Retracing the steps of a misunderstood predator: A biologist's search for a wayward wolf

Wolves get a bad rap.

From time to time, they're blamed for taking a bite out of cattle farmers' bottom lines.

Kidslearnto fear them based on fairy-tale portrayals in Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs: wolves are dark and deceptive, big and bad keep your distance oryou could belunch, so the story goes.

But Daniel Dupontsees pastthat grim depiction.

"They're really a species that don't want to be seen, for the most part," Dupont says, crouched by the edge of a babbling brook in the heart of Manitoba's Nopiming Provincial Park.

This boreal forestis the wildlife biologist's office, and this pastsummer he let a CBC/Radio-Canada journalist follow him through a couple days on the job.

Far from keeping his distance, Dupont is gettingcloser to the elusive apex predators to find out which less-fortunate creatures are on their menu.

ThePhD candidate at Memorial University of Newfoundlandhas been studying how wolves in Manitobainteract with prey species, including beaver and moose.

The research was spurred by declines in Manitoba's moose population, and other issues facing the animals.

Dupont is endeavouring to find out what wolves are eating and where they fit into the troubling patterns conservation biologists are seeingin moose numbers.

A curious signal

He and his colleagues have spent six years eavesdropping onwolves in theNopiming, northeast of Winnipeg near the Manitoba-Ontario border, as well as in Riding Mountain National Park, about 250 kilometres northwest of the city.

They trappedabout a dozen of the creatures and fit them withradio collarsthat track their movements using GPS and beam that location data back to Dupont's lab.

The collars also come equippedwith tiny microphones that record every sound that comes from the wolf and what's going on nearby something of a first in wolf research, and an approach the researchers believe will help them better understand hunting habits.

But something curious happened early last summer. The GPS signals coming from one wolf collar didn'tbudgefor a few weeks.That ledDupont to ask: did the collar pop off, or was the wolfdead?

In June, he packed his GPS and camping gear into his pickup truck and wentto investigate.

That's where a journalist from Radio-Canadajoined him on his search for the wolf's collar.

A winding path

After a long drive from Winnipeg to Nopiming, Dupont is as closeas roads will take him to the last known location of his collared wolf. Still, he's several kilometres away and has brought a tent and enough food to last a couple days.

He hoists his kayak off the top of his truck and onto his shoulders, walking it up to the edge of a creek that zigzagsand disappears into the woods.

Hours of paddling in the hot sun bring him to the first of several locations the wolf passed through in the days before the GPS signal froze in place.

Dupont is forced ashore.

Like swimming through prickly molasses, he tramples slowly through a thick tangle of willow and other shrubsthat choke out the forest's subcanopy.

He happens upon bird droppings and other signs of wildlife activity at a break in the trees.

"That's promising," he says in French, crossing his fingers.

A leg up

As he trudges on, a beamof light shooting down through the trees illuminates something in the middle distance.

He arrives at a severed moose leg, lying on a bed of moss.

The GPS in the collar emits a blip every two hours, and it's clear Dupont's wolf was in the area for between 14 and 18 hours.

Whatever little meat is left on the limb is being dutifully digested byswarms of tinybugs and carrion beetles that stayed to pick it clean well after the wolves moved on.

A peculiar scent draws Dupont up a nearby moss-covered hummock. It's the rest of the moose mostly reduced to sun-bleached bones and piles of hair.

"Oh," he exclaims. Speaking in French, he adds,"It doesn't smell like roses."

Duponthacks open a bone using a hatchet and removes a bit of marrow that he'll send for lab analysis, to find outwhat condition the moose was in before it met its end.

He records the exact co-oridnates of the site, making note of the mix of cone-bearing white spruce and Jack pine that dominate the area.

A special role

Information about the habitat and kill site will tell scientists a little more about this particular wolf's habits.

Dupont hopes whatever he learns will ultimately helpgrow public understanding about how everything is connecteda foundational concept in ecology.

"Each species has its role," Dupont says. "If we continue to change the balance in the ecosystem, it will have serious impacts."

The connections in a single ecosystem like this one are too numerous, subtle and complex to quantify.

Itcan be difficult to understand how a change in, say, the number of beavers in a habitat impacts how many moose there are. As an apex predator, wolves eat them both and play a part in each species' population fluctuations.

Those predator-prey relationships are also influenced by landscapes, human activity and environmental conditions: an area flooded for a hydroelectric project might mean more beavers, and more beavers could mean more wolf food in spring and summer.

A tough call

An estimated 60,000 wolves still roam 90 per cent of their historic Canadian range; fewer wolves live near the Canada-U.S. border now due to human development.

There areabout 4,000 to 6,000 in Manitoba, according to 2018 estimates from the International Wolf Center.

The provincial population is thought to be fairly stable overall, though it varies from area to area because wolves get around. That makes it hard to get an accurate sense of their overall numbers, said Dupont.

Another tricky factor is that wolf behaviour and migration are unpredictable, and can vary dependingon the season or year or availability of food.

That can mean some years they appear abundant and others not, even though their numbers perhaps haven't fluctuated greatly, said Dupont.

"They like to do their own business and not be seen by humans," Dupont says, nearing the end of the first day of searching for the collar.

A promising discovery

The next morning, a white-throated sparrow pipes its familiar "Oh, sweet Canada-Canada-Canada" song amid thedawn chorus.

Today, Dupontleaves the moose carcass behind.

More paddling and hiking gets him nearthe last known location of the radio collar.

He pulls out a radio telemetry device that allows him to pinpoint the collar's exact location.

The device emits a beeping sound: the closer he gets to the collar, the louder the beeps.

"Oh, it's strong," Dupont says, adding in French, "There we go."

Then, he nearly steps in it:a clump of wolf poop. It's delicateand this piece is full of fur from a beaver a delectable summer snack and primary dietary staple of wolves.

He follows the signal farther,high-steppingover a lattice of fallen trees to an opening where he finds the collar, still in working order.

With no wolf corpse nearby, Dupont rules out one of his two working theories: the wolf is likely still alive.

"I'm reallyhappy to have found it," he says, speaking in French.

A search of thesurrounding area for further cluesfinds a bare patch of dirt,the vegetation beaten back by sleeping wolves.

He finds a thicket of collapsed branches concealinga den dug into the ground, where wolf pups were born recently.

A baby wolf is born black with blue eyes, which they mostly keep shut for the first few weeks of their lives.

After about three weeks, the family moves the pups to a new location, as they did here. Dupont says parents will move their pups to new den sites at least two or three times a summer.

A way forward

Having retrieved the collar and documented other signs of hiswolf, Dupontmarches out of the bush.

As he approaches the edge of the stream that brought him into the heart of Nopiming's wolf country, Dupontslides his kayak into the water.

He isn't sure yet what the totality of the project will reveal about Manitoba's ailing moose populations, or the precise role wolves are playing.

Whatever the data reveals, Dupont hopes it serves to educate the public, and those who make policy decisions that impact species whether moose, wolves, deer or beavers.

"I hope that we make decisions based on science, and not opinions," he says.

"Often we think we know what's going on in nature, but as we take the time to really try to understand, we realize that often nature offers up many surprises."

A version of this story was originally published in French by former Radio-Canada reporterPierre Verriere. Read that version here.