Both criteria have been shown to have a strong relationship to the ability of wolves to survive in other areas. On the Olympic Peninsula, the only areas with large enough blocks of habitat and low enough road and human densities to provide suitable wolf habitat were in Olympic National Park and wilderness areas of Olympic National Forest. This is the area where researchers concentrated their efforts. In the study, they call it the Primary Analysis Area. Most of the land on the Olympic Peninsula outside the Park contains too many roads to be considered suitable wolf habitat as defined in this study.
Some lands are at too high an elevation to provide year-round wolf habitat.
The remaining lands were not considered large enough to support enough deer and elk to sustain at least two wolves year-round. The result is that 78 percent of the area considered suitable wolf habitat on the Olympic Peninsula is within the Olympic National Park and 19 percent is on the Olympic National Forest. As the number of roads in an area increases, so does the number of deliberate, accidental or incidental killing of wolves by humans. Others might not. Wolves are a wide-ranging species and their social structure promotes widespread dispersal.