Trappers killed almost every wolf on Alaskan island, officials say. How did it happen?

Only 3% of the wolf population on an Alaska island is left after the majority of the wolves were killed during trapping season, wildlife groups say.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game said in March that at least 165 wolves on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska were killed during the 2019-2020 trapping season, according to an announcement from the department.

That number does not include any wolves that were killed illegally, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

The most recent estimate of the wolf population was only 170, Fish and Game said.

Now conservation groups are calling on the U.S. Forest Service to protect the Alexander Archipelago wolves on Prince of Wales Island after the record-breaking trapping season wiped out at least 97% of the estimated population, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

“This is a shocking number of wolves to have been taken, and once again there has to be concern for the viability of wolves on Prince of Wales Island,” Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska program director for Defenders of Wildlife, said in a news release. “The U.S. Forest Service must engage with the state on wolf management decisions to ensure that this imperiled wolf population and its forest habitat will remain healthy for future generations.”

Alexander Archipelago wolves roam most of southeast Alaska. There are likely fewer than 1,000 in that area, according to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance.

Since the wolf population lives mostly on islands in Alaska, it can be more sensitive to human activity and habitat disturbances, the Wildlife Alliance said.

In the past, Fish and Game had quotas set on the number of wolves allowed to be hunted, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

“In previous years the quota had been set at about 20% of the population estimate, and sometimes significantly lower than that due to conservation concern for the population,” the Center for Biological Diversity said in the statement. “The Tongass Land Management Plan directs the U.S. Forest Service to ‘assist in managing legal and illegal wolf mortality rates to within sustainable levels’ and to ‘develop and implement a wolf habitat management program in conjunction with’ the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The Forest Service finalized that plan in 2017.”

If the quota had been in place during the 2019-2020 season, only 34 wolves would have been killed, rather than the reported 165, according to the group.

The trapping season was two months long, and the number of trappers more than doubled during the season, according to Fish and Game.

“With the trapping season open for only two of the four and a half months allowed under regulation, we believe the unusually high harvest resulted from this apparent doubling of the normal trapping effort,” said Tom Schumacher, regional supervisor for the Southeast Region of Wildlife Conservation.

Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council are asking the Forest Service to implement the Wolf Habitat Management Program to help protect the wolf population from other unprecedented trapping seasons.

The plan would add quota managements, incorporating human-caused mortality rates in creating the harvest quotas, monitoring the wolf population and prioritizing and increasing wolf trapping season patrols, according to the statement.

“The unprecedented killing of these imperiled wolves is an appalling and completely predictable result of reckless mismanagement,” Shaye Wolf, a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “It’s difficult to see how state and federal officials can allow hunting and trapping next season without completely wiping out these wolves. They have a duty to protect these beautiful animals from extinction.”

This story was originally published April 16, 2020 at 5:06 PM with the headline "Trappers killed almost every wolf on Alaskan island, officials say. How did it happen?."