COS 197-2 - Habitat selection and landscape connectivity for dispersing eastern wolves (Canis lycaon) in Central Ontario

Background/Question/Methods

Habitat degradation and fragmentation have been identified as important drivers of global biodiversity loss. Eastern wolves (Canis lycaon) have been recommended for uplisting to a threatened species federally in Canada and provincially in Ontario. While the eastern wolf was historically found across northeastern forests in North America, its current distribution is limited mainly to Algonquin Provincial Park, and several other protected areas scattered across central Ontario and southern Québec. Two of the major threats limiting the current distribution of eastern wolves are hybridization with coyotes (Canis latrans) and harvest mortality. Our goal was to assess whether there were physical characteristics of the landscape that limited movement of eastern wolves among protected areas. We deployed GPS collars with a 3-hour fix interval on canids in Central Ontario and identified 20 non-resident wolves that were not associated with a pack between 2005-2020. We fit these individuals to a 3-state Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and a Step Selection Function (SSF) to investigate movement-based resource selection along dispersal paths. Lastly, we used the output of the SSF to classify a resistance layer for a connectivity model using Omniscape.

Results/Conclusions

We identified movement states corresponding to stationary, tortuous, and directional movement pattens. The stationary state had short step lengths with high turning angles, the tortuous state had intermediate step lengths with high turning angles, and the directional state had long step lengths and low turning angles. Dispersing wolves avoided open water, high elevations, light pollution, and steeper slopes, whereas they selected conifer and wetlands. We also found that wolves avoided unpaved roads during the day but selected them during the night. Omniscape identified areas with apparent low connectivity between Algonquin Park and other protected areas that were driven by low presence of conifer and wetlands. Coniferous forests tend to have lower amounts of undergrowth in summer and less snow in winter, which may facilitate movement by dispersing wolves. Whereas wetlands are associated with beaver, which are an important prey item for eastern wolves. The relatively small size of beaver may make them a particularly useful prey item for dispersing wolves because they hunt on their own. Our results suggest that management aimed at restoring wetlands and coniferous forests in the landscape to the south and west of Algonquin Park may improve connectivity for eastern wolves.