Daniel Pack is not dead. Eleven wolves rediscovered when they
kill a few Wyoming cattleOctober 16, 2004
Last fall the Daniel wolf pack in Sublette County, Wyoming was Wyoming's largest pack, with 17 members (this does not count the Wyoming wolves of YNP).
During the winter, however, all four of the radio-collared wolves disappeared and were thought to have been poisoned, and indeed the dead radio collared wolves were found and their deaths under investigation.
With no good sightings of more than one or two wolves, it was thought possible the entire pack had been poisoned. Moreover, this summer the last of the Green River Pack (in the upper Green River country) was killed by the government.
All of sudden, however, this October, eleven members of the Daniel pack just showed up, according to Mike Jimenez. They were noticed when they killed at least 7 cow calves on public and adjacent private land. On the 13th, three of these wolves (1 adult male, 1 adult female, 1 male pup) were shot in open rangeland from a fixed wing airplane, leaving 7-8 members of the Daniel Pack still alive. "Control" actions are over for now.
On October 12 two uncollared adult wolves (a male and a female) were shot in a similar manner by Wildlife Services in an upper Green River drainage after killing at least 5 calves over several instances. All of these dead livestock were on public, US Forest Service grazing allotments. USFWS Wyoming wolf manager Mike Jimenez told me they had no idea where these 2 wolves came from, but this has happened again and again -- wolves migrate into the upper Green River area, kill some cows and then are killed by the government.
Despite my statement late August that all the wolves in Sublette County, WY seem to have been killed one way or another, this was probably not the case. It isn't known where the Daniel Pack was at the time, but at any rate wolves continue to migrate into Sublette County. Jimenez told me it's a natural corridor for wildlife migration, down from the north between the Wind River Range on the east and the Wyoming Range on the west. Wolves will continue to filter down into the area, following the deer, elk, and moose; setting up packs; or wandering through the high desert and the growing maze of drill pads southward toward Colorado and Utah.
In other Wyoming wolf news, wolves might have severely injured an adult horse near Bondurant, Wyoming. The horse was then euthanized. Attacks on adult horses are rare. Bondurant is area of a few farms and ranches and sprawling sub-divisions near the Hoback River about 20 miles SE of Jackson Hole.
To the north, the Teton Pack has survived the plague of cattle dumped on them early this summer inside Grand Teton National Park. The cattle are still there, and will be until the end of October, but the pack has moved off to its traditional fall and winter hunting grounds in the Gros Ventre River drainage outside the Park. Sadly, these cattle may be back next summer to once again defile one of our great national parks.
I didn't ask for a rundown of other Wyoming packs when I talked with Jimenez, but I did ask about manage. Mange had hit the Absaroka Pack, Sunlight Basin Pack, and Beartooth Pack, east of YNP, hard. Jimenez said the Absaroka Pack is now mange free (not known whether the old pack recovered, or all died out with a new pack moving into exactly the same territory). The Sunlight Basin Pack still has mange, but did successfully raise pups so far this year. There is no indication of mange in the hard-to-observe Beartooth Pack.
Earlier reports indicated that the Washakie Pack was doing fine except for its typical sporadic cow calf killing and subsequent control in the DuNoir area. The Greybull Pack, Owl Creek Pack, and the Carter Mountain female and pups were also doing fine.
In sum, it looks to me like the Wyoming wolf population outside YNP is about stable now. The federal government vigorously controls wolves, and the hoorah with Wyoming politicians and groups over wolves has little relation to what is happening on the ground. Idaho has 3 or 4 times more wolves than Wyoming, and with much less controversy.
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