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Beyond 2000:
Realities of Global Wolf Restoration
23-26 February 2000
Duluth, Minnesota USA
J. Henry Fair
Satish Kumar (far right), Aligarh
Muslim University, India with Lu Carbyn, Laurie Schaefer,
and Dave Mech.
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Satish Kumar, Centre for Wildlife and Ornithology, Aligarh
Muslim University, Aligarh - 202002 UP, India; Asad R. Rahmani,
Bombay Natural History Society, Hornbill House, S.B. Singh Road,
Mumbai - 400023, India
Aspects of predation on blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra),
a primary prey of the Indian grey wolf (Canis lupus pallipes)
were studied in the Great Indian Bustard Sanctuary from 1991 to
1994. For each kill, data were collected on a) sex and age, b) habitat
around kill site, c) biomass left unconsumed, d) distance of kill
from the den(s) and nearest vegetative cover.
The wolves largely preyed on old and injured blackbuck and had
a strong selection for males (U=42, P=0.01, Mann-Whitney U test).
On an average, wolves made a kill every 3.65 days during winter
(s.e.=0.58, n=19) and 2.1 days (s.e.=0.7, n=10) during summer. The
consumption rate was found to be 1 kg/wolf/day and it was not correlated
with the pack size (rs=0.16, P=0.07). The wolves depended largely
on blackbuck for food during their non-breeding period and on livestock
during denning or breeding period. The maximum number of kills were
located within 4 m of distance from vegetative cover (34%, n=26).
The distribution of kills differed significantly between habitats
and the maximum number of kills were found in grasslands (37%),
followed by scrubland (22.7%), plantations (21.3%) and grazing land
(18.7%). The wolves killed blackbuck irrespective of the location
of dens (D=0.246, P=0.462, Two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test).
Only two instances of food caching by wolves were recorded during
the study period. The wolves removed annually about 4% of the total
blackbuck biomass available to them in the Sanctuary. Blackbuck
used predator avoidance strategies such as encirclement of herds
by large males with longest horns to scare wolves, ground stumping
and grunting, flashing tail while running, and galloping as high
as possible when the flight distance between the predator and the
prey was short.
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