Biologist Rainer Brocke penned an essay on New york's Adirondack Park wildlife residents and the potential of the East's largest Forest Preserve to once again house previously extirpated Wolves, Lynx and Cougars............Tim Holmes reviews the essay below

Adirondack Research Notes

by Tim Holmes, Holmes & Associates and AdirondackCraft.com

 

Wildlife for a Wilderness: Restoring Large Predators in the Adirondacks, by Rainer Brocke* – a review

Spanning 40 years of wildlife research in the Adirondack Park, this 21-page essay can hold its own among the finest of American wildlife essays.  Rainer Brocke's tale begins 12 years before the first lynx in almost 100 years has the opportunity to roam the Adirondack mountains. In the first section, he explains how a team of researchers spent that time laying the groundwork for lynx restoration.  In the process Brocke pens a compelling history of the lynx, including background on the bobcat, trapping and the forest ecology of the High Peaks.
A significant amount of research had to precede that momentous event, as Brocke relates:

"If logging had indeed degraded lynx habitat while favoring bobcat competition, what hope was there for a successful restoration?  Several possible factors seemed to favor restoration: (1) regrowth of conifer habitat during the last century, particularly on lands acquired by the state; (2) enhanced deer habitat on low elevations, attractive to bobcats, especially on logged private land; and (3) recent colonization of the Adirondacks by a steadily expanding coyote population, perhaps further depressing the bobcat population by competing for deer prey.  These possibilities had to be verified by research."

In the second half of his essay, Brocke offers an overview of current research on large carnivores and their habitat requirements, relying on extensive comparative data from a variety of locations around the U.S. and Canada.  More heavily laden with data than the first half, Brocke still manages to apply a flowing, literary style to his mosaic of the carnivore-habitat-human relationship.While some like to highlight the Adirondack Park's six million acres as significantly larger than the 2.2 million acres of Yellowstone National Park, Brocke explains how the quantity and the quality of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem make that an incomplete comparison.

"To assess the quality of the park's ecosystem for wildlife, comparison with the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) is revealing.  Encompassing 18 million acres, the GYE is recognized as the largest remaining wildland in the "lower 48" and today hosts a dazzling array of large, wide-ranging mammals, including moose, elk, white-tailed deer, mule deer, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, pronghorn antelope, buffalo, gray wolf, coyote, cougar, black bear, and grizzly.  …In terms of public lands alone, the GYE's relatively continuous 12 million acres contrast with the Adirondack Park's 2.5 million public Forest Preserve acres, scattered in large and small blocks across the park."

In the 1930s wolves were being removed from Yellowstone and Denali National Parks in an attempt to improve deer herds until George Melendez Wright, Adolph Murie and other wildlife biologists provided conclusive evidence that biodiversity and habitat protection were a more effective approach.  We are fortunate to have someone with Rainer Brocke's experience to follow in their footsteps and tackle the Adirondack Park's shortcoming head-on with a series of recommendations for better habitat management, especially on the Forest Preserve lands.