An article published last month in the Journal of Heredity concludes that DNA evidence does not support listing Southeast Alaska wolves as a distinct sub-species for protection under the Endangered Species Act. However, others say the same research supports that distinction.
The research was funded by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game. It compared DNA of wolves, coyotes and dogs from Alaska and other parts of the United States and British Columbia.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game does not believe Southeast wolves warrant ESA listing, a designation that could restrict logging, mining and other proposed development in the region.
Matthew Cronin is a professor with the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Natural Resources and Extension in Palmer is a co-author on the study. Cronin says he found DNA differences between wolves of some of the islands and mainland areas of Southeast.
“There’s a lot of variation within Southeast,” Cronin says. He added, “They’re not differentiated in a very great extent, but at the level you’d expect of populations that might be isolated either by islands and mountains and so on.”
Cronin says as a whole Southeast wolves are not a homogeneous group that’s very different from other wolf populations in British Columbia and interior Alaska.
“So what that means is that they don’t qualify as a group that would be termed a sub-species in some circles,” Cronin says.
The Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace filed an endangered species petition in 2011 arguing that Southeast’s wolves are a distinct population because of their geographic isolation. The groups want protection for the wolves because of continued logging on the Tongass National Forest that is impacting habitat for wolves’ main prey, deer. In particular, they say the animals are in danger of extinction on Prince of Wales Island because of hunting, trapping and logging.
The petitioners look at Cronin’s research and other studies and come to the opposite conclusion. Joe Cook is a professor of biology and director of the Museum of Southwestern Biology at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. He was at the University of Alaska in the 1990s and has studied animals in Southeast.
“I really have a hard time understanding what the disjunct is between his data which clearly show that the Southeast Alaska wolf population are distinctive from other wolf populations in North America and then his conclusion that therefore they are not a subspecies,” Cook says. “I don’t get that connection. I would come to the opposite conclusion.”
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Andrea Medeiros says the agency will consider the latest paper along with other information in Fish and Wildlife’s evaluation of the wolf’s status. The government has until the end of next year to complete a 12-month finding on the petition.
