Here’s an interesting piece about the wolf population in the temperate rainforest of Canada’s Pacific coast, which given it’s unique environment (this is the world’s only temperate rainforest) differs markedly from the bulk of North American wolves.
Lone wolf: ‘Canada’s newest marine mammal’
Deep in British Columbia’s coastal temperate rain forests, an area known as the Great Bear Rainforest, roams a wolf like none other. Our data set, drawn from nearly a decade of our non-invasive work, combines genetic information with a summary of the unique ecological, morphological and behavioural characteristics of these special wolves.
Genetically, wolves nestled in the moist forests west of the coastal mountains are the most divergent population in western North America. In fact, these rain-forest wolves are more differentiated from the western continent’s two subspecies than the subspecies are from one another, even though previous taxonomy had placed coastal wolves in one of these subspecies.
Why is this so? The ecological environment in the Great Bear Rainforest differs markedly from any other that the species inhabits worldwide. Where else on the planet do you find swimming, salmon- and seal-eating, island-hopping, tiny deer-munching, red-coloured, small-skulled wolves? Nowhere else does this “phenotypic,” or observable, diversity exist in wolves. And, critically, we show how the ecology on the coast drives the genetic differences we observe in wolves.
Rainforest WolvesWhere else on the planet do wolves take to the sea, swimming among forested islands to feed themselves?
Where else can wolves make more than 75% of their living from marine resources like salmon, beached whales, and seals? Where else can we learn how these magnificent animals used to live, before the planet suffered extensive loss of wild wolves in most other places? In the traditional territories of several First Nations – an area known globally as the Great Bear Rainforest – wolves live a unique and precious existence, and one we work hard to safeguard.
