Paper says Canadian canines unlikely to get to New York from the Laurentians
By Mike Lynch
A loss of habitat in southern Canada has made it more difficult for wolves to travel from the Laurentian Mountains to the Adirondack Park, a recently published research paper concludes.
Jonathan Cole, a PhD student at Concordia University in Montreal, led the study that was published in Regional Environmental Change in August. He used existing data and mapping programs to analyze landscape features from the Adirondack Park region to the Laurentian Mountains in Quebec.
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“If there were to ever be wolves coming back into New York, the odds of this taking place is getting worse and worse because of the habitat loss in Ontario, and … a little bit in Quebec,” Cole said.
The area examined extends from just south of the Adirondack Park to about 200 miles north of the Canadian border. East to west, it ranges from Lake Ontario to Lake Champlain.
The total area includes 49,192 square miles: 46% in Quebec, 12% in Ontario and 42% in New York.
There are at least three populations of wolves in the Quebec region of the study area that could potentially disperse to New York: those in Mont-Tremblant National Park, Rouge-Matawin Wildlife Reserve, and Papineau-LaBelle Wildlife Reserve.
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“Those nice big patches that were in Ontario are gone, and so the dispersal distances are now almost double than they used to be,” Cole said. “Without extensive restoration in Ontario, it’s going to be tough, or tougher anyway, for them to get down.”
As recently as 2000, it was easier to get to New York from Quebec. “They could go maybe (12 to 19 miles) and get to a stepping stone patch, then maybe another (12 to 19 miles) to get to another stepping stone patch, then get into New York,” he said.
Cole said that habitat patch areas decreased from 2000 to 2015 by 695 square miles, including by 28% in the Quebec portion, 95% in the Ontario portion and only .3% in New York.
Cole’s research found New York’s still offers opportunities for migrating animals other than a few pinch points in places such as St. Lawrence County and northern Franklin County.
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“The reason for this is that New York is so highly protected,” he said. “Almost 70 to 80 percent of the (New York) area within the corridor is protected, so it has not changed much.”
Cole said that “extensive habitat restoration and protection” needs to happen within the Ontario and Quebec portions of the study area, road development needs to meet certain thresholds, and cross-border cooperation needs to happen to keep habitat intact.
But even with restoration efforts, wolves and coyotes need better protection from hunters and trappers in New York and Canada, he said. Several wolves discovered in New York and Northeast in recent decades have been killed by humans, including one shot by a hunter in 2021 in the northern Catskills.
Gray wolves are listed as an endangered species in New York, but they resemble coyotes and can be killed mistakenly. In Canada, eastern wolves received additional protections in June when they were listed as threatened.
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The research was partly funded by Natural Conservancy of Canada (NCC) for the Quebec ecological corridors initiative. NCC launched the effort in 2017 “to accelerate the conservation of natural areas connected by ecological corridors,” according to the project’s website.
The initiative identifies numerous wildways in northeastern U.S. and southeastern Canada, including three north-south corridors in Quebec and Ontario and two pathways that extend into New York. The wildway west of the Laurentian linkage aligns closely with the Algonquin to Adirondacks (A2A) corridor.
A2A tends to get more publicity because it has a nonprofit entity focused on promoting and restoring it. That wildway has eastern and gray wolves in Algonquin Park and the lands north of Lake Ontario.
Wildlife advocates have also been saying for years that dispersing or migrating animals struggle to get through parts of A2A because of the number of roads and the amount of urban and suburban development in southern Ontario.
These wildlife corridors have value not only for wide-ranging animals, such as wolves, but also for plants and animals that are migrating short distances or to escape warming temperatures caused by climate change.
The recently published study is part of a larger project by Cole that involved three studies regarding the wildlife linkage between the Adirondack Park and Laurentian Mountains.
The first study analyzed changes to the landscape between 1992 to 2018 to see if it was becoming more fragmented. It found that forested areas had decreased by 526 square miles and 527 square miles of wetlands, or 69%, had disappeared. The majority of that occurred in the Quebec and Ontario portions of the corridor.
