Methods to Assess Prey Abundance for Possible Wolf Reintroductions on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, Using DNA from Pellets PDF Format - [163KB] Acknowledgments The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service funded this study. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife provided housing in the field and use of vehicles during field collection. A great big thanks goes to the field crew responsible for running the transects and collecting deer pellets across difficult terrain and in the kind of wet weather the Olympic Peninsula is known for. Brett Lyndaker led the crew and did a great job organizing the data and getting it ready for analysis. Joann Wisniewski, Clay Fletcher, and Cheryl Leach contributed tireless energy in the field without which successful pellet collection could not have occurred. Kurt Jenkins and Patti Happe provided logistical support and shared radio-telemetry movement data of black-tailed within Olympic National Park. Helmut Zahn provided field supervision. Jennifer Fangman and Kathleen Hunt provided lab assistance.

Methods to Assess Prey Abundance for Possible Wolf Reintroductions on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, Using DNA from Pellets D. John Pierce (WDFW), Samuel K. Wasser (U. of Washington Dept. of Zoology), Christine M. Clarke (U. of Washington School of Medicine), and Kenneth I. Warheit (WDFW) 2001 INTRODUCTION: There has been a growing interest in the question of whether to establish a gray wolf (Canis lupus) population on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. Prior to the twentieth century wolves were common residents of the Olympic Peninsula (Scheffer 1995). The historical record indicates that by the 1930's or 1940's Olympic Peninsula wolves were likely extinct. The last verified record occurred in 1930’s (Scheffer 1995). Today approximately 25% of the peninsula (approximately 3,600 km2 is within Olympia National Park) is in the same general condition that existed when wolves were present 100 years ago. However, since the early 1900's the majority of the peninsula landscape outside of the park (~ 12,000 km2) has been managed as commercial timberlands and has changed considerably since wolves were last reported on the peninsula. The large scale changes to the landscape, the uncertain associated effects on any potentially reintroduced wolf population, and a recognized lack of biological information on prey species known to occur on the peninsula, led the U.S. Congress to appropriate funds in 1998 to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to investigate the possibility of reintroducing wolves on the peninsula. In March 1998 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service contracted with the University of Idaho to examine the biological feasibility of restoring wolves to their former range on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula (Ratti et al. 1999). One problem facing the feasibility analysis was that there was virtually no quantitative information available on the abundance and densities of the likely prey species, Roosevelt elk (Cervus elaphus roosevelti) and black-tailed deer (Odocoilius hemionus columbianus), for the peninsula. This was particularly true of black-tailed deer populations both inside and outside of the Olympic National Park. Recognizing this limitation, the U.S. Congress House Report of the Appropriations Committee stated: “these funds should permit the necessary review and research and priority focus should be placed on prey base studies”. Although much of the attention so far has centered on the ability of the Olympic National Park to support wolves, there is a need to look at the landscape outside of the park to evaluate wolf reintroductions. Probably the most important reason to consider non-park land as important in determining the likelihood of a successful reintroduction is that almost all (~90%) of the Peninsula-wide winter range of potential prey, (i.e. deer and elk), exists outside of the Olympic National Park boundary. Most of Olympic National Park is over 750 meters in elevation, which is a defining typical winter range for deer and elk on the peninsula (Jenkins et al. 1999, Ratti et al. 1999). In contrast, non-park land that surrounds the Park is at much lower elevation. Most of the area outside of the Park is below 500 meters in elevation. Historically abundance estimations of deer in western Washington have ranged from 5-150 deer /sq mile, depending on the local habitat conditions in the surrounding landscape (Ratti et al. 1999, Raedeke 1986, Brown 1961). In spite of the fact that black-tailed deer are the most abundant ungulate on the peninsula no method exists for accurately determining the size of the deer population with an adequate level of precision (Raedeke 1993). Western Washington and in particular the Olympic Peninsula receives substantial annual rainfall (over 300 cm) which translates to rapid and heavy growth of underbrush. The presence of the underbrush and dense forest canopy make it especially difficult to directly observe deer. Traditional techniques used to monitor deer have included spotlighting transects, composition counts from deer observed while driving, and in some cases pellet counts. However the most important and consistent method used to monitor the deer population has relied on the estimated annual number of deer killed during the fall hunting season. Even the most quantitative approach to analyzing deer harvest numbers, at best, provides only an index to changing trends in the population, not reliable estimates of the absolute abundance of black-tailed deer on the peninsula. The scope of this project is to evaluate the feasibility of using DNA genotyping from deer pellets collected along random transects to determine an unbiased estimate of the population abundance of black-tailed deer on the Olympic Peninsula. The original objectives of this study were to 1) develop a population estimation technique for black-tailed deer in dense forest of western Washington, and 2) determine the abundance and distribution of black-tailed deer on the Olympic Peninsula outside of the Olympic National Park (ONP).