Why do we play winter as a "lean time"?

[Barrett]

Well... while it's warmer it still dips down well below freezing at night for four months of the year -- December through March. Various parts of NS receive anywhere from 1.5 to 4 m of snow a year (59 - 157 in). The coasts are on the lower end of the spectrum, and the coverage is intermittent, but¹:

During the snow season, snow cover usually occurs 75 per cent of the time away from the Atlantic coast, and especially over higher ground. Near the Atlantic and the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, snow cover can be expected 50 to 65 per cent of the time.

Said cover ranges from

less than 30 cm in coastal areas to more than 75 cm in upland and highland areas.

They'd have to be strategic and opportunistic about it, but half the time in winter, there is snow on the ground for them to use to their advantage. Those on the southern coast won't get much of a boost, but northern packs definitely would. And it's not unusual for our wolves to roam around the neutral territories in between, some of which fall into prime snowy territory; looks like the Ethereal Eclipse, Arachnea's Revenge, and Drifter Bay would be good spots to try (comparing our map with the one on page "101").

As far as reforestation, it happens faster than you'd think. Consider the following:

Give them another 30 or 40 years, and hikers going through the area where this year’s fires have wiped out most trees, those seedlings will have grown tall enough that hikers won’t even know the area had been devastated by fires in 2007.

In fact, fire is a natural part of the forest’s regeneration system. Most forest trees need to be exposed to fire every 50 to 100 years to invigorate new growth.

Given that's about regrowth after a forest fire, so let's look at an abandoned city -- Verosha, Cyprus, which was abandoned in 1974. A mere two years after the city's abandonment, someone was called in to help refurbish a hotel³.

He wandered through the deserted town.  About 20,000 people had lived or worked in Varosha.  Asphalt and pavement had cracked; he wasn't surprised to see weeds growing in the deserted streets, but hadn't expected to see trees already ... some nearly three feet high.

If they're already colonising the streets within a couple years, I'd imagine after 30 they'd be fine.

I guess I'm not seeing how it could be much harsher on them if a string of brutal winters = more wolves. I'm guessing they'd be indifferent to it at best -- again for Canadian and mountain-dwelling natives.

¹ http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mnh/nature/nhns/t5/t5-2.pdf
² http://www.sciencebuzz.org/buzz_tags/forest_regrowth
³ The World Without Us by Alan Weisman