SSP

[Spree]

Does MN ZOO have an SSP for wolves???

Also are u getting more dolphins

[WQ Project Coordinator]

First of all, just so everyone knows what an SSP is:
What is an SSP?

The Species Survival Plan program began in 1981 as a cooperative population management and conservation program for selected species in zoos and aquariums in North America. Each SSP manages the breeding of a species in order to maintain a healthy and self-sustaining population that is both genetically diverse and demographically stable.

Beyond this, SSPs participate in a variety of other cooperative conservation activities, such as research, public education, reintroduction and field projects. Currently, 107 SSPs covering 161 individual species are administered by the Association of Zoos and Aquarium, whose membership includes accredited zoos and aquariums throughout North America.

One of the cool things is that this program started at the Minnesota Zoo with Siberian Tigers.

The Minnesota Zoo currently particpates in the Mexican Gray Wolf SSP. What this means is that our Mexican Gray wolves are in the registry of all captive Gray Wolves. Their reproduction is controlled to maintain genetic diversity within the captive population. As you might expect, too much inbreeding can cause health problems. The SSP also has the control to determine if, when, and which wolves are reintroduced into the wild. So that means that all captive animals in the SSP need to maintain a fear of humans in case they are selected to be released into the wild. The SSP will select canidates for release that meet a list of criteria. But human handled/raised animals are not released into the wild due to their habituation to humans. There was a Mexican Gray Wolf that was born at the Minnesota Zoo that was released in the US Southwest as part of the reintroduction efforts.

[CLBaileyi]

Hi, I am the wolf keeper at the Minnesota Zoo and have worked with wolves here at the zoo and with wolf recovery for over 20 years. I am also the Mexican Gray wolf Education Advisor to all the zoos that participate in the SSP. I have a chicken degree in Animal Behavior and Biology, and teach many classes at the zoo about wolves, carnivores, and conservation biology.

I wanted to kind of add a few comments made by the WQ Coordinator on what the SSP does with wolves. First of all, there are 2 Wolf SSP's that zoos participate in-the Mexican Gray SSP and the Red Wolf SSP. Both programs have similar goals: The first is to exhibit the species to educate the public and allow people to view an endangered species. Second, both programs are heavily involved in captive breeding for future recovery/restoration efforts to historic areas of the species range. For the Red Wolf SSP, this involves areas in the southeastern US. For the Mexican Gray Wolf SSP, this involves areas of the southwestern US and areas in Mexico. Both of these species continue to exist due to the breeding efforts of zoos, and without zoos, the species would most likely have gone extinct. Lastly, these two SSP's are somewhat different from most others, in that the animals are owned by the government-not by the individual zoo. Anything and EVERYTHING we do with the wolves is controlled and evaluated by US Fish and Wildlife Service (and with the Mexican wolf, also the Mexican government).

The WQ Coordinator also mentioned the criteria used to evaluate wolves for possible release. One that we use is "comfort level" with humans-we obviously take great care to avoid imprinting the wolves to us, but we also cannot allow a wolf to be released into the wild that shows a lack of fear towards humans. A wolf that flees from us immediately when we are providing food/etc. would be a good candidate for release. We also look for wolves that have some previous parently experience or wolves that were raised in large, multigeneration packs (i.e. the adult breeding pair, yearlings, and pups of the year). Any hunting experience that a wolf might gain in a captive enclosure is also a plus-I'm not talking about zoos putting live deer or elk into the pen, but rather wolves that might hunt and stalk smaller prey like rabbits, birds, and squirrels.

Another important thing to look at is the genetics of a species in a recovery/restoration project. We want to try and vary the genetics of wolves in the wild as we do for the wolves in captivity. Initially, we used wolves that were fairly well represented in the captive community, but we now have enough animals in zoos to allow some of the more genetically variable wolves to be released-especially when we have had large litters produced the past 3-4 years. The wolf that the Minnesota Zoo released last summer met all of this criteria-she was 1 of 4 females born to our breeding pair with highly variable genetics (this way, we still had those genes if something happened to her in the wild). She was paired with a male that also had many siblings with variable genetics. She had hunted and caught prey in the enclosure, had an EXTREME fear of humans, and was reared in a large pack. It is not often that zoos are able to contribute to full-circle recovery of endangered species, due to politics, habitat, or prey availability, but this was a great example of what the Minnesota Zoo could do in the Mexican Wolf program.