Recovery
of wolves in Jackson Hole amazingly slow.
1-29-2001
The Jackson Hole Guide ran an amazingly inaccurate article this week. Lower elk numbers spark concern. Predators and liberal hunting seasons are blamed for elk decline. By Rebecca Huntington. Note: the article has expired.
Huntington bases her story on an undisclosed number of phone calls to state legislator Sen. Grant Larson and a Jackson Representative, nicknamed, perhaps appropriately, "Bubba." She also reports a state biologist who told her the obvious -- that grizzly bears and wolves have been reported killing elk calves. I guess the number killed is not important enough to make the story. It also seems that for many years the State Game and Fish Department and federal biologists have believed the elk herd (and now especially the bison herd) is too large. They have been trying to reduce the size of both.
Rather than concentrate on the elk and bison population question, I want highlight the unappreciated fact that wolf recovery in Jackson Hole has been amazingly slow, given its proximity to Yellowstone and the huge prey base in the area.
When the wolves were first released into Yellowstone, many observers thought the wolves would discovery the Jackson Hole elk herd the first or second winter, given the tendency of wolves to travel. In fact, wolves did not appear in Jackson Hole until late 1998, and since then their population has barely increased (from 5 wolves then to 10 wolves now).
The first wolf to migrate any distance south from Yellowstone was ill-fated R12M, reintroduced with the Soda Butte Pack in 1995, and he did so quickly. Early in 1996, this big wolf left the Cooke City area and headed south, taking a very rugged route through the Absaroka Mountains to Dubois, and thus missing Jackson Hole by passing east of it. From Dubois, he moved south of Jackson into the Pinedale area, where he was shot near Daniel.
The next wolf to move south was another member of the Soda Butte Pack, No. R11F. She tracked even more to the southeast and was shot mid way between Cody and Meeteetse (mistaken for a coyote). This was the same season that no. 12 dispersed (early 1996).
Late in 1996, two of the 1996 reintroduced wolves found each other and once again moved south, but they came down once again on the east side of the Continental Divide to settle just north of Dubois and form the Washakie Pack. The Washakie Pack had a good litter of pups, but the pack was destroyed by the government after they began killing some cattle on a ranch in the Dunoir area just northwest of Dubois.
Late in 1997 the Soda Butte Pack descended southward into the very top of Jackson Hole and then quickly turned around and went back to their deep snow home in the SE corner of Yellowstone.
Finally in the late fall of 1998, two groups of wolves showed up in Jackson Hole. Wolf 24F from the Soda Butte Pack and wolf 133M had met, and they moved out of the Teton Wilderness to the north and settled near Elk Ranch Reservoir in the vicinity of Moran Junction. He was a yearling who has dispersed after his pack (the Washakie) after it had been controlled by the government. The new pair had 5 pups in April 1999. They were named the Teton Pack, but no. 133M was soon hit and killed on U.S. 26 near the den site. Ever since then the Teton Pack numbered six, and 24F did not find a new mate in the winter of 1999-2000.
At the same time as 24F and 133M paired, wolf 29M dispersed from his pack (Nez Perce) in central Yellowstone and met two females from the ill-fated Thorofare Pack, which had been destroyed by natural causes. These three, the "Jackson Trio," migrated south and finally showed up on the National Elk Refuge to entertain observers during the winter of 1998-9. Immediately rumors began that they were decimating the elk herd (over a thousand elk were said to be missing!). So wolf hysteria was immediate among a few.
Soon after the Jackson Trio showed up, six members of the Soda Butte Pack suddenly came south to the Refuge. It looked like the era of the wolf in Jackson Hole had finally come, but after just 2 months the pack went back to its deep snow home in Yellowstone.
That spring (April 1999) the Jackson Trio became the Gros Ventre Pack after they denned deep in the Gros Ventre Mountains to the east of Jackson. The pack had pups again in 2000, but after two members were shot by the government this fall for killing some calves, the pack numbers just six members. Meanwhile the Teton Pack seems to be down to just 4 wolves. One appears to have dispersed to live near Daniel south of Jackson Hole, and one was illegally killed (details on this are still lacking. If it was the alpha female that was killed, this pack may have no future, although the yearlings could become valuable dispersers.).
Both packs have spend most of their time, not in Jackson Hole, but in the Gros Ventre Mountains to the east, where they have been amazingly tolerant of the vast number of cattle on their range.
After hardly using the National Elk Refuge at all last winter, this winter the Gros Ventre Pack has been on the Elk Refuge several times, and the Teton Pack was probably near Moran Junction a week ago and might still be there.
So after 6 years, there are about 10 wolves amongst the approximately 14,000 member Jackson Hole elk herd and the 500 bison that live in Jackson Hole. While the wolves provide occasional viewing interest, they have essentially no effect on the large number of ungulates in the area. Ten wolves would be expected to eat about 100 elk, or their equivalent, a year total. In sum, predatory control of the elk population by wolves is lacking; and what little total predatory control there is comes mostly on elk calves in the spring by coyotes and bears and by cougar year round.
Note: there have been unconfirmed sightings of a lone black wolf near Moose (GTNP Park headquarters and southward). For wolf watchers, the Gros Ventre Pack is 3 gray wolves (no. 29M is very light gray) and 3 blacks. The Teton Pack is all black.
I did get a note from a resident of the Kelly area indicating that because Wyoming Game and Fish allows hunters to kill cow moose with moose calves at their side, the wolves seem to be making a living by killing the starving moose calves. I don't know if this is in fact so, but the strong tendency for wolves to kill the weak is common knowledge.
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