A.Phil Miller flies the single- engine plane in a tight circle at an altitude of about 300feet, listening on his headset to beeping from a wolf’s radio collar. The animal is somewhere below, in a mix of patchy pine forest and low, sparse brush scattered over a snow-covered swap. It is a gray day, drizzling and misty, and after the plane circles a line of pines several times, the wolf is still not visible. The Mr Miller spots a pair – their coats a peppery mix of gray, black and cinnamon – standing casually under a pine tree, looking for all the world like they are trying to decide whether is worth going out in the rain. If they were really worried about the weather, they might go to the vast Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, only a two-hour drive away – or a 190-kilometer trot, no great challenge for a wolf. These wolves are not on Arctic tundra or in the confines of Yellowstone National Park. They are in Wisconsin, not exactly the suburbs, but not the wilderness either.
B.In their quiet way they have shown that wolves do not need pristine wilderness to be successful, that they do not necessarily need a highly managed reintroduction programme, as used in Yellowstone, and that they can increase their range without stirring conflict among wolf proponents and opponents. ‘Once wolves were thought emblematic of wilderness,’ said Dr Adrian Treves, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York who has just published an analysis of what conditions are most likely to bring wolves and people into conflict. But the nearly 350 wolves of Wisconsin, in 80 known packs, have shown that they can cope with people.
C.‘The wolves,’ Dr Treves said, ‘have managed to make dens and breed successfully for 25 years on a lot of private land, on county and state forest land, which is heavily, heavily used by recreationalists like snowmobilers, cross-country skiers ad hunters. This is the classic case of the quiet recovery of wolves without a big fanfare, without big attention.’ He added that because the wolves conducted their own repopulation, public reaction had been largely favourable. In the 1950’s, northern Minnesota had a remnant population of a few hundred wolves, Dr Treves said. After the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, the protection it afforded, along with some forest regeneration and a change in attitudes, allowed the wolves to start growing in number. There are now more than 3,000 wolves in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin.
D.The day after flying with Mr Miller, who tracks wolves from the air, I went with Adrian Wydeven as he drove slowly around on sandy roads looking for wolf tracks in the same forested areas. Mr Wydeven, a mammalian ecologist, has been in charge of the wolf programme for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for about 10 years. The talking stopped when we saw tracks in the sand. These were wolf tracks, not the large dog tracks we had seen earlier. ‘If you look at these tracks,’ he said, ‘they’re more elongated than those other tracks.’ He noted that the wolf was not trotting but running, so that both back feet set down at once and then both front feet – a gallop. ‘If he’s chasing after a deer, that would make sense,’ Mr Wydeven said. Stepping into the snow at the side of the road, he added, ‘It looks like the deer veers off a bit here.’ The tracks were fresh. ‘I would say less than a day. I would say a few hours. It could be this morning. There might be just a pair.’
E.The road is just a few miles from a cattle operation that has claimed significant depredations from wolves each year. Those attacks on livestock are the central problem in any resurgence of predators, and it is those attacks that Dr Treves has been studying. The state compensates anyone who has suffered loss from wolves. The highest risk, Dr Treves said, was in “at the colonisation front” where an expanding wolf population, especially young, inexperienced wolves, comes into contact with people who are unused to coping with wolves.
F.His findings may lead wildlife managers away from lethal control, which Dr Treves said is inefficient at getting the wolves that are preying on livestock. The more refined the understanding of how wolves and people interact, the better the chances are for keeping the public on the side of the wolves. The wolves are doing their part to keep their population growing. When Mr Wydeven was inspecting the tracks in the road, we came on a spot where the road was all scuffed up with tracks. ‘They’re milling about here,’ he said. I asked whether they might be playing. ‘They might be, or they might be mating,’ he replied. ‘We’re still in the breeding season.’
For questions 13 - 18 write the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the correct numbers i - x in the answer box
List of Headings
Predictable behaviour
Interpreting Evidence
An out-of-date image of wolves
New problems for wolves
Preventing negative view of wolves
Wolves who may be sheltering
Understandable reactions
Contrasting behaviour patterns among wolves
A Largely unnoticed increase
Damage done by wolves
13. Paragraph A
14. Paragraph B
15. Paragraph C
16. Paragraph D
17. Paragraph E
18. Paragraph F
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