The Bitterroot Divide becomes a major wolf concentration area

August 9, 2001

The Bitterroot Divide has emerged as one of the places most favored by wolves, especially that part of the Divide just north and just south of Lolo Pass, where U.S. Highway 12 crosses the Idaho/Montana border.

For those familiar with the shape of the states, Idaho, unlike most Western states, is not a basically rectangular. It is totally unlike Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico.  While Idaho's southern and eastern borders are linear, and correspond to nothing on the ground, its northeastern boundary follows the Continental Divide from Yellowstone northwestward to near Salmon, Idaho. Then the border follows the Bitterroot Divide north to near the Canadian border, causing Idaho to taper to a small "panhandle."

The Bitterroot Divide is general high, with just a few low passes. Lolo Pass, just SE of Missoula, is one of the most prominent passes.

The return of wolves shows they definitely favor certain areas. Many of these are the same as 100 years ago. In many cases, the places reinhabited were even named for wolves, such as Wolf Creek, Lobo Mesa, Little Wolf Creek, Wolf Mountain, etc.

The first known wolf to return to Idaho was a disperser from an early Montana wolf pack. In 1990, he was captured in Montana by wolf researcher Diane Boyd-Heger , radio-collared, and given the number 90-13. He was observed to travel southwestward through the territory of the famous Ninemile Pack and then he crossed just over the Bitterroot Divide near Lolo Pass. He was monitored there until has radio collar failed. Then he was forgotten.

Of course, in 1995 wolves were reintroduced to central Idaho, with a second batch in 1996. One of the "class of 1995," B15F, wandered until she was observed to have settled in Kelly Creek, a famous Idaho fly fishing stream, deep in the Clearwater Mountains, with its source on the Bitterroot Divide. It was believed she was with another wolf, and in 1997 they produced five pups, the first of many litters, to form the Kelly Creek Pack. The pack favored the Bitterroot Divide, north of Lolo Pass, and spent about half their time on the Idaho side and half in Montana, particularly in Montana's Fish Creek drainage. Finally in 1998, it was determined that her mate was veteran 90-13. The lonely part of his life had ended in 1996.

Early in 1996 a pair of reintroduced wolves, B7F and B11M, met on the southern end of the Bitterroot Divide and paired. They did not produce pups for several years. However, they did migrate into the Big Hole Valley of Montana, which has been kind of a black hole for wolves due to the livestock and their keepers. The pair was captured and relocated far to the north, but they eventually settled on the Bitterroot Divide just south of Lolo Pass and produced pups in 1998 to form the Big Hole Pack. Future years produced more pups. Now the Divide had a pack just to the north and just to the south of Lolo Pass. 

Late in the winter of 2000-2001, wolf 90-13 finally expired of natural causes at an age of at least 12 years. By now the Kelly Creek Pack had produced a number of dispersers and there were lone wolves, which had been relocated to the area, or had moved there.

At the present, the Kelly Creek Pack mostly favors the Idaho side of the Divide. B15F still appears to be the alpha female, but her collar is dead and only one member of the pack has a live collar. The country is heavily forested, and the Nez Perce wolf team has spent a lot of time just looking for the suspected pups of 2001.

Meanwhile B81M, one of a pair of pups that were relocated from a dairy just north of Salmon, Idaho, inhabits the Elk Summit area, just SW of Lolo Pass. His movements indicate he might be with other wolves (a third pack?).

B64M, a yearling from the former White Clouds Pack was relocated to the north in 1999. He moved into Fish Creek where researchers have suspected another pack may have formed from collarless wolves. Unfortunately, he was found dead this winter; but now B79M, a radio-collared disperser from the Kelly Creek has moved into almost the exact territory favored by B64. Researchers hope tracking him will show if there is a yet another wolf pack in Fish Creek, just on the Montana side of the Divide, NE of Lolo Pass.

Thus, there might be four wolf packs to the NW, NE, south, and SW of Lolo Pass on the Bitterroot Divide.

There are other possible packs on the Divide. It is suspected there is a pack near the southern end of the Divide near the headwaters of the Selway River and another in the East Fork of the Bitterroot. At one time there was pack at the north end of the Divide, the Snow Peak Pack. When all the radio collars failed, the pack was lost, although there is no reason to believe the wolves have disappeared from that heavily forested area.

The highest part of the Divide is in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, just west of Darby, Montana northward to about Stevensville. This scenically famous, glaciated and jagged, row of peaks, like most such country in the wolf restoration zone, has not been favored by wolves.

Most the recent information was furnished to me by Curt Mack, head of the Nez Perce Tribal wolf team. Thanks, Curt!

Addendum about Elk Summit.

An old friend emailed me after I wrote this story this morning, and suggested I write a few words about Elk Summit. Elk Summit is a roadless area that used to be part of the old Selway-Bitterroot Primitive area back in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and early 60s before the Wilderness Act was passed.

At the time the Primitive Area was reclassified as a Wilderness (1963), timber interests had the Forest Service rip Elk Summit out of the boundaries of the new Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, and thus protection from logging. Conservationists have fought for years to keep the Forest Service from logging it. Significantly the major attempt at logging was by District Ranger (at the time) Dale Bosworth, now Bush's Chief of the Forest Service.

Many folks have read Norman McLean's novellas, or seen the movies "A River Runs through It" and "The Ranger, the Cook, and the Hole in Sky."  Young McLean was stationed at the Elk Summit Ranger District one summer, including a stint on prominent Grave Peak as fire lookout.

I have a web page on Elk Summit. Sorry, but it hasn't been updated for a while.

Much of the land around Lolo Pass (NE of Elk Summit) was logged in the 1980s. These were private sections (square miles) of land, the legacy of the corrupt Northern Pacific Land Grant of 1864. So much damage was done that the forest supervisor eventually barred logging on adjacent Forest Service land. He was supported by the regional forester in Missoula, John Mumma, a man of integrity, who then lost his job in a purge engineered by western senators and the first Bush Administration.