Garett Williams
Miner and News
An increase in wolf attacks on small dogs in the Kenora area in recent years is likely evidence deer numbers are in decline and food supply is waning, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources.
In a recent reported attack, a small Shih Tzu was killed in the Perch Bay area in late February some five-minutes after being let outside.
Charlene Haste put her two dogs — Pepsi, a Shih Tzu and Cola, a chocolate lab — outside around 7:45 p.m. Feb. 29. Normally, she would keep an eye on her pets and walk with them if they wandered out of eyeshot but was distracted by a phone call.
Minutes later, she said she heard Cola bark and walked outside to find Pepsi’s skull crushed on a bloody snowbank not 30 feet from her driveway.
“I feel so bad,” said Haste. “I feel like I let her down. I was there to protect her. I mean, we domesticated these animals.”
Tracks surrounding the site indicated a wolf kill and while Haste said she didn’t want to blow the incident out of proportion, safety is a concern.
“I just don’t want to see a baby or a child (get hurt) or something, you know,” she said. “That’s my biggest concern. An animal is an animal and I loved her and she’s part of our family and I’m hurting… I feel this way for myself right now but I couldn’t imagine if it was one of my children.”
Ministry of Natural Resources information section wildlife biologist Bruce Ranta said the number of wolf attack reports have increased in the last three years, which he said is in direct correlation to a deer population that peaked in 2007.
“Even though there’s still quite a few deer in town and around town, there’s not nearly as many deer as there were a few years ago, so I think that a lot of the wolves are fairly hungry,” he said. “They’re always hungry but the food supply is actually in decline.”
While the ministry doesn’t have a count on the numbers, Ranta noted he spotted 14 wolves during this year’s moose survey in the catchment area north of the CN line, west to the Manitoba Border, east to the Red Lake highway and north toward Woodland Caribou Provincial Park, which he said is “quite a few more” than usual.
He urged dog owners to keep their pets in an enclosed yard or on a leash when walking through the bush and said while there are incidents of wolves attacking humans, they’re rare and he said he couldn’t recall a fatal attack in Ontario.
If a wolf is acting in a threatening manner toward someone, the drill is similar to a bear sighting — look big, make noise and throw things in the animal’s direction. Unlike a bear, though, Ranta said wolves aren’t easily trapped or killed and the best way to eliminate the threat is to decrease the food supply.
“There’s not really a lot that we can do — anybody can do — besides what we’re trying to do, us, the MNR, and the city, which is reduce the number of deer in town,” he said. “If we reduce the number of deer, we’re going to have less wolves because there’s less food.”
He noted there is a few years lag between a declining deer population and a drop in the wolf numbers and said he expects to see the wolf population drop by next winter.
Three suspected attacks were reported to the ministry in a span of one week this summer.
For more information, the ministry is providing an online resource titled Living With Wolves, which can be found at www.mnr.gov.ca.