NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 221 



many, perhaps exceeding the wolf population. Wolves and 

 coyotes probably furnish a most effective check on the undue 

 increase of woodchucks and ground squirrels, but the part 

 played by each is uncertain. Wolves also kill some deer. 

 With the diminution of good wolf cover in recent years, there 

 has probably been a concentration of the animals proportion- 

 ately where cover is good, and it is even believed that their 

 numbers have shown an actual increase in later times. If they 

 become really numerous, these authors observe, they must be 

 controlled, but under usual wild conditions they are a natural 

 element of the fauna and their presence may even have a bene- 

 ficial effect on the species that they prey upon in improving 

 the quality of the race through their elimination of the less 

 able animals. 



Farther west, the Plains wolf is apparently quite gone from 

 Kansas (Hibbard, 1933), though it was common in that State 

 in the sixties or later, and the same is probably true for Ne- 

 braska where they remained in some numbers till about 1890. 

 In Montana, Bailey (1918) writing of the fauna of Glacier 

 National Park, says: "Along the eastern edge of the park, in 

 the open country, are still founS the large, light-colored plains 

 wolves . . . and a few occasionally range up through the 

 valleys and over the high parts of the mountains . . . 

 Along the trails in the Belly River valley in August, 1917, I 

 saw wolf signs that were not very old. The wolves had evi- 

 dently been down in the cattle country as the sign was com- 

 posed mostly of cattle hair. Don Stevenson reports them in 

 the country about Chief Mountain for the past 20 years, where 

 they have ranged up and down the edge of the Plains killing 

 cattle and some horses, and in 1914 he saw their tracks on St. 

 Mary Ridge at the park line. There are said to be some in the 

 North Fork valley, where it is probable they are attracted by 

 the abundance of deer, as they are on the eastern border by the 

 abundance of stock. In 1895 they seemed to be no more 

 common than at the present time, as I saw then only a few 

 tracks on the prairie below St. Mary Lake, and some fine skins 

 among the Indians on the Blackfeet Reservation. As the 

 valleys settle up, more vigorous hunting and trapping is likely 

 to crowd the wolves back into the park at any time and make 

 them more numerous than they are at present. If so, their 

 destruction of game will be correspondingly increased * . . 



