Much interesting information was presented at the IF "wolf seminar."  200 or so folks attended, and most stayed the entire three hours.

If there was any overall theme, I suppose it was the Yellowstone Park's wolf population is falling quite quickly while Idaho's much larger population continues to grow at 10 to 20% a year. The Idaho experimental recovery area, which includes some of SW Montana,  had 420 wolves at the end of 2004.

Head of the Yellowstone wolf team, Dr. Doug Smith presented numerous data indicating that the Park's wolf packs are under increasing stress. Meanwhile, pup survival this year is weak. As reported earlier in this web site, the Yellowstone northern range¹ wolf packs have each lost more than half their pups. For first time it was reported that half of the 19 pups in the big Leopold Pack are dead. For first time I have heard, the indications are that indeed 2005 is the second time in the last decade that parvo-virus has hit the pups hard.

Yellowstone's wolf packs are being impacted by the effects of the drought which linger even though rainfall this spring was greatly improved. Drought both harms and helps elk. In the winter light snow and bare ground greatly reduce the normal wintertime advantage wolves have in a chase. On the other hand, drought reduces elk nutrition in the non-winter months. Northern range wolves are also in competition for the elk with other carnivores besides other wolves, including human hunters, grizzly bears, black bears, cougar, and coyotes.

As a result of the population drop, Yellowstone wolves are now on the average older than in the past. Their major prey remains by far, elk. However the data is now coming in from summer predation studies. It turns out the Park wolves eat a lot of deer in the summer, compared to just 1% in the winter (almost all deer migrate out of the Park with its deep snow). Wolves in general eat less well in the summer. The estimate is 25 to 35% less food, probably due to the greater difficulty catching prey.

Smith pointed out that deciduous vegetation, especially willows, but also likely aspen and cottonwood were responding favorably to wolf predation of elk.  As a result the number of beaver on the northern range has increased tenfold, even though wolves kill and eat beaver.

Despite the controversy today about too few elk, for over thirty years the Park Service "culled"  the northern range elk population (to as low as 4000 elk).  They thought there were too many elk. Even at a mere 4000 elk the vegetation did not respond like the current growth. That is because elk favor willow areas when there are no wolves present and greatly impact the riparian vegetation even at fairly low populations. When the Park Service stopped killing elk, the population rose to a peak of over 19,000 on the northern range. Today it is about 50-60% of that.

Smith indicated that one ungulate population wolves seem to have helped grow is the Park's dangerously low pronghorn antelope. Coyotes are the top predator of pronghorn fawn.  Studies in years past have showed that some years all the radio-collared fawns were killed by coyotes.  Wolves don't bother with the small but fleet pronghorn fawns, but wolves do kill coyotes -- the fawn-killing specialists. Pronghorn that calve in the heart of a wolf pack territory are doing well because there are few coyotes there.

On the other hand, Yellowstone coyotes might be making somewhat of a comeback after being hit hard by wolves. The coyotes have learned that living in a coyote pack is dangerous -- wolves seek the packs out --- but living in pairs or small groups attracts less wolf attention.

In Idaho on the other hand, the wolf population continues to climb. New packs keep showing. As many new breeding pairs have been identified in Idaho this summer as all the breeding wolf pairs in the state of Montana (not counting the Montana portion of YNP), according to Steve Nadeau, State Large Carnivore Program Manager.

Nadeau said that so far in Idaho this summer 34 breeding pairs of wolves have been found, including 15 new packs with an estimated total of 102-111 pups. The count is still going on. For the first time there are wolves in far northern Idaho (that is north of I-90) and wolves in Eastern Idaho. There are two eastern Idaho packs -- the Biscuit Basin Pack which left Yellowstone because it couldn't compete successfully for food with the larger nearby Nez Perce Pack and another pack which has been located to the west of the Biscuit Basin Pack.

Idaho wolf packs have, on the average, fewer members than Yellowstone Packs (so too do non-YNP packs in Montana and Wyoming). Idaho packs also seem to have fewer pups per pack, but because the packs are often located only one or twice a year pups are probably undercounted (but so too pups that didn't make it through the summer undercounted).

Idaho Fish and Game is doing a very important study radio-collaring new elk calves and deer fawn and tracking their mortality or survival and what killed them (cougar, wolf, bear, disease, etc.). Preliminary results are in, about a half year's worth. I had a hard time copying the data in the dark auditorium, but my impression was that black bears were the major predator of young calves, and especially in the two Idaho areas where IDFG is concerned about the elk population.  If Idaho is anything like Yellowstone, wolf predation of elk calves will begin to show up in the winter. The study is yet to go though an Idaho winter. Cougar were the major predator of deer fawn (so far).

Idaho's elk seem to be doing well except for two zones out of the 29 elk zones.

In zones with "many wolves" 3 showed no change in elk numbers, 2 were up and 3 were down.
In zones with "some wolves" 4 showed no change, 3 were up and none were down.
In zones with "no wolves" 3 showed no change, 8 were up, and 3 were down. The no wolf zones were mostly eastern and southern Idaho.

I didn't see any evidence that Idaho's wolves are causing a statewide decline of elk or deer, and I really didn't see much evidence that they are harming elk in the areas where elk are below department objectives.  Nevertheless, Nadeau made it clear the IDFG was going to propose a wolf reduction in some areas (probably the Clearwater in north central Idaho) where elk numbers are way below department objectives. Wolves didn't cause this drop. The drop began well before wolves were reintroduced, but some think wolves are stopping the herd from building back again.  Nadeau also expressed great hope for wolf hunts in the future, indicating the Idaho had many more wolves than required under the approved Idaho wolf plan.

He also pointed out the contradiction between radio-collaring wolves to track threats to livestock and to count wolves and hunting them.  He said "it costs $2000 or so to collar a wolf."  A hunter could take out that wolf with a 30 cent bullet." Currently about one million dollars a year is spent on Idaho wolf management including all agencies and the special fund to compensate Idaho ranchers who think they lost livestock to wolves but have no evidence except for a positive deviation from past summers' loss numbers.

Many questions were asked in writing by the audience.  I didn't use my one question to ask about one of my hypotheses why Idaho wolves have fared so well, namely that Idaho hunters provide wounded elk, deer, and gut piles from late August through November. This is precisely at the time when wolves are naturally most stressed for food.  Unlike Yellowstone, Idaho has an unplanned feeding program for wolves.

Carter Niemeyer, Idaho Wolf Manager for the US Fish and Wildlife Service responded to a question as to whether wolves will soon (or ever) inhabit all of the western states. Niemeyer said "no."  His experience indicated  that due to lack of habitat and conflicts with humans what we now see in terms of wolf distribution is about what we will see in the future, although he added there will probably be a few packs from time-to-time in adjacent Oregon and Washington.

Nadeau thought wolves would spread through all of Idaho, although their numbers would be low in fairly large areas such as the high deserts of of the state.

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¹ While the Yellowstone northern range herd is the Park's best known elk herd, and its largest, it is but one of 8 Park elk herds.