Photo: L. Labatt
Protect threatened eastern wolves
Eastern wolves, Canis sp. cf. lycaon, are a unique species with a very limited distribution in the forests of central Ontario and southwestern Quebec. Eastern wolves are a Threatened Species, listed on Schedule 1 of Canada's Species At Risk Act, which provides population estimates that there are fewer than 236 mature Eastern wolves alive today.
Eastern wolves are believed to be closely related, if not the same species, as Endangered Red Wolves found in the U.S. Their home range has shrunk significantly across North America, where they originated and evolved over millennia, alongside the grey wolf, Canis lupus, and later on, coyotes, Canis latrans. Eastern wolves are often referred to as Algonquin wolves.
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Today, the main refuge for Eastern wolves is Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park (APP). However, the park is not large enough to ensure the long-term survival of the species, even with its significant “Buffer Zones”.
Take action today, so that Eastern wolves can have a future tomorrow.
wolf buffer zones
After decades of public pressure and important research by Dr.'s John and Mary Theberge and others, Buffer Zones were implemented around Algonquin Provincial Park in 2004. This effectively banned the killing of all wolves and coyotes in 39 townships surrounding the park.
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The Theberge's showed that Algonquin wolves were being hunted and trapped outside of the park boundaries, leading to smaller territories, smaller group sizes, more dispersers, and less cooperative hunting methods.
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After the ban, research showed that the wolves stopped recruiting new pack members and instead shared bloodlines, with more kin-based families post-ban. With more shared experience among each family group, other evolutionary behaviours returned too, such as re-use of den-sites and territorial spacing.
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See publication in Biological Conservation (2010): Protection from harvesting restores the natural social structure of eastern wolf packs. Authored by Linda Y. Rutledge, Brent R. Patterson, Kenneth J. Mills, Karen M. Loveless, Dennis L. Murray, & Bradley N. White.
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Buffer Zones have since been established around other small parks where Eastern wolves are known to occur, but scientists have determined that these are too small to have a significant effect on Eastern wolf conservation.
what will we do with what we know?
Research on wolves in Central Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park, where wolves are protected from hunting and trapping, has helped people worldwide to understand the critical importance of maintaining stable family groups - the way wolves have evolved. True conservation of wolves requires keeping wolf families together. ​​
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There is a requirement and a dire need to protect areas of adequate size to ensure that the social stability of wolf families is not disrupted through human activity. This will allow wolves to function effectively as a group apex predator. This is facilitated through generational learning among wolves (knowledge transfer) and the strong social bonds and teamwork that help define what wolves are. .
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Eastern wolves need better protection. Their future is threatened by ongoing hunting and trapping pressures, and from ongoing habitat destruction and conversion. Scientists have determined that Eastern wolves have no future unless current management practices are changed.
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Eastern wolves need more protection from hunting and trapping over a large area. It is not possible for people, including expert biologists, to distinguish Eastern wolves from their other wild canid relatives (eg. coyotes, grey wolves, hybrid canids), which interbred historically and still do so today. Because of this, the entire remaining gene pool must be preserved to give this species a fighting chance. This means protecting ALL wild canids from direct persecution within the recovery zone, at least until the population becomes more robust.
WeHowl advocates for protecting ALL wild canids within the Eastern Wolf Recovery Zone proposed by biologists and shown below from the research article Humans drive spatial variation in in mortality risk for a threatened wolf population in a Canis hybrid zone (Benson et al. 2024).
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Map showing proposed recovery zone for eastern wolves, see full article for more details. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
​Image Reference: Benson, J. F., Mahoney, P. J., Wheeldon, T. J., Thompson, C. A., Ward, M. E., McLaren, A. A. D., Desy, G. E., Fryxell, J. M., & Patterson, B. R. (2024). Humans drive spatial variation in mortality risk for a threatened wolf population in a Canis hybrid zone. Journal of Applied Ecology, 61, 700–712. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14589
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