An associate professor in the University of Saskatchewan Biology Department says a research project started last winter on caribou and wolf populations is progressing well.
Philip McLoughlin worked for two years planning the effort and says the final results will be shared with governments, industry and other interested groups.
He says the animals were spotted from the air in March and fitted with collars which use GPS technology to track their location.
“We had 94 caribou and 26 wolves and so we are monitoring these animals right now with satellite collars so we have pretty much real time updates where every animal is on an hourly basis,” he says.
McLoughlin says as far as the caribou are concerned, movements so far have been as expected but there have been some surprises with the wolves.
“We’ve seen them den and we’ve also noticed some really interesting movements for the odd wolf, we’ve had one that has been tracked all the way into the far north of Manitoba.”
University students have been helping with the project and updates are posted on the Saskatchewan Boreal Wolf Project Facebook page.
The project ends in 2017 and information gathered will be organized and published at this time.