Beginning in 1986, Mech spent 25 summers observing wolves on
Ellesmere Island. He said that his research on the wolves there was different, because it is one of the few places where they are not afraid of people, making that experience one of the best in his life. In addition, there were no trees or bushes to hide wolves from view in the
tundra. In the summer, Mech found a den near the military and weather base at
Eureka. He witnessed wolf interactions within a family unit and watched them hunting
muskoxen; this type of research had not been done before. In an interview, Mech said, "The kind of stuff I got here was not just the objective behavioral stuff, but the kind of thing you get from living with a pet of some sort. You get an insight into the thing. You get to know the animal." Mech serves as a senior research scientist for the
United States Geological Survey (USGS) since 1999, and prior to that, he was a wildlife research biologist in the Biological Resources Division of the USGS, from 1969 to 1999.
Positions An avid mushroom hunter and fur trapper, Mech has continued to support fishing, hunting, and trapping, which has led to criticism from animal protectionists. On his website, he lists
mink trapping as one of his interests. He closed the abstract to "Is science in danger of sanctifying the wolf?", published in the January 2012 issue of
Biological Conservation, with "The wolf is neither a saint nor a sinner except to those who want to make it so." Mech was actively involved in the reintroduction of
gray wolves to areas from which they had disappeared through human activities. After more than 45 years of population recovery, in 2020, the
US Fish and Wildlife Service removed the gray wolf from the list of endangered species. The
Mexican and
Red wolves remain on the list, however. Mech has also written about wolf management through regulation. According to him, every year, a certain percentage of a wolf population must be
killed by humans (in addition to natural mortality) to keep the population stable. According to his findings, about 50% of young wolves over 5–10 months old must be killed each year to bring a wolf population under control. In a 2017 publication, he describes, among other things, livestock-depredation control in the United States. Mech has declined to express an opinion on whether wolves should be hunted or trapped for their pelts, saying that his opinion on the subject is no better than that of anybody else. ==Publications==