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PART I
Feasibility
To speak correctly, it is too late in the day to write about the âconservationâ of American big game. The word conservation itself is no longer a happy choice as applied to wild life. It suited well enough while we still had a sufficient stock of large mammals for our needs, recreational or commercial. But now the term conservation seems more suitable when associated with the economy of soil, minerals and oil, the non-renewable resources. It has much too narrow a meaning to convey to the public a proper appreciation of what ought to be done if we are to restore useful or beautiful species, control overpopulation of game and epidemics of disease, and preserve wilderness areas where the ordinary traveller may see wild game in an unspoiled environment or one as little spoiled as possible. It is so obvious that game cannot be restored or even maintained nowadays by merely passive, restrictive measures, such as the word conservation implies, that we now use the terms âgame managementâ or ârestoration.â A whole new school of thought based on scientific management is gradually being built up. . . . Conditions change rapidly. The history of reduction or extirpation of many species and subspecies is a long one and often well documented, though the sources of information are widely scattered and difficult to come by.
John C. Phillips, North American Big Game (Scribnerâs, 1939)
The specter of disappearing large mammals was recognized by John C. Phillips and others nearly a century ago. Restoration of big game had begun well before the 1939 publication of his North American Big Game, but it appeared to be a relatively unenlightened process. Until the middle of the twentieth century, large mammal restoration was as simple as moving Minnesota black bears to Arkansas, moving white-tailed deer from one state to another, or moving elk throughout North America. Such translocations were just part of a common practice that not only attempted to reestablish a variety of taxa to vacant range but included the introduction of foreign wildlife species. This was an era when the homogenization of faunas (and myriad other problems caused by exotic species) was simply not a concern. Unenlightened wildlife management was more concerned with increasing the opportunities for an avid hunting public. Thus it should not be surprising to learn that Texas supports a diverse array of African antelope, New Zealand has red deer, and Scandinavia has a North American beaver population.
With respect to large mammal restoration, the twenty-first century will be distinguished from the past by the detailed planning that precedes the first capture and relocation. Not all of the stories in this section are optimistic views of repatriated carnivores roaming the landscape. Where the prey base or public perception creates unsuitable ecological and social conditions, restoration planning must be suspended and new efforts initiated. Without such planning, however, agencies would waste huge sums in personnel costs, equipment, and public trust. In this sense, a restoration effort that fails may be worse than one that is never attempted at all. Whereas wolves, wolverines, cougars, elk, and grizzly bears might have a shot at restoration in the expansive and relatively unpopulated sections of the Pacific Northwest (Carroll et al. in chapter 1) and Desert Southwest (Dugelby et al. in chapter 3), upstate New York offers an entirely different restoration potential (Paquet et al. in chapter 2). Although elk have been returned to several eastern locations, many of these efforts have failed for unknown reasons. In chapter 4, McClafferty and Parkhurst offer a blueprint that will enable the state of Virginia to avoid many of the pitfalls experienced by others who have rushed headlong into a vision of elk in the East.
All four of these chapters build on the best available information concerning the historical distribution of extirpated fauna by examining the ecological requirements of their target species and exploring the geographic possibilities for their return. Two of the chapters address the restoration of entire large mammal communitiesâthus pushing the envelope of traditional restoration practice. All are blueprints for those considering the return of an extirpated large mammal. All should be viewed as the first step in a long and complicated process.
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Chapter 1
Is the Return of the Wolf, Wolverine, and Grizzly Bear to Oregon and California Biologically Feasible?
CARLOS CARROLL, REED F. NOSS, NATHAN H. SCHUMAKER, AND PAUL C. PAQUET
Carnivores are indicators of ecosystem function and can serve as keystones in the top-down regulation of ecosystems (Terborgh et al. 1999). Although the strength of top-down processes varies widely among species and ecosystems (Noss et al. 1996), it is probably more prevalent than many ecologists have assumed (Terborgh et al. 1999; Crooks and SoulĂ© 1999). Wide-ranging carnivores may serve as âbioassaysâ of emergent landscape characteristics such as connectivity and give us information on the optimal size and arrangement of reserves. Viability analysis of carnivore species may highlight potential reserve areas that are not targeted in other biodiversity assessments such as gap analysis (Scott et al. 1993).
