The Coast Wolf

The wolves of the North American west coast are a different breed. They're smaller in size, dark in colour and eat primarily shellfish, salmon, carrion and the small black-tailed deer. They don't take down large game like other gray wolves, and they don't venture away from the coast.

Once, these wolves roamed a narrow strip of land from northern California to coastal Alaska. But now, many of these populations are extinct, with only two strong populations: Southern Alaska and Vancouver Island/the Great Bear Rainforest.

Swimming from island to island, these wolves thrive on the rocky shores and deep old growth.

Now, new research has shown that these wolves are genetically distinct from their closest gray wolf cousins. And this is important for a number of reasons. One, this research shows the incredible diversity within a species and gives us a better understanding on special adaptation to specific habitats. This lets us better manage species protection plans. And two, if a wolf that can roam hundreds of kilometres adapts to a specific environment, than the potential for other animals in this ecosystem to be unique is great.

The following is a piece I did for work on the coastal wolf. I interviewed Dr. Chris Darimont, an ecologist from the University of California Santa Cruz.




Chris was also one of the authors of the paper, "Human Predators Outpace Other Agents of Trait Change in the Wild", which gave evidence that humans have become an agent of evolution.


In this piece, I point out that the research was paid for by the Rainforest Conservation Foundation, a conservation group that is calling for the protection of the Great Bear Rainforest.
This is important, because many science stories do not question who is paying for the research. Do they have special interests that are clouding the science? By just putting their stories out their are you simply re-gurgitating press releases?

In this circumstance, I think that the science is clean, because the report was published in a respected journal, there were researchers from many universities, and no protests were associated with this release.

Nothing hurts science coverage more than when people hype the issue, falsify the data or refuse to have their work scrutinized. And an associated protest is never good.