Alberta has the bighorn sheep. Manitoba has the plains bison. Yukon has the raven. So what’s Ontario’s official animal?
We don’t have one — yet.
The loon is our official bird, but we can’t help but think that Ontario’s other furry and feathery (and slippery and leathery) denizens haven’t been given a chance to compete.
That’s why, over the next eight weeks, TVO.org will be giving 16 Ontario animals their turn in the spotlight. You’ll learn about how they live, what threats they’re facing, and how they reflect the province’s character. At the end of the series, you’ll get the chance to make your voice heard — and to vote for your favourite critter.
The winner may not end up on a flag or a coat of arms. But they’ll get a fancy title: Ontario’s unofficial official animal.
Click here for complete voting information, including matchup schedules.
Natural history of New York, 1842. (Wikimedia Commons)
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Species/scientific name: Canis lupus lycaon
Adult size: 63-70 centimetres in height
Adult weight: Females average 24.2 kilograms, while males average 29.3 kilograms
Longevity: Capable of living 10 to 12 years, although few Algonquin wolves live that long
Feeding and diet: Deer, moose, beavers, occasionally domestic animals
Predators: Black bears prey on wolf pups
Threats: Hunting and trapping, interbreeding, habitat loss
Habitat: As “habitat generalists,” Algonquin wolves are not restricted to a particular habitat but are typically found in wilderness areas where prey is abundant and human-caused mortality is less of a threat
Range: Mainly protected areas, such as Algonquin Provincial Park
Population in Ontario: Less than 500
Conservation status in Ontario: Threatened
(Jessica McCoomb/Ontario Nature)
Brent Patterson thinks wolves are misunderstood. “If you don’t like wolves … it’s easy to vilify them or think that they’re bloodthirsty,” says Patterson, a senior research scientist with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry who has studied Algonquin wolves for more than two decades. “But, like all creatures, they’re using the tools that they possess to try to scratch a living.”
Wolves primarily feed on ungulates like deer and moose — it’s more energy efficient for them to kill animals as big or bigger than they are, explains Patterson — but these wild canines will also take the opportunity to harvest a farmer’s livestock for dinner, a habit that has led to enduring conflict between humans and wolves.
Agenda segment, December 19, 2017: The survival of the Algonquin wolf
This conflict has come at a cost for Algonquin wolves. Prior to European colonization, wolves were abundant here, but threats like human-caused mortality and interbreeding have led to a decline in their populations. By some estimates, there are fewer than 1,000 Algonquin wolves in Canada — about half of them live in Ontario.
In 2015, the federal government designated the Algonquin wolf (also known as the eastern wolf) a threatened species, and Ontario followed suit a year later. The committee overseeing species at risk in Ontario identified human-caused mortality — the result of hunting and trapping, for example — as a significant threat to Algonquin wolves. Another, not entirely unrelated threat, is interbreeding. If one half of a breeding pair is killed, chances increase that the remaining wolf will breed with a different species, such as a coyote. “That compromises the genetic integrity,” says Patterson.
Wild fact: Ontario is home to more Algonquin wolves than anywhere else in North America.
Some scientists do not consider Algonquin wolves, which typically sport a tawny or reddish-brown coat, as a distinct species but as a hybrid of grey wolves and coyotes. There is some “contemporary hybridization” between Algonquin wolves and coyotes and grey wolves — the largest of wolf species — but, according to Patterson, “recent whole genome analyses confirm that the [Algonquin] wolf has existed as a distinct species for almost 67,000 years.”
Although wolves are “habitat generalists” that can live in a range of habitats where food is available, in Ontario today, Algonquin wolves are most abundant in spacious protected areas — such as Algonquin Park — where they are generally safe from hunting and trapping. (Algonquin wolves are a threatened species, but they can still be legally hunted and trapped in many parts of the province.)
How wolf scat (and DNA) may help save the Algonquin wolf
Patterson says that some of his most delightful encounters with Algonquin wolves have occurred in Algonquin Park. Once, when Patterson and his colleagues were “scouting an old sandpit” that a wolf pack was using as a rendezvous site, they heard the “scampering of feed and clinking of metal.” A wolf pup emerged from the woods and ran across a clearing in front of the group “clinking an old aluminum can in its mouth,” says Patterson. “It was as wound-up and exuberant as any dog pup I have ever seen.”
Wolves are playful social animals that form packs composed of a monogamous breeding pair, their pups, and sometimes previous litters. “A wolf pack is essentially a family,” says Patterson. In his view, wolves are capable of joy, which they demonstrate when they reunite after a day of hunting individually across their territory.
(Lev Frid/Ontario Nature)
And “they’re definitely capable of grief when they lose a family member,” he says. “We’ve seen cases where, when a member of a breeding pair dies, the surviving member goes on a big walkabout — we don’t know if they’re looking for them, maybe thinking they’ve been lost somewhere — but we’ll see the surviving member go very widely across the landscape for weeks at a time before coming back into their territory.”
The idea that wolves are bloodthirsty or that they kill for fun is based on a misconception, says Patterson. “They kill animals to survive, and sometimes that includes domestic animals, but they do that because that’s what they have to do to feed themselves, to feed their pups, and carry on the population.”
Algonquin Wolf Howl
He believes wolves are “very deserving of respect” and “much more complicated and intelligent animals than we give them credit for.” But that’s not the only reason he thinks Algonquin wolves should be Ontario’s official animal: “Hearing the howl of an [Algonquin] wolf in Algonquin Park has probably given more Ontarians a sense of connection with wilderness and awareness of the value of wild places than encounters with any other animal in the province.”
This series is produced with the assistance of Ontario Nature.