Salute These Students!
Sandhill Wildlife Area was the site of a wolf kill-rate and consumption study this past winter through the cooperation of the Wisconsin DNR’s Outdoor Skills Center, TWIN and participating school districts. TWIN supplied radios and $400 toward photocopying technical literature on wolf-deer interactions used by students in interpreting their results.
The scientists included 31 high school students from nine school districts. These students, selected from a pool of applicants, were assigned to four-person crews. One crew was on-site each day, Monday through Friday, from January 8 through February.
The purpose of the study was to determine the kill- and consumption-rates of a single wolf and to measure the competition between wolves and coyotes at kill-sites. The students’ objective was to find tracks of a lone male wolf living in the wildlife area and follow his trail.
Dick Thiel, coordinator of the Sandhill Outdoor Skills Center, noted after the students completed a day of data-crunching, “The kids were really excited about the results and did a phenomenal job interpreting, based on literature from other studies.”
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