The Wolf Conservation Center offers grants to support projects and research that are in line with our mission. We are proud to have awarded grants and support to the following projects:
Voyageurs Wolf Project
The Voyageurs Wolf Project is focused on understanding the summer ecology of wolves in and around Voyageurs National Park in the iconic Northwoods border region of Minnesota, USA.
Project Details
"The Voyageurs Wolf Project is a University of Minnesota research project that was started to address one of the biggest knowledge gaps in wolf ecology—what do wolves do during the summer? Our goal is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the summer ecology of wolves in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem in northern Minnesota. Specifically, we want to understand the predation behavior and reproductive ecology (e.g., number of pups born, where wolves have dens, etc) of wolves during the summer."
The red wolf is one of the most endangered canids in the world with less than 20 wild individuals persisting in an introduced population in North Carolina and >200 individuals in a captive breeding program. Conservation efforts have focused exclusively on the reintroduced and captive populations which were assumed to be the only red wolves left in the world, but a recent discovery of red wolf hybrids along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana has changed this assumption. The discovery of ghost, or extinct red wolf genes, in hybrid coyotes demonstrates a real possibility that red wolf populations may continue to exist in Texas and Louisiana.
Project Details
The Gulf Coast Canid Project was created to achieve three objectives: (1) initiate research and develop community support to determine the extent of red wolf genetics persisting in the Gulf Coast canid population, (2) understand the impact of historic red wolf hybridization, and (3) search for potential remnant red wolves left in the region. We currently have two primary projects, one focused on Galveston Island, and a second focused on a regional trapping effort.
Our Galveston Island work is an island wide canid population study designed to estimate red wolf ancestry, population size, and behavior of canids on Galveston Island. We are measuring diet, phenotypic variation with cameras, and eventually want to quantify prey base and use Galveston Island as a model system for understanding how the presence of red wolf alleles in coyotes makes them different. We are also working on a large, multi-partner regional study to determine the taxonomy of wild canids in the southeastern United States. We are live trapping canids in Louisiana and Texas to collect genetic samples and phenotypic data for species identification, to determine taxonomy with comprehensive genetic and morphological analyses, and identify historic red wolf ancestry and ghost alleles not present in extant red wolves. This research will lay the groundwork for identifying landscape features in the southeast that foster red wolf persistence.
Project lead & contact: Kristin E. Brzeski, Assistant Professor, Michigan Technological University And Biodiversity Initiative Co-Founder | http://biodiversityinitiative.org Website: http://www.brzeskilab.com/ Research Partners: Dr. Bridgett vonHoldt, Princeton University; Dr. Joey Hinton, SUNY Syracuse; Dr. Melissa Karlin, St. Mary’s University; Dr. Lisette Waits, University Idaho; Wolf Conservation Center; Ron Wooten, Galveston Island. Galveston Island Canid
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