Courtesy Photo | Personnel work to place a satellite tracking collar on a wolf at Fort McCoy, Wis., on...... read more read more
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Personnel with Fort McCoy’s Directorate of Public Works Natural Resources Division (NRB) were alerted Feb. 10 by Mike Borchers, a registered trapper, that a wolf was caught in a coyote trap at Fort McCoy. Immediately, staff responded to where the wolf was located.
NRB staff responding included NRB Chief Tim Wilder, Natural Resources Specialist Kevin Luepke, and Endangered Species Biologist Jessup Weichelt. Also responding was U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Wildlife Services employee DeWayne Snobl from Eau Claire who supports the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR).
“Having spent the past 16 years here at Fort McCoy, mostly as a cooperating partner employed through Colorado State University and now recently as an Army civilian, I was pretty familiar with the process that needed to take place,” Luepke said. “The trapper called the NRB to report that he had an incidental wolf catch in one of his foot hold sets that was targeting coyotes.”
Once coordination was made and people were responding, Wilder, who’s also a wildlife biologist, said the decision was made to have a tracking collar put on the wolf. Snobl “came down, tranquilized the wolf, and placed a satellite collar on her,” he said.
“We first verified that the animal caught was indeed a wolf when we arrived,” Luepke said. “After the positive identification, we backed away from the animal to 200-plus yards to give the animal room so it would stay calm and not injure itself. When the USDA Wildlife Services biologist arrived, he gave everyone a run-down of what he would like to see happen, and who was going to complete certain tasks.”
Those tasks included someone being a decoy to keep the wolf focused on them while Snoble administered the tranquilizer, Luepke said. It also meant helping to remove the foot-hold trap, laying out blankets, checking if the airway was clear, weighing the animal, monitoring breathing and temperature, taking notes and recording information, and handing tools and hardware to the USDA biologist to put on the collar.
“After the collar was placed and all biological data collected, the animal was given a reversal drug to wake the wolf,” Luepke said. “The 3-year-old, 73-pound female wolf was then monitored from a distance to make sure it was able to get back up on its feet. After the wolf was able to get up on its own, and walked off a bit, all staff left the area to give the wolf a chance to bed down and recover fully. The collar that was used will provide valuable and interesting data to the WDNR, USDA Wildlife Services, our staff at Fort McCoy, and other agencies for roughly three years. This data will be used to identify the boundaries of her territory and the location of a future den site if/when additional wolves join her within this territory.”
Like Luepke, Weichelt said he was proud to be a part of the rescue effort.
“It was ironic that on the same day this happened wolves were placed back on the Endangered Species List,” Weichelt said. “Either way we would have had it collared, but now she will more than likely survive as there will be no hunting or trapping season in the near future. Also, when a wolf is trapped like this one, I contact the WDNR who then contacts USDA Wildlife Services. They complete all of the wolf collaring for the WDNR. We then receive updates from the WDNR on the location of the collared wolf."
Although wolves being inadvertently captured in coyote traps is a somewhat rare occurrence, it has happened on Fort McCoy in the last 20 years, Wilder said. In December 2011, a female wolf that was captured in a coyote trap on South Post also had a telemetry collar placed on her. This wolf eventually left Fort McCoy and traveled in a southerly direction.
By December 2012, she had crossed over the Wisconsin border and was located in northern Illinois. Unfortunately in March of 2013, she was hit by a vehicle and was killed. At the time of her death she was 108.5 miles south of where she had been captured and collared on Fort McCoy.
Fort McCoy NRB staff members are responsible for all wildlife management support and programs at the installation. The NRB team regularly works with numerous federal, state, and civilian organizations and agencies to complete that mission.
For more about the wildlife mission at Fort McCoy, visit the post iSportsman page at https://ftmccoy.isportsman.net.
| Date Taken: | 02.25.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 02.25.2022 15:40 |
| Story ID: | 415336 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 225 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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