VOYAGEURS NATIONAL PARK— Researchers with the Voyageurs Wolf Project have tagged their first new wolf pups of the spring. In a posting on Instagram this week, the researchers posted photos of two of the pups they were able to recover from the Half Moon wolf pack.
Den cams placed at the site suggest there may be as many as eight pups total in the den, although researchers could not reach the deeper recesses of the sprawling underground lair.
According to the researchers, the pups were quite small, each weighing roughly one kilogram. By comparison, the pups tagged in the same den on April 29, 2020, weighed from 2.4 to 2.6 kilograms and pups tagged there last year on May 5, weighed from 1.7 to 1.9 kilograms.
“In other words, these pups were 40-60 percent smaller than previous litters at this same time of year,” the researchers noted in the post.
“Much of the smaller size has to do with when the pups were born. Specifically, the pups were likely born later this year than typical. We will be interested to see how many pups end up surviving.”