Dan Strickland worked as a Naturalist in the Algonquin Provincial Park in Canada from 1965-2000..............A major concentration of his during this period(and currently) was the question of why the white-tail deer had originally been unable to live as far north as Algonquin with the supposition being that their colonization of the region had only took place because of human altering and clearing the landscape........ And that the subsequent decline of the deer herd in the 1960's was due to the return of the forests to a more mature, pre-settlement condition that had seemingly kept deer absent from the area.............In his 2009 paper that you can access below, you will read about Dan's SUITABLE ALTERNATE PREY HYPOTHESIS which states that Moose had historically dominated the landscape from Canada on down through Northern New England.....By subsisting on Moose, Wolves(perhaps Bears and Pumas as well) took the smaller and more vulnerable deer to very low levels of population.......As settlement disrupted Moose habitat and caused Wolves, Bears and Pumas to retreat farther north, deer took advantage of the vacancy and also moved farther north...........With Wolves present today in the Great Lakes and Algonquin regions and feeding on Moose,, the easier-to-kill deer are again kept at low densities............So called PREDATOR MEDIATED COMPETITION is not a rare event in nature.............Where we have altered the linchen landscape that Caribou thrive on, Wolves who are subsisting on Elk find the easier-to-kill Caribou and subsequently bring their population down to low ebb..............Dan's paper adroitly addresses ecosytem structure looking at it both from a "bottom up" as well as a "top down" perspective................He goes so far as to suggest that in some cases, control of wolves is necessary if the goal is to have larger deer herds..............And of course, we on this blog are constantly questioning if inflated deer numbers(for hunter satisfaction) should be the goal of wildlife agencies...........I encourage you reading the article attached!

click to read the entire Dan Strickland paper entititled WHAT ORIGINALLY PREVENTED, AND WHAT LATER PERMITTED, THE GREAT NORTHERN EXPANSION OF WHITE-TAILED DEER?

                                              White-tail Deer

Moose

Gray Wolf in Minnesota

Eastern Wolf in Algonquin Park