Diane Boyd: Wildlife biologist and wolf conservationist

Diane Boyd has four decades of experience on behavior, conservation and management of wild wolf populations. In 1979 Diane moved to Montana to study wolf recovery in the Rocky Mountains, from the first natural colonizer to approximately 2000 wolves today in the western United States. Diane has worked for the University of Montana, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Montana. He new book is titled: A Woman Among Wolves: My Journey Through Forty Years of Wolf Recovery.

 

Some interesting insights from this episode:

·         Similar to humans, wolves live in family groups and protect their territory, often to the death.

·         You learn a lot by walking the wolf's tracks in the snow – their habitat, how they respond to scent of other animals, where they sleep, how they kill animals.  You can see the entire ecology of wolves written in their tracks. 

·         A wolf is a cooperative obligatory hunter. It's obliged to cooperate because it needs the power of many mouths to take down a prey animal.

·         The average lifespan of a wolf in the wild is just 4.3 years.

·         Close to 300 wolves are killed every year due to recreational sport.  That's about 1/3 of the overall population.

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