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March 6, 2005Wolves still a mysteryByRecord-Eagle staff writer ATLANTA - The truck crept along a snow-packed road in rural Montmorency County before it stopped and Dave Smith climbed out. Snow crunched under his boots as he approached paw prints that crossed the road and entered a snowbank. Smith peered down for a closer look at what he hoped were tracks left by a gray wolf. "Nope, it's another coyote track - a pretty fresh one," said Smith, a wildlife habitat biologist in the Atlanta field office of the state Department of Natural Resources. Smith and DNR wildlife assistant Joe Valentine covered miles of backwoods roads by truck and snowmobile during a two-week wolf survey in northern Lower Michigan, as did dozens of trackers with the DNR, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Fish and Wildlife Service and the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians. They found plenty of tracks - coyote, elk, deer, dog - but none from wolves. "You know they're here, but there's just so much country," Valentine said. The survey centered on northern Montmorency and southern Presque Isle counties, where a 70-pound female wolf was killed in a trap in October and where the DNR later confirmed tracks of at least three other gray wolves - the first recorded proof of the predator in the Lower Peninsula since 1910. "We're not done. We'll be keeping our eyes open the rest of the winter, as long as we have snow cover," Smith said. Coyote tracks are similar but smaller than those left by wolves. Canine tracks usually are found atop the snow with no deep impressions. Deer and elk, however, crunch through the surface and leave two lines where the animals drag their legs through the snow. Wolves located here likely migrated across the ice bridge at the Straits of Mackinac and Smith said he wouldn't be surprised to learn that more than a couple of wolves made the journey, based on the animals' recent revival in the Upper Peninsula, where more than 300 wolves are known to exist. But finding them within the deep woods has been a challenge, he said. "If we had a lot of animals and we weren't finding anything, that would be confusing. This isn't," Smith said. DNR wildlife biologist Brian Mastenbrook said area residents reported finding wolf tracks during the survey period. The sightings are unconfirmed, though, because blowing snow destroyed prints before DNR officials could view them. Mastenbrook said trackers tried to twice cover the back roads and trails in all of Lower Michigan north of M-32. The region's habitat is perfect for wolves with its large prey base, Smith said, but it's the social structure of wolf packs in the Upper Peninsula that likely prompted the predators to stray south. The alpha male and female in a pack alone can breed, so as the pack grows, more wolves must break away in search of new territory. The survey was planned around the breeding season, when wolves are most likely to be moving around. "It's a mystery - how many are here, where they are and what they are doing," Valentine said. A capture and radio-collar management plan for wolves is months or even years away in Lower Michigan, Mastenbrook said, as the wolf population here is not large enough for much more than observation.
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