Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Confirmation of officers: Melanie Culver as Chair, Paul Krausman as Co-Chair, Warren Ballard as Secretary Those in attendance described the projects they were working on and what we knew about ongoing work by others from the team from updates emailed to M. Culver prior to the meeting, from members that were not able to attend. The group agreed to having yearly meetings in Albuquerque, closer to where everyone works, to increase attendance in times when travel is limited due to budget restrictions. The next meeting being will held in July 2009. The scientific committee will continue to help prioritize which research proposals are worth pursuing and send papers and proposals to Stewart Breck and David Bergman who will distribute them to the rest of the committee.

Those in attendance describing what projects they were working on and what we knew about ongoing work by others from the team from updates emailed to M. Culver prior to the meeting, from members that were not able to attend. Ballard update: 1) Chip Cariappa has completed his sample collections for the random and weather experiments. He will be quantifying sample collection and storage methods for successful analyses of DNA from scat of canids. He will also quantify degradation rates. 2) Mike Panasci is looking at predation and at comparing coyote ad wolf genetics, in the same geographic area. Krausman update: Dan Stark's predation study is onging. Howery update: Brian Kluever completed his cattle predation study and and one publication completed which indicates ungulates modify their olfactory and visual cues of predators, and wolves stimulate more antipredatory behavior in ungulates than lions do. Brian has a second paper in review that suggests cattle are less vigilant than wild ungulates, in response to predator cues. Morgart update: John is adding life tables to a manuscript he is working on with John Oakleaf Oakleaf update: 1) John is adding habitat variables to the wolf survival database. 2) John was contacted by Dr. Ripples in Oregon who wants to look at trophic cascade in the southwest. Breck update: Stuart is generating a 10-year database on livestock stocking levels. Also, his calf survival report is nearly complete and will include data from Arizona and New Mexico, but will exclude data from San Carlos lands. Culver update: 1) Sarah Rinkevich has completed one sampling season on White Mountain Apache lands, using scat detection dogs. She will work on extracting DNA over the winter and sample again April-June 2009. She will address wolf population size, diet components for wolves as well as coyotes, lions, and bears. Also Sarah will assess the cultural significance of Mexican wolves for the White Mountain and San Carlos Apache. 2) Eric Burnham is still waiting to hear if he will be awarded his NSF grant to use volatile organic compounds in scats to identify species and individual. Bergman update: 1) David is working on rabies projects. He has blood samples for captive Mexican wolves from 12 facilities that have been vaccinated and is looking for vaccine effectiveness. 2) In the future he will do a viral challenge study for Mexican wolves. 3) David asked for opinions on the trade-offs between spending money on aerial tracking versus costs of satellite collars for wolves, and requested that any opinions be emailed to him. DeGomez update: the committee wonders if he got the home range data he needed to conduct his aspen/elk interaction study.

Brian Kluever has produced 2 manuscripts, one accepted and one in review, on the responses of cattle and other ungulates to wolf presence.