New twist! NW Mont. pups to come to YNP

9/3/96.

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I recently posted my first article on the naturally-recovering
wolf population in NW Montana. Now there is going to be a
NW Montana/Yellowstone Park connection.

Federal ACD officers have killed the alpha female in the Sawtooth
Pack -- a wolf pack that roams the Rocky Mountain Front SE of
Glacier National Park and east of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Three adults from this pack recently killed a hereford calf on a
ranch near Augusta, Montana. Federal officials trapped four pups
from the pack and will transplant them to Yellowstone. The pups
are a black male and three grey females. They will be put in a
Park enclosure for the winter which currently holds two of the
recaptured Nez Perce wolves. They will be released next April.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hopes that removing the four
pups will reduce the nutritional needs of the Sawtooth Pack and
will stop the killing of livestock on the Rocky Mountain Front.

In a statement about two months ago, Secretary of Interior, Bruce
Babbitt, indicated there would be no more wolf reintroductions from
Canada, at least for the time being. He indicated that there were
enough wolves in Idaho, Montana, and the Greater Yellowstone eco-
system to replace wolves if any of the two reintroduction area
populations began to decline prior to full recovery. This may be
the first instance of this policy. The Yellowstone pup population
this April was not nearly as high as expected due to several un-
fortunate instances such as the scalding death of a female wolf
in a hot spring. She had been carrying six pups.

Transplantation from NW Montana to Yellowstone (which is in SW Montana,
NW Wyoming, and E. Idaho) will bolster the Yellowstone population
and save four pups that may well have starved.

This Sawtooth Pack should not be confused with the captive Sawtooth
Pack of the Wolf Education and Research Center (formerly of Ketchum,
Idaho; now in Winchester, Idaho).