The second study looked at animal habitat changes for wide-ranging mammals from 2000 to 2015. That one found that moose and black bear had experienced the greatest habitat loss.
Photo at top: Eastern wolf in Algonquin Provincial Park. Photo by Michael Runtz
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Not really surprising. Sad to hear, but I am glad someone is doing the science. Hopefully the trend can be slowed or even reversed with international commitments to effective wildlife corridors.
This is not sad to hear in the freaking least…
In Colorado they are now in the process of trying to figure out what to do with the wolves they reintroduced that are causing so many livestock losses. What they said wouldn’t happen has already happened. They have trapped the wolves but don’t know what to do with them. Those areas are much more remote than any areas in NYS where you might want to see wolves again.
I hope this study proves to be true. With the influx of eastern coyotes New York certainly does not need the return of wolves. The devastation caused in Yellowstone by the reintroduction of wolves is a prime example.
Devastation? Yellowstone is one of the only few intact ecosystems in the lower 48 states. It has all of the species present in North America when Lewis and Clark embarked on their journey across the West. Predators play an essential role in the ecosystem, and with wolves finally returning to the region, visitors get a glimpse of an America that once was. And now wolf tourism in the region is responsible for $30 million dollars annually. That sounds like a success.
Canada can keep the wolves.
The coyote population will ensure that wolves will never again occupy the Adirondacks. Their impact on the prey species populations is too great to allow wolves to once again be a part of the ecosystem. The predation on snowshoe hares pretty well eliminates the lynx as well.
Although I am a native of the North Country/Adirondacks I now spend most of my time in Florida. Here we have many alien animals (and plants) and watch their impact on the ecosystem in real time. Pythons, in particular, have created a major amount of damage by destroying the populations of many native species. There is an annual python roundup where many of them are captured and killed. It gets significant press with much support from the environmental community and state biologists. It reminds me of the coyote contests in NY where “environmentalists” strongly opposed the killing of those “alien animals” and inadvertently supported a very significant modification of the Adirondack ecosystem. Coyotes are not wolves or lynx and are not a substitute.
Coyotes are native. I don’t get your comparison to an introduced species such as Python.
Coyotes are NOT native to the Adirondacks!
Why don’t they just use the same trails Sasquatch do?
Haha
When officially did the NYS Wildlife DEPT acknowledge there were wolves in the ADK. Because before I moved to VA 10 years ago they claimed wolves were a coyote with an additional wolf strain? I’ve seen coyotes that look like the one in the article. This isn’t some sort of oops we thought they were in NYS but we weren’t wrong the forest fires (A bigger threat to the ADK than global warming or the like) makes it hard for them to follow their migratory routes?
Or is there not enough ice over the St Lawrence to facilitate their movements?
As I mentioned above, I am glad someone is at least trying to do the science. These corridors are not important to wolves alone. They are important to keep wildlife diversity and genetic diversity within species strong and resilient across a REGION. Focusing on large-scale wolf reintroductions in Yellowstone is not even slightly relevant to the incidental trickling of individuals through a wildlife corridor. It is obvious by comments here that wolves will continue to be shot on sight or otherwise harrassed and persecuted based on Western medieval myth. But this is no reason to eliminate the corridors. We may as well put up walls and fences.
It is correct – predators of ANY species do not respect the political borders of humans. As large as YNP is, there is absolutely no way to contain all the animals within the Park while maintaining their genetic diversity and health. Allowing cattle ranges up to the borders of the Park is essentially the same as dangling easy meat in front of predators – enticing them away from their intended “natural” – albeit human-imposed – pack territories within the Park. Problems with cattle kills outside of the Park need to be balanced with the long-term goals of balancing predator/prey species within the Park. And private landowners should not be required to bear the cost alone. Ideally, state and federal government should be looking at moving ranching concerns farther away from the Park creating larger buffer zones. But it is easier just to shoot animals that are simply following their instincts for easy food. Persecution/elimination of native predators is certainly effective, but opposed to natural processes.
