{"id":6607,"date":"2011-07-25T09:28:11","date_gmt":"2011-07-25T13:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=6607"},"modified":"2013-05-10T10:47:18","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T14:47:18","slug":"north-american-wolf-empowers-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2011\/07\/25\/north-american-wolf-empowers-flowers\/","title":{"rendered":"North American wolf empowers flowers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

The Minnesota wolves flourished under the protection of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973. Packs from the population began migrating into Wisconsin and Northern Michigan.<\/p><\/div>\n

A lush thicket several feet high flanks a clearing on the forest floor. A marsh lies on the other side, wrapping around the back of the open space and creating a danger zone for woodland creatures not at the top of the food chain.<\/p>\n

For deer, areas like these are kill zones\u2014confined spaces perfect for wolves to take down a trapped animal\u2014and not coincidentally a location where forest wildflowers are flourishing, because they aren\u2019t being eaten by deer.<\/p>\n

There is a connection between wolves and wildflowers. Whether assistant biology professor Tom Rooney realized it or not, he began assembling the data to link the species several years ago.<\/p>\n

About 10 years ago Rooney began tracking plant populations over a 50-year period in Michigan and Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were going back to thousands of forests and prairies where wildlife surveys had been conducted to see what had been changed,\u201d said Rooney.<\/p>\n

Rooney and his students had expected to find some European and Asian plant species had migrated to North America, but instead found something far more interesting. In some places, flowers had been decimated by deer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the places where deer populations were particularly abundant, those losses of wildflower species were near 60 percent,\u201d said Rooney. \u201cIt was like an eradication.\u201d<\/p>\n

Species like the large-flowered white trillium, Solomon\u2019s seal and Blue-bead lily suffered heavy losses in some areas, but were flourishing in others. Rooney began to investigate.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>

Species like the large-flowered white trillium (above), Solomon\u2019s seal and Blue-bead lily are flourishing in some areas again because of wolves.<\/p><\/div>\n

Despite a much-publicized wolf reintroduction effort in Yellowstone National Park in the early \u201990s, for several decades the largest wolf population in the lower 48 was in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

The Minnesota wolves flourished under the protection of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973. Packs from the population began migrating into Wisconsin and Northern Michigan.<\/p>\n

Suddenly the deer had company.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve basically existed, from a deer\u2019s perspective, in a really good neighborhood,\u201d said Rooney. \u201cThere\u2019s about one time of year where they really have to be careful\u2014 when they\u2019re fawning.\u201d<\/p>\n

At that time, deer could lose fawns to coyotes and black bears. Other than that, predation was not really a problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuddenly in the \u201990s, wolves are back on the landscape, and they\u2019re there year-round and they\u2019re not just after your fawns. They\u2019re after you as well,\u201d said Rooney.<\/p>\n

In reality, wolves don\u2019t often hunt deer, but the reintroduction of a large hunter at the top of the food chain did have its affect all the way down to the flowers on the forest floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou no longer see deer in the middle of the day. They\u2019re only out at dawn and at dusk, the way they used to be,\u201d said Rooney. \u201cAnd as a result there\u2019s been a relief of pressure on their favorite wildflowers\u2014their favorite food, because wolves really have them in a state of fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rooney said that fear has led to a floral facelift in the kill zones.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>

Rooney and his students had expected to find some European and Asian plant species had migrated to North America, but instead found something far more interesting. In some places, flowers had been decimated by deer. The above example is not the case.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIn these places in the landscape where there aren\u2019t really clear escape routes, we see wildflowers recovering in abundance. They\u2019re big they\u2019re robust. It looks like they haven\u2019t been eaten in five or six years,\u201d said Rooney.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been five years since Rooney began tracking the relationship in earnest. Rooney typically spends two to three weeks in wolf habitat each year and sends a student into the bush a couple times of year as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy site is thick with wolves, which is really nice. You can hear them howl at dusk,\u201d said Rooney. \u201cIt\u2019s cool to be out in the woods and know that there is a large animal out there that, if it chose to, could kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n

There haven\u2019t been any wolf attacks on humans in America in decades, but wolf re-population is a touchy subject in Wisconsin, where wolf populations are being delisted from the ESA.<\/p>\n

The recovery goal for the species had been to grow the population to 250\u2013350 wolves in Wisconsin, and now the population is more than twice that goal.<\/p>\n

A wolf hunting or trapping season is likely to begin in the state in the next year, motivated by a wolf population that has grown 15 percent in the last year, coinciding with live stock and pet attacks that have increased by 15\u201320 percent too.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of me has a very negative reaction to that because they are very social animals,\u201d said Rooney. \u201cIf you kill the dominant male or female, then the pack can die off.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Rooney says he does support the hunting of wolves because it gives the people who are anti-wolf an invested stake in the wolf population.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I can\u2019t think of a single counter example in the era of modern wildlife management where building a hunting constituency for an animal has led to its endangerment,\u201d said Rooney.<\/p>\n

Rooney isn\u2019t quite so torn when it comes to hunting deer.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeer hunting is getting to the point where it is no longer effective in controlling deer populations,\u201d said Rooney. \u201cThere\u2019s just not enough freezer space. When the freezer is full, the hunting stops.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lush thicket several feet high flanks a clearing on the forest floor. A marsh lies on the other side… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":6609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2064,2023,711,725,715,717,18,746,719],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-faculty","category-faculty-staff","category-home-news-sidebar","category-news","category-photos","category-research","category-science-mathematics","category-special-categories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6607"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21458,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6607\/revisions\/21458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}