A Better Understanding of Wolves and Coyotes in Ontario

Mar 15, 2012

Photo: Scientific researcher with the MNR, Dr. Brent Patterson

In an effort to dispel common myths and to educate the public about wolves and coyotes in Ontario, members of the Mississippi Madawaska Land Trust Conservancy invited Dr. Brent Patterson, a long time scientific researcher with the MNR, to speak on the subject at their regular AGM on March 10 in Lanark.

The close to 100 people who attended demonstrated the keen public interest on the subject. Conservancy director Michael MacPherson introduced Dr. Patterson and said that though our attitudes towards these animals have changed considerably in recent decades, there is “still a bit of an ambiguous attitude towards them, especially when they come into close proximity to us and as a land trust we need to know more about exactly how these animals fit in”.

Patterson, who studied wildlife and conservation biology at UMV at Acadia and the University of Saskatchewan, now spends most of his time in the field doing research. He spent five years studying coyote life history and assessing the effects of logging and coyote predation in deer populations in Nova Scotia. He has also studied caribou, musk ox and wolverines in the Canadian Arctic. He is an adjunct professor in the environmental and life sciences at Trent University. Patterson began his talk with the natural history of coyotes and wolves and their relationship with the eco-systems they inhabit in Ontario. When Europeans first colonized North America coyotes had a limited range in Canada, mostly in the southern prairies, until 1850 when extensive changes to the landscape were made for farming. Now their range covers almost all of the North America.

By contrast, eastern and gray wolves, which were once found all over North America, now have a relatively restricted distribution as a result of intense persecution. “While our persecution of wolves was able to severely reduce the range of wolves, leaving them in a few dispersed areas of the continent, we have been unable to do the same to coyotes. That may seem like a paradox but it's not”, Patterson said. One of the main reasons for this is the hybridization of wolves and coyotes. “Unraveling the taxonomy in genetics of wolves and coyotes in Ontario and our neighboring jurisdictions has been one of our key interests over the last decade, ” Patterson said.

His recent studies, which are based on genetic samples collected from animals all over the province, have shown that coyotes will hybridize with eastern wolves and eastern wolves with gray wolves, but that gray wolves and coyotes do not hybridize. “The most significant contribution of the eastern wolf into the world of wolves and coyotes in Ontario is the fact that eastern wolves can breed with gray wolves and coyotes and the result is that if I were to show you the genotype of all of these animals found on this map you would see a continuum of hybrids, which is because of the fact that these eastern wolves allow gene flow from the smallest coyote to the largest gray wolf, “ Patterson said.

“While west of Ontario there are coyotes and gray wolves who do not breed or intermingle, in Ontario we have this continuum.”

Generally speaking the most common wolf in the province of Ontario, commonly referred to as the Great Lakes wolf, is a gray/eastern wolf hybrid. Its range extends from western Quebec to north eastern and western Ontario and into the Great Lake states south to the US border. In appearance they tend to resemble a typical gray wolf though typically smaller than a pure gray and larger than the eastern wolf. The stronghold of eastern wolves in the province remains Algonquin Park, where there are about 200 wolves in total. They can be found in and around the park and further south in Kawartha Highlands.

Eastern wolves, though they appear larger than they actually are due to their thick coats, are smaller in size than the Great Lakes wolves, with a typical female weighing 45 -55 lb. and males averaging 65 lb. In this area there may be some eastern wolves but most of what we have here are eastern coyotes and eastern coyote/wolf hybrids, which can take on a number of variable physical characteristics with females weighing on average 35 lb. and adult males 40 lb.

Gray wolves are the largest wolves but there are very few pure gray wolves in the province with exceptions in the Hudson Bay Lowlands. The largest one Dr. Patterson trapped and collared in Northern Ontario last summer was a 140 lb. male gray wolf.

Patterson next spoke of the how his research was done by tracking the animals using GPS collars. He spoke of the various methods used to trap the animals in order to gain specific information and to track their movements, thereby defining patterns. In the summer season his team used foothold traps, which were set along frozen trails, usually buried near a bush. Scat and urine from an animal further afield was then placed to encourage an animal to mark the bush thereby entrapping itself. In the winter months and usually further north Patterson's team used professional wolf trackers who fly helicopters to chase wolves out onto frozen lakes. They then catch them using a net gun, firing it down on the animal from the door of the chopper. The trappers then hold the animal down with a pitch fork that has the center tine cut out. They duct tape its muzzle shut, take its measurements, a blood sample, and fix it with a GPS collar, all of which takes roughly five minutes after which the animal is immediately released. No drugs are used in the process. The GPS collars have shown that coyotes' basic social unit is a monogamous breeding pair that will breed for many years. A pack is usually made up of the pair and its immediate family, usually the most recent litter.

The only difference with wolves is that a wolf pack will usually be formed of a further extended family, a breeding pair plus pups from various litters, like the 14-member pack Paterson studied north east of Lake Nipigon. Patterson's research has also shown that in areas where wolves tend to be harvested you start getting unrelated animals joining the packs and the pack structure tends to change. It is believed that the benefit of the family units staying together is that the younger animals benefit by learning from their elders how to take down larger prey like caribou and moose. Both coyotes and wolves are territorial and possess territories that are respected by other packs. “Our studies have shown that both wolves and coyotes who want to successfully raise pups have to possess a territory. We are currently unaware at this time in this province of any non-territorial wolves or coyotes that have successfully raised a litter of pups. So though a solitary or transient female may get pregnant, without a territory those pups will not survive.”

The size of a pack's territory is closely related to the amount of food in the landscape. The animal's body size will also determine the size of territory required. Typically in agricultural areas in Southern Ontario there are roughly 30 coyotes per 100 square km. Numbers can be denser in urban areas.

All of this information is helping Patterson and his team to better address management strategies for these animals in both the north and the southern parts of the province. His work in Prince Edward County specifically studies coyotes' response to culls and how their populations still manage to persist and thrive despite them, and he and his team are also looking into ways to reduce their livestock predation. He is also doing field research in the far north, trying to better understand the dynamics between caribou, moose, and wolves and why it is that wolf predation on caribou seems to be higher in developed areas rather than in less developed areas. “Basically in the south we are aiming to reduce animal conflict with people and trying to reduce levels of predation on livestock and in the north we are trying to find out how to better manage the landscape and to reduce wolves predation on caribou.” As far as myth busting goes, Patterson did bring up the topic of the young girl who was bitten by a coyote in Oakville while playing outside in her back yard earlier this winter. While the general public assumed that the animal, which weighed just 31 pounds, had to be either starving or rabid, neither was the case. Urban coyotes feed on small animals and when the coyote was killed and it was found to have had a full stomach at the time of the attack. Apparently the young girl had been lying in the snow making a snow angel when the animal approached her and bit her leg, likely thinking her movements were those of a smaller animal. After biting her once, it retreated after she ran to her home. “Though this was indeed an attack, if the coyote had been hungry or rabid the girl would have been bitten many more times,” Patterson said.