20-50 years would still be considered by naturalists to be VERY early in the process of returning predator/prey/vegetation in YNP to a more natural and sustainable state. To further complicate things, this process is also being effected by climate and weather changes within the Park and throughout the world, changing feeding habits and ranges of many species. We are seeing stresses on natural balances that have not been seen in the last 150 centuries. Relative “climate stability” over that time frame allowed for widespread human civilization – often at the expense of Nature. But as inexorable climate and natural forces continue over the next 150 centuries, human civilization will need to adapt as well as Nature does – and it will likely be easier if we have Nature on our side instead of putting our civilization first and foremost and bending Nature to our will.
Great article that brings to the point of fragmentation in an ecosystem and how this trickle down affects keystone species such as wolves that create a healthy ecosystem. Wildlife corridors are needed to protect ecosystems and make a ecosystem complete.
Remember the Law of Unintended Consequences! In short, why do you think the travel corridors will not allow the coyotes to migrate northward and displace some of the wolf population in Canada?
Be careful what you wish for! The Law of Unintended Consequences” may be at work. While your intent is a good one the consequences of a wildlife corridor may enable the coyotes to migrate northward to displace some of the wolf habitat in Canada. The corridore is a two lane road with an unknown outcome. And that outcome may be the exact opposite of the objective.
I would argue we are living with several unintended consequences of wolf eradication in the NE US.
1. Destruction of forest understory diversity due to deer populations without adequate predator pressure.
2. An influx of non-native coy-wolves from Canada. Wolves HAVE worked their way into the NE, but in coy-wolf clothing. Unfortunately, these hybrids have not evolved enough yet to significantly impact deer numbers. That could take centuries. Perhaps over time wolf DNA will gradually increase in coy-wolf hybrids and SNAP – just like that – we will have an analog of the grey wolf that is more effective against larger prey like deer and moose. If a large prey source exists, predators will eventually find a way to exploit it. But how long can our forests and forest wildlife survive constant overbrowsing while being faced with climate factors?
3. Indeed, traffic through any N-S wildlife corridor is likely to entail more migration N than S. Grey wolf movement S is simply one possible scenario, but is not the main reasoning for the push for wildlife corridor(s). It is unlikely that full-blooded grey wolves would be able to get a toehold in the ADKs or any other part of NYS due to environmental and sociological factors working against them. So encouraging corridors is NOT just a way to reintroduce wolves to an extirpated area. It allows for genetic and diversity flow in both directions.
What we are hoping corridors will do is allow genetic diversity to flow more naturally than is possible with our modern fragmented landscapes. Forest species/types are changing as we speak because of natural and man-made forces. Yes, corridors may allow pests/disease to flow as well – another unintended consequence. But if a gigantic ocean can’t stop the human introduction of invasive species and disease, neither will land/forest fragmentation. In my opinion, wildlife corridors need not be large in order to encourage continental genetic diversity in a changing climate.
We have been working to promote natural wolf recovery in Maine for thirty years. http://www.mainewolfcoalition.org
Wolves have returned and are returning to the northeast and it is likely they were never gone. Many of these comments highlight how little people know about the northeast wolf recovery issue and how little they know about wolves. The title of this article is both misleading and completely unsupported by any science. The paper simply measures changes in habitat. It does nothing to document wolf movement or dispersal. It does nothing to prove where wolves are traveling/dispersing and their survival. It says nothing about their dispersal from Ontario east to Quebec and across the St. Lawrence. Wolves can easily travel from Algonquin Park east to Quebec. The range of eastern wolves extends east to include the Laurentide Reserve which is just seventy-five miles from Maine. In order to really get answers, start tracking collared wolves in Ontario and Quebec to document their movements. They are far more adept at traveling through and around human dominated landscapes than the authors of this paper seem to believe. We have dead wolves. No one has yet attempted to show where they came from or where they traveled to get here.
The 12-19 mile stepping stone patches that Cole cites have no scientific validity. A dispersing wolf can cover those distances in an hour and can travel 100 miles or more overnight. The paper has everything to do with changes in land use and virtually nothing to do with wolves and connectivity for dispersal across the St. Lawrence River..