Central East Slopes Wolf and Elk Study

We fitted 13 wolves with Lotek (Lotek Engineering, Newmarket, ON, Canada) 3300Sw store-onboard GPS collars (2002–2005), and 6 wolves with Lotek 4400S remote-downloadable GPS collars (2005–2006); both collar types featured the advanced-scheduler option. We programmed collars to collect locations at 15-minute, 30-minute, 1-, 2-, 4-, or 6-hour intervals during October– April. We downloaded data from model 3300Sw collars upon retrieval via remote-release mechanism, recapture of the wolf, or when wolves were harvested by trappers.

We remotely downloaded data from model 4400S collars every 1–2 weeks during aerial telemetry flights. Global Positioning System collars collected 443–6,676 locations per wolf and remained on wolves for 41–180 days. Collars recorded locations on 90% (3300Sw model) and 82% (4400S model) of fix attempts, suggesting the influence of habitat-induced GPS bias was minimal (Frair et al. 2004).

Previous trials using Lotek GPS collars in our study system indicate that 95%of locations fall within 114 m of the true position, with a Bessel distribution (s parameter) of 34 m (Hebblewhite 2006)