GPS Map Composed Of 68,000 Pinpoints Tracks The Territorial Nature Of Minnesota Wolves

The Voyageurs Wolf Project is a collaboration between the University of Minnesota and Voyageurs National Park which tracks and studies wolves throughout the warmer months. In 2018, the project studied six northern Minnesota packs, creating a map that showcases the intensely territorial way the animals behave, and how tightly they stick to their packs. The brightly colored line drawings were composed from 68,000 GPS locations of the six packs, with negligible crossover between the data-driven formations.

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“Here is some evidence for how territorial wolves are. This map is the result of 68,000 GPS-locations from 7 wolves in different packs from this past summer. Each wolf’s collar took locations every 20 min (with the exception of the northernmost pack which took locations every 4 hr starting in October) for the duration of the summer. The last photo of the post shows the name and territory of each pack. There are a few packs that we have had collared in the past 2 years that we were not able to get GPS-collars on this year.

This detailed GPS-data is incredibly valuable for understanding pack boundaries and also for our predation research. We visited every spot these wolves spent more than 20 minutes to determine if the wolves made a kill. This required an estimated 5,000 miles of hiking this past summer from our field crew!!” explains a post from the Voyageurs Wolf Project.

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