2026

The Eastern Wolf (Canis sp. cf. lycaon) is one of Canada’s most iconic and most imperiled wild species. Once ranging widely across eastern North America, it now persists in fragmented pockets of central Ontario and southwestern Québec, facing mounting pressures from habitat loss, human-caused mortality, and weakening environmental protections. Despite its listing under Ontario’s Endangered Species Act, 2007, critical gaps in scientific data continue to limit effective conservation, leaving much of the species’ range unprotected and its future uncertain.

Earthroots’ Eastern Wolf Survey Program directly addresses this urgent challenge. By combining cutting-edge DNA analysis with a powerful network of citizen scientists, Indigenous partners, and local organizations, the program is generating the high-quality, field-based evidence needed to inform conservation policy, strengthen recovery strategies, and secure meaningful habitat protection.

At the heart of the program is a simple but critical goal: to make the invisible visible.

Across vast and understudied landscapes, the true distribution of Eastern Wolves remains largely unknown. Without this knowledge, policymakers cannot effectively protect habitat, regulate threats, or plan for recovery. Earthroots is closing this gap one sample at a time.

Using non-invasive collection methods, participants gather scat samples from priority areas across the species’ suspected range. These samples are analyzed at Trent University’s Natural Resources DNA Profiling & Forensic Centre, where advanced genetic techniques identify species, sex, and individual animals. Each sample produces a unique genetic “fingerprint,” allowing researchers to map populations, track movement, and distinguish Eastern Wolves from Grey Wolves and Eastern Coyote.

The results are transformative. Data generated through this program feeds directly into provincial databases such as the Natural Heritage Information Centre, strengthens recovery planning, and provides the scientific foundation needed to expand protected areas and establish critical habitat corridors. It is this evidence that can shift policy, influence land-use decisions, and ultimately determine whether Eastern Wolves persist on the landscape.

The 2026–2027 season comes at a pivotal moment. The need for robust, science-based data has become even more urgent in light of recent legislative changes. Ontario’s 2025 overhaul of endangered species law, embodied in the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, 2025 and the new Species Conservation Act, 2025, repealed the Endangered Species Act and fundamentally weakened automatic protections for species and habitats. Under the new framework, the procedural requirement to develop and publicly release recovery strategies has been eliminated, and at least one nearly decade-in-development Eastern Wolf recovery strategy is now being withheld from public view by provincial authorities. This lack of transparency undermines public accountability, obscures scientific guidance, and constrains the ability of researchers, communities, and Indigenous partners to contribute meaningfully to recovery planning.

The Species Conservation Act also narrows definitions of habitat and embeds economic considerations into conservation decision-making, shifting protections toward a “registration-first” regime that allows many potentially harmful activities to proceed with minimal review or oversight, heightening risks to already fragmented Eastern Wolf habitats.

Without reliable data and transparent recovery planning, policymakers lack the evidence and public scrutiny necessary to establish effective protection zones, regulate harmful activities, or implement meaningful recovery actions. This data gap not only undermines conservation efforts but leaves the Eastern Wolf more vulnerable across its remaining range at a time when strong, science-driven action, grounded in transparency and accountability, is most critical.

Through the Eastern Wolf Survey Program, Earthroots is advancing science-based conservation by generating the critical data needed to strengthen protection and recovery efforts for the Eastern Wolf. The program is designed to address one of the most urgent gaps in Eastern Wolf conservation: the lack of reliable, landscape-scale data on population distribution, specifically outside of protected areas.

By combining non-invasive genetic monitoring with community-based fieldwork, Earthroots is building the scientific foundation necessary to inform conservation policy, guide recovery strategies, and support the expansion of protected areas across the species’ range.

Earthroots’ Eastern Wolf Survey Program combines rigorous genetic research with community-based fieldwork. The program generates the high-quality data needed to inform policy, strengthen recovery strategies, and secure meaningful habitat protection. This work is not only advancing scientific understanding, but also empowering citizens, supporting Indigenous stewardship, and building a broader movement for wildlife conservation across the landscape.

The program has contributed essential data to a PhD study on the diet of the wolves and coyotes, and a MSc project building family trees to determine if hunting and trapping regulations affect social structures outside of Algonquin Park. More recently, Earthroots work supported the research article that was published in the Journal of Applied Ecology (2024) examining human-caused mortality in Eastern Wolves around Algonquin Provincial Park.

The study confirmed that mortality rates are significantly higher outside protected areas and reinforced the need for stronger landscape-level protections.

Key outcomes of the 2026/2027 season include:

• Identification of Eastern Wolves in unprotected areas
• Updated species distribution maps
• Contributions to academic research and graduate studies
• Data used in Ontario and federal species recovery planning
• Evidence supporting improved habitat protection and wildlife management policies

At a time when environmental protections are being weakened and development pressures are intensifying, independent, science-driven initiatives like the Eastern Wolf Survey are more important than ever. The data produced through this program will directly influence conservation decisions, helping ensure that recovery efforts are grounded in reality and that protections extend beyond park boundaries into the wider landscape where Eastern Wolves