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Minnesota Vet Med helps to relocate wolves

By Wesley Coburn

SANTA BARBARA, CA - FEBRUARY 02: A sanctuary wolf is seen at a screening of 'The War In Between' during The 33rd Santa Barbara International Film Festival at the the Fiesta Theatre on February 2, 2018 in Santa Barbara, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for SBIFF)
SANTA BARBARA, CA - FEBRUARY 02: A sanctuary wolf is seen at a screening of 'The War In Between' during The 33rd Santa Barbara International Film Festival at the the Fiesta Theatre on February 2, 2018 in Santa Barbara, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for SBIFF) /
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A multi-agency project moved a pair of wolves to a Michigan national park.

The University of Minnesota’s College of Veterinary Medicine recently helped a multi-agency project to move a pair of wolves to Michigan’s Isle Royale National Park in an effort to balance out the island’s natural ecosystem.

This came to Dog O’Day’s attention from the Minnesota CVM website.

The wolves, a four-year-old female and a five-year-old male, were removed from their original territory in Minnesota’s Grand Portage Indian Reservation.

The relocation project was a joint effort between Minnesota CVM, the U.S. National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services, and the U.S. Geological Survey, along with the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

Each wolf weighs around 75 pounds and has a predominantly gray coat, and they’re now outfitted with GPS collars to help researchers track their movements.

“After months of planning, coordination, and weighing all the risks—even up to the morning of translocation—it was a pleasure to see this initial success,” said Dr. Tiffany Wolf, assistant professor in the Minnesota CVM’s Department of Veterinary Population Medicine. ”

Dr. Wolf conducted the health examinations of the two transplanted wolves. “There is still some work ahead,” she added.

Two wolves are known to already live on Isle Royale, so these new wolves were released far from the resident wolves’ territories, and far away from the public, in separate release locations.

Researchers plan to release up to six wolves from the mainland of Michigan and Minnesota into the park this fall, as the first stage of three-to-five-year project that will see between 20-30 wolves in total relocated to the park.

The University of Minnesota is one of five Big Ten schools with veterinary medicine programs, out of about thirty in the country. Canada has five vet schools.

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