been a huge challenge. This week, wolf trapping season will start amidst concerns that the population is getting dangerously low and a new effort to get a better count. Jack Darrell from KRBD reports.

KAYLA FRATT: Get it, Barley.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL JINGLING)

JACK DARRELL, BYLINE: This spring, on the outskirts of the main town on Prince of Wales Island, a dog named Barley was sniffing for wolf poop. He wore a bell, and when he found some, he lay down.

FRATT: Good checking. All right. Let's go. Go search.

DARRELL: Barley's owner is Kayla Fratt. She's a Ph.D. student in biology at Oregon State University and trains dogs like Barley to help gather data. She was hired by the state of Alaska to try to find as much of this wolf scat as possible.

FRATT: Biologists love poop. That's a huge part of our job.

DARRELL: Prince of Wales Island is a mossy rainforest about the size of Delaware, surrounded by around 25 smaller islands. Just under 6,000 people live here and an uncertain number of wolves.

FRATT: Good boy. Catch.

DARRELL: Up to now, state managers have counted them mainly using hair boards. Those are wooden planks wrapped in barbed wire and lathered with a stinky goo. Wolves roll on them and leave hair, which managers can test for DNA.

TOM SCHUMACHER: Some people think that that produces low estimates, and it's - that's possible it does.

DARRELL: Tom Schumacher is this region's supervisor for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

SCHUMACHER: Like, if you say all 3-year-old females never roll on a hair board, then those animals are invisible to the sampling technique.

DARRELL: By collecting wolf scat, managers hope to get more DNA samples and a better sense of where the wolves spend time. All this matters because for years, there's been big controversy in this community about how many wolves people should be able to hunt and where.

SCHUMACHER: Nobody wants to give up hunting opportunity.

DARRELL: In 2019, managers doubled the length of the season and scrapped the hard cap on how many wolves could be taken. As a result, a record number were killed. But because this is an isolated group of wolves, when their population gets low, there's a real risk of inbreeding, which can lead to deformities and...

SCHUMACHER: Reduced survival, reduced ability to reproduce.

DARRELL: It can even lead to extinction. So last year, they returned to a shorter season and got a lot of pushback from the community.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MIKE DOUVILLE: So are you going to raise wolves and sacrifice the deer? - you know, because that's a (inaudible) resource that's probably the most important on this island.

DARRELL: That's Mike Douville, a longtime resident, hunter and trapper, speaking at a public meeting last October. Hunting wolves is an Alaska native tradition here. So that's part of why people want to hunt them. But they also see wolves as competition for deer in a place where groceries are extremely expensive. Here's hunter Don Bussi (ph) at another meeting.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DON BUSSI: We live here. We need the deer. We need the deer because that's what we (inaudible) live off of.

DARRELL: Schumacher and other wildlife biologists say research shows wolves aren't actually the main factor driving down the deer population. They point to habitat changes from logging, disease and other predators. Still, if wolves disappeared altogether...

SOPHIE GILBERT: Anytime a predator-prey system gets out of balance, there's a risk.

DARRELL: That's Sophie Gilbert. She's a wildlife ecologist with Vibrant Planet, an organization that supports conservation. She's researched deer on Prince of Wales. She says if wolves were gone, it would remove one of the checks on the deer population, and that population could explode. And if that happened...

GILBERT: They can take out whole species of trees from the ecosystem. They can decimate the understory (ph).

DARRELL: She says that can have wide-ranging impacts for the rest of the forest. For the next two summers, Kayla Fratt will continue her data collection. Next year could be the first hunting season where the regulations are informed by her work. For NPR News, I'm Jack Darrell on Prince of Wales Island.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Jack Darrell