Wolves carrying remains of beavers they killed

Beavers are critical prey for wolves in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem for a 7-8 month period of time, roughly April to October/November…i.e., when ice on lakes and ponds is largely absent.

Beavers likely constitute, on average, ~30-40% of all biomass wolves obtain from predation during this period. That said, we have studied numerous wolves for which beavers are the primary prey during the spring to fall.

For instance, beavers can constitute up to 82% of all biomass killed by some wolves during this 7-8 month stretch. In other words, some wolves rely almost exclusively on beavers during spring to fall and then deer almost exclusively during winter.

Given how often wolves are killing beavers, we naturally get footage of wolves carrying remains of beavers they have killed, often taking the carcasses back to their pups.

The reason wolves rely heavily on beavers is almost certainly due to the abundance of beavers in the area. Beaver densities have remained roughly around 1 beaver lodge per square kilometer (and there are ~5ish beavers per lodge) for about 40 years now.

That is a very high beaver density, and likely is similar to, if not higher than, beaver densities in other southern boreal forest ecosystems in places like Ontario, Manitoba, and Quebec.

We suspect beavers are, in part, why the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystems has sustained very high wolf densities for many years, and we are actively trying to understand how beavers drive aspects of wolf population dynamics.

Prior to our work, wolf-beaver interactions had received very little attention or research. In 2018, we wrote a peer-reviewed publication summarizing all that was known on wolf-beaver interactions up to that point. In that paper, we dubbed beavers “the forgotten prey of an iconic predator.”

Of course, biologists knew wolves in a variety of ecosystems hunted beavers to an extent but that was about it. Fortunately, we have made substantial headway in understanding this predator-prey dynamic but there is much we still don’t understand…which means there is still much to be discovered!

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Written by Voyageurs Wolf Project