Seven months on a frozen beaver pond
A video 7 months in the making showing how some beaver ponds become wolf highways once they freeze. And the footage on this camera was critical in understanding the splintering of the Cranberry Bay Pack, the formation of the new Mithrandir Pack, and the changes in the Nashata Pack.
Importantly, this footage not only helped us understand what happened with these packs last winter but when it happened. For a detailed description of this whole event, check out our post from last Tuesday which gets into the nitty gritty details.
A few interesting things to note in the video:
1.) The footage of the Nashata Pack on December 2 was one of the last times we observed the breeding male from Nashata (big, whitish-gray wolf). We suspect he died a few days after that video.
As you can see in that video, he is in great shape and looks like a boss…and a few days later he disappears, never to be seen again. We think the most likely cause of his disappearance was was that he was killed by other wolves.
In that same December 2 video, the wolf on the far right is the yearling female of Nashata. On December 8, you can see her now in the Mithrandir Pack and she remains in that pack to this day.
2.) There was a Cranberry Bay pup that really liked messing with cameras. And with the help of an accomplice, that pup destroyed this camera during a mass destruction event on Jan 10. You can actually hear the pack howling as the wolf(ves) carry out their attack
And though that pup won the battle it did not win the war! We put up another camera in early March and it is still working (assuming a bear hasn’t destroyed it in the past month or so…).
3.) You can see in the Cranberry Bay Pack was very large in early December but due to the split of the pack and the changes to Nashata, Cranberry Bay was down to only 3 wolves by early January.
We want to thank the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund for their continued support of our project. Their support helps us capture footage like this and share it with everyone for free!
Learn more about the Voyageurs Wolf Project:
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