After almost six months in captivity at McCall in western Idaho, the Bass Creek Pack is slated to be released in early December near the boundary between the Great Bear and the Bob Marshall Wilderness at Spotted Bear.
The Bass Creek formed in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana not far from the Idaho border this April when an uncollared pair of wolves had a litter of eight pups. The two wolves, whose origin was unknown (although a recent Missoulian story said the male was from central Idaho and the female from the Montana Flathead River area) paired last fall near Bass Creek on the Bitterroot Front above the populous Bitterroot Valley.
The wolf pair was discovered when the male showed up in a trap for coyotes. He was radio-collared and released. The pair may have killed a 500 pound steer found dead in the area at the time.
In one of those relatively uncommon "good rancher" wolf stories, rancher Tom Ruffatto was very tolerant of the wolves and even developed an alarm device the would go off when wolves approached his cattle, and he never did suffer a depredation.
However, the pack with ten mouths to feed, and it was obviously under nutritional stress. They finally did kill some cattle in June. As a result the pack was captured and put in an enclosure 200 miles west at McCall, Idaho. The female wolf was underweight and the male wolf sustained a foot injury during capture.
The plan was to hold them and feed them in preparation for an autumn release into central Idaho. Unfortunately, the alpha male was killed when a snare device used to capture him in the pen, malfunctioned and strangled him. He was in process of capture to treat his foot injury. Not long afterward, three of the pups died of parvovirus infection, a common deadly disease of dogs.
Now the remaining six wolves -- the female and five pups -- will be transported to the wilderness threshold release site, held for a week and then released. This is called "modified hard release." In the past relocated Montana wolves have all been "hard released" -- released immediately upon reaching the release site. Few of these released have been sucessful. The wolves often returned to where they were captured and got into more livestock trouble.
Montana, rather than central Idaho was chosen for the release. I am not sure why, but the hunting season will have just ended in the area and there will be wounded animals from the hunt for the wolves as well as dead, lost animals, shot by hunters.
I suspect also that because the NW Montana wolf recovery has failed to meet the recovery goals, despite the early belief it would be the first area to reach 10 packs, this pack is an augmentation. Because the northwest Montana recovery is a "natural," meaning "non-reintroduced" wolf recovery area, the wolves have not found all of the best habitat. The Bob Marshall/Great Bear Wilderness area is one place that is vacant of wolves.
It has been determined the alpha female came from the MW Montana Murphy Lake Pack. The origin of the alpha male wolf was never determined, as far I can tell.
Past stories on the Bass Creek Pack:
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