Considering the results of our data collection, there are differences between the amount of predation at each cutline type. The legacy cutline treatment showed the largest amount of wolf predation on each prey size category (Small: 122 individuals, medium: 84 individuals, large: 83 individuals). The low-impact cutline treatment showed the second largest amount of wolf predation on medium and large sized prey and the smallest amount of predation on small prey (Small: 126 individuals, medium: 64 individuals, large: 71 individuals). Areas with no cutlines showed the least amount of wolf predation on medium and large sized prey and the second largest amount of predation on small prey (Small: 53 individuals, medium: 26 individuals, large: 21 individuals).
It is clear that looking at the data the presence of cutlines results in a large increase in the efficacy of wolf predation when compared to no cutline areas as seen in Figure 11. Within cutline types, recorded values demonstrate small variations in the amount of predation occurring between the legacy and low-impact cutlines. It could be stated that these variations are a result of differences in the type of cutlines, however, given the small degree of variation between the treatment results we believe that the observed changes can not be associated solely to differences in the cutline types. Instead, it is highly likely that the slight differences in the observed data are resultant from randomness in the sampling process and uncertainty related to the abundance of wolves and the likelihood that their predation would occur directly on the cutlines involved in the study.
The results of our three single factor ANOVA (Table 2-4) showed that the differences between the mean predation values of each prey size on each cutline type was statistically significant.
Low-impact cutlines cost less than legacy cutlines. We calculated the probability of low-impact lines having a higher rate of predation than legacy lines in order to justify implementation of low-impact cutlines instead of legacy cutlines, from a conservationist approach.
The results of our effect size statistical analysis showed that low-impact lines when compared to legacy lines have a small probability of having 10% increase in predation at each animal size (Table 5). To further narrow our results, we also looked at the probability of low-impact lines having a 5% increase in predation over legacy lines. The probability of a 5% increase in predation levels compared to legacy lines had higher probabilities compared to the 10% increase, but were still relatively low overall (Table 5).
This lack of difference in our results could be caused by aspects of the experimental design that limit the study's sampling process and variability of sampling sites including having a small time period of sampling, having sites that are relatively close to each other instead of testing wolf predation in different areas of Alberta, using only two different sites instead of having multiple experimental replications, and that differences in line of sight between the cutline types was too small to significantly affect wolf predation.
The choice to limit the time of sampling to three months was a practical decision based on speculation about the amount of resources (in the form of trail cameras and supporting budget to run the project) that would be allocated to the project at one time. Running the experiment for three months enabled us to reduce the amount variations in predation due to stochastic weather events or changes in seasonal weather. Application of a three month observation period meant that all cutlines at each site could be observed over the course of a single season, providing general consistency in seasonal weather patterns. Implication of a larger observation period that spanned an entire year would have drastically increased the amount of time required to complete this experiment but would have provided a larger window to observe and record changes in predation that would omit seasonal change as a potential source of variation.
The choice of having sites close together was a practical decision made to limit the amount of time and resources needed to travel between the different sites. This choice may have resulted in the two sites of observation being relatively similar in environmental characteristics and geographic location. Similarity of environments may have contributed to similarities in predation by studying areas that support the same wolf populations that are likely to practice consistent predation techniques. This may have contributed to a lack of differences in the observed wolf predation along different cutline types.
By designing the experiment to only include two experimental replications, the experiment is likely to have result outcomes simply by chance. Implementation of more experimental sites would provide a wider sample size for the experiment, help eliminate results occurring by random chance and increase the statistical power of our experimental results.
Finally, the last consideration of this experiment is that the differences in line of sight between the two cutline treatments may not be a significant factor dictating wolves ability to catch prey. Regardless of having curved cutlines (low-impact treatment), the cutlines that we have chosen may still provide sufficient sight lines for wolves to predate effectively. This could be a contributing factor as to why we observed insignificant difference in predation between the two cutline treatments.
These factors considered, we must also consider the possibility that differences in cutlines do not equate to differences in the efficacy of wolf predation. Given the resultant data it is reasonable to conclude that cutline types, excluding the presence or absences of cutlines, do not impact the effectiveness of wolf predation and that any observed differences were a result of aforementioned random factors or choices in experimental design.
In conclusion, we found significant evidence in our results that prove a difference in predation efficacy caused by the different cutline types, including that caused by the presence of a cutline within areas of hunting. However, the differences in the amount of wolf predation on all prey sizes between the cutline types are quite small. Thus, further experimentation should be pursued, altering the design to create sites that only include a single cutline type to see if they would result in more pronounced differences in wolf predation. A potential future experiment could include replicating this experiment with an extended period of data collection to potentially observe more distinct differences resulting from increased amounts of data collected. An alternative future experiment could use larger areas that have the specific type of cutline within them to represent our experimental treatments instead of walking singular cutlines. This would provide us with larger samples sizes that are more appropriate for the analysis of predation by wolves and give more representative results on how each treatment impacts the predation by wolves. Having different cutline treatments in our experiment that were relatively close to each other in conjunction with a small sample size may not have provided an appropriate representation of wolf predation occurring as a result of each cutline type.