The restoration of mammalian carnivore species to portions of their former range, either by restoration of habitat or through active reintroduction, presents new challenges. Besides the inevitable sociopolitical difficulties, large and medium-sized carnivores may be particularly sensitive to landscape configuration because of their low population densities and large area requirements. In these species, population processes operate on a regional scale. Thus, regional-scale habitat models can be useful management tools for prioritizing restoration efforts. Multispecies conservation strategies have many advantages over single-species strategies (Noss et al. 1997). The extent to which restoration efforts for a particular species will enhance viability of the broader carnivore guild can be assessed by considering the major factorsâsuch as topography, forest structure, and risk of human-induced mortalityâthat limit their distribution and abundance.
We used predictive habitat models to develop a carnivore restoration strategy for Oregon and northern California for three species: the gray wolf (Canis lupus), grizzly bear (Ursus arctos), and wolverine (Gulo gulo)âspecies currently extirpated from most or all of the region. Natural range expansion from adjacent states or existing refugia may be possible for at least the wolf and wolverine, and reintroduction programs have been proposed for all three species. Knowledge of the current amount and configuration of habitat can help us to identify core habitat areas and dispersal routes for these species and predict the viability of restored populations.
The three carnivore species considered here differ in the degree to which they tolerate human-associated landscape change and direct persecution. Contrasts in behavior, demographic characteristics, and population or metapopulation structure result in differing levels of ecological resilience (Weaver et al. 1996). All three species avoid humans. The wolf is highly resilient demographically, but its social structure increases the area requirements for viable populations. In mountainous portions of the western United States, the wolf may be especially vulnerable because its avoidance of rugged terrain brings it into greater proximity to human settlements (Paquet et al. 1996). The wolverine has the lowest reproductive output despite its relatively small size. The grizzly bearâs limited dispersal abilities make it the most vulnerable species at the metapopulation level (Weaver et al. 1996).
The three species differ as well in the ecological roles they have played in Pacific coastal ecosystems and the potential impact of their restoration on current ecosystem dynamics. Bears may be an important link between riparian and upland systemsâespecially in regions, such as the Pacific coast, with anadromous fish populations. Nutrient input from salmon may be a key factor in productivity of coastal forest ecosystems (Bilby et al. 1996). The grizzly bear in south-central Alaska redistributed 40 percent of the salmon entering a coastal stream and was the conduit for 20 percent of the nitrogen uptake in adjacent forests (Hilderbrand et al. 1999). Storer and Tevis (1955:17) comment: âIts numbers multiplied by its average daily metabolic requirement must have made the grizzly an outstanding factor in the total food consumption by mammals . . . [and] a dominant element in the original native biota of California.â The historic ecological role of the wolf in the Pacific Northwest is unknown. Wolf reintroduction appears to have strongly affected vertebrate communities in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (Smith et al. 1999), and we might expect similar effects in portions of the Pacific states. The ecological influence of wolverine populations in the lower 48 states is almost entirely unknown.
The historical factors leading to range contraction and extirpation differ among the three species, but all three were affected by predator control programs during the late 1800s and early 1900s (Schullery and Whittlesey 1999). To the extent that todayâs land management agencies are more tolerant of predators, the absence of these species from much of their former range is not an inevitable consequence of current human population density and land use. In eastern Europe, Italy, and China, populations of large carnivores coexist with much higher levels of human population density (Mattson 1990). In this chapter we present an approach for evaluating the biological feasibility of restoring populations of wolf, grizzly bear, and wolverine to areas within their former range in Oregon and California. We adapt habitat suitability models developed for these species in the Rocky Mountains, show potential core areas in a combined study region, and estimate potential population size.
Wolf
The historical distribution and abundance of the wolf in the Pacific coastal states is uncertain. In California, wolves were probably most abundant on the northern coast, where elk (Cervus elaphus) were abundant, and in the northeastern corner of the state where they were found until 1922 (Grinnell et al. 1937; Schmidt 1991). Early extirpation from northern coastal California may have been due to human settlement patterns, including the gold rush of the 1850s, that briefly made the area one of the most densely populated in the western United States. Wolves were historically common in western Oregon (Bailey 1936), as well as east of the Cascades Range (Young and Goldman 1964). Most museum specimens were collected from the western foothills of the Cascades; the last wolf bounty in Oregon was awarded there in 1946 (Verts and Carraway 1998). Wolves reportedly persisted in the Oregon Cascades even after they were extirpated from the Rocky Mountain region (Young and Goldman 1964). While only scattered wolf reports exist from the latter half of the twentieth century, wolves have recently been documented dispersing into Oregon from the rapidly growing Idaho population (see chapter 6 in this volume).
Generally wolves locate their home ranges in areas where adequate prey are available and human interference is low (Mladenoff et al. 1995). The primary limiting factor for wolves has not...
