Yellowstone Delta Pack Found

Yellowstone Delta Pack is found-

After months of not finding the Yellowstone Delta pack, email hints to me from visitors to the remote area who heard and saw multiple wolves, and continued Park Service flights have located the Yellowstone Delta pack, plus pups-of-the year, inside Yellowstone Park inside what is their usual general territory.

I speculate that is was chance that all of the radio collared members disappeared (dispersed?). Visual observation shows the pack has a minimum of 9 adults and a number of pups. It is odd, however, that the dispersed (radio collared) wolves have not been picked up in aerial tracking. Foul play is still possible, but other explanations are possible for the long invisibility of this large pack.

One thing occurred to me. . . this is wild speculation. The Delta Pack is a obviously a collar hating pack. It always has been. Could wolves chew off the collars and then "play with them" enough that they are destroyed and so fail transmit a "mortality signal" as they do when they fall off? Wolves play with bones, sticks, straps, etc.

Park wolf population decline-

Dr. Doug Smith, head of the Yellowstone wolf team told me today that every week they are picking up one or two new dead wolves in the Park, all natural causes. The latest is a Nez Perce Pack wolf. There have been so many that he believes the wolf population is almost certainly now in population decline. Of course we won't know for sure until the end of the year because their numbers are temporarily bolstered with the influx of pups.

This is a hard time of year for wolves in a pristine environment because the pups are big and need more food, and are no help in the hunt. Their prey is strong and fleet. This problem for the Yellowstone wolves is one not faced with the wolves in areas with human hunts -- all of Idaho and most of Montana and Wyoming. The archery season begins in a week, followed by various rifle, muzzle loader, and special hunts almost to December. Because there are always wounded deer and elk, and kills, the hunters couldn't find, these wolves gain carrion and weak prey just at the time they need nutrition the most. I think this generally more than makes up for wolves hunters illegally kill. I wish I had some data, however. Otherwise, it must remain a hypothesis.

Slough Creek Pack pups-

It looks like the Slough Creek Pack somehow lost all but three of its 15 pups. Visuals of the pack from the air consistently show three pups. It's hard to say why this happened. The other 12 pups disappeared about the time parvo-virus kills pups. This happened one other year in Yellowstone -- parvo got about half the pups in 1997. Parvo is one possibility.

Their disappearance might also have something to do with the unprecedented 4 litters of pups in the pack and the fact that the alpha female disappeared in mid-June (see Kathie Lynch's latest report). Intra-pack dynamics might have led to their death directly or to lack of care or even abandonment. An exceptional event is also a possibility -- such as drowning or death by rival wolves when most of the pack was elsewhere.

Some other news notes-

The mighty Leopold Pack was found today by aircraft tracking in a place they had never been seen before -- at a rendezvous site almost 9 miles south of their usual range on the Blacktail Deer Plateau.

The Agate Creek Pack, which has been near its den and rendezvous sites in Antelope Creek on the north slope and drainage from Mt. Washburn, has suddenly crossed south over the mountain and is near Canyon. That is a new location for them, and I suppose it means the pups are now traveling with the pack.

Druid 480M-

The still presumed Druid alpha male, 480M who was seen alone, looking "skinny," and scavenging an old bison kill at the old Druid rendezvous site in the Lamar, was spotted today back in Cache Creek in the company of the beta female 255F.