A disjunct gray wolf population in central Wisconsin

Abstract

Wisconsin s Central Forest Region (CFR) is a 7,155-km 2 L-shaped area in westcentral Wisconsin extending from Chippewa Falls and Eau Claire to Tomah, Adams-Friendship, and Wisconsin Rapids (Fig. 7.1 ; Curtis 1959 ; Finley 1976) . The CFR lies within the unglaciated driftless area and consists of flat, sandy, late Pleistocene glacial lake sediments and occasional Cambrian sandstone or Precambrian igneous outliers. Extreme western portions of the CFR consist of ridges and deeply incised valleys of Cambrian sandstones (Martin 1965 ; Schultz 1985) . This region was logged between 1850 and 1920. In the past century its marshes were drained, its uplands and lowlands farmed, and much of it was abandoned by the time of the Great Depression of the 1930s (Grange 1948) . Humans sparsely inhabit the CFR. Economic activities are mainly forestry, outdoor recreation, and cranberry (Vaccinium) agriculture. The region consists of forests of oak ( Quercus ), aspen ( Populus ), pine ( Pinus ) and a variety of wetlands ranging from tamarack ( Larix laracina ) and black spruce ( Picea mariana ) swamps to sedge and sphagnum bogs. Floristically, the CFR resembles the northern forested region of Wisconsin, but is isolated from it by a 22 72-km wide zone of intense agriculture (primarily dairy, grain, and forage crops). About 2,574 km 2 in the central CFR is publicly owned, consisting of a mixture of county forests (Adams, Clark, Eau Claire, Jackson, Juneau, Monroe, and Wood counties), state forests (Black River State Forest and several Wildlife Areas,) and federal properties (Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, Meadow Valley State Wildlife Area, Fort McCoy Military Reservation). These forests primarily are managed for forestry, recreation, and wildlife conservation. Gray wolves ( Canis lupus ) ranged throughout the CFR prior to European settlement and were probably extirpated as a breeding population by 1920 (Thiel 1993) . Some dubious bounty data and local accounts suggested that individual wolves may have survived within the CFR until the 1950s when the species disappeared from all of Wisconsin. Initially wolves recolonized several small, isolated areas within northwestern and north-central Wisconsin during the mid- to late-1970s (Mech and Nowak 1981 ; Thiel and Welch 1981 ; Thiel 1993 ; Wydeven et al. 1995) . By 1990, wolves began expanding their range in Wisconsin (Wydeven et al. 1995) . Citizens reports of large canids in CFR surfaced in 1992. In November 1994, a radiocollared yearling male wolf was killed near Oakdale on Interstate Highway 90/94 just south of the CFR. Surveys and monitoring for gray wolves began during winter 1994 1995 in the CFR. This chapter summarizes monitoring of gray wolves in the CFR between the winter of 1994 1995 and 2005 2006. We also address concerns for the longterm maintenance of the CFR wolf population because of its geographic separation from the larger Lake Superior basin wolf population located further north.