2020-2021 Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem Wolf Pack and Population Size Report

Winter 2020-2021 was the most successful winter monitoring effort to date in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem (GVE) in terms of the number of packs studied and the number of independent observations of each pack (Fig. 1). In total, we estimated pack size for 14 packs and collected an average of 9.8 independent observations of the same pack size for each pack from December 1, 2020 to April 10, 2021. During this period, we had 320 observations of 2 or more wolves traveling together, though some of these observations were not independent (i.e., observations of the same pack on the same day).We considered observations to be independent if they were on a different day than any other observations of that pack. Multiple independent observations of the same pack size for each pack provides highly-reliable and accurate pack size estimates and ensures that pack size estimates are not based on 1 or 2 opportunistic, and potentially spurious, observations.