Lone Bear Pack near Livingston is slated to all be killed after too many attacks on sheep.
Update Oct. 10. Lone Bear Pack still avoids government control. Sheep Mountain Pack hit with government control.
After killing about 36 sheep this year, the Lone Bear Pack at the northern end of Paradise Valley is being wiped out. Two of the five members were killed on Friday and three more will be killed if possible.
The pack is believed to have formed in about 2001. It has repeated returned to the sheep farms of the Weber brothers. These wolves have become increasingly insensitive to efforts to deter them.
The Lone Bear pack inhabits Canyon Mountain and the northern end of the Gallatin Range. A number of wolf packs live near by, and the location is not expected to remain vacant.
A longer story on this is in the Sept. 21 issue of the Bozeman Chronicle. "Wolf pack to be killed." By Scott McMillion, Bozeman Chronicle Staff Writer.
When Montana gets full wolf management, the owners of sheep like the fellow quoted, will no longer have Defenders of Wildlife compensation payments to complain are insufficient or help with fladry and related items.
Update: 9-27-2004. The latest USFWS report said the following about trying to control the pack. The report spans about half of September:
On [September 4] WS confirmed that suspected members of the Lone Bear pack inthe Paradise Valley killed 3 ewes and a lamb on private property. Wolf #283F a 3-yr-old female was located nearby on a telemetry flight shortly after the depredation.WS was authorized to remove her and if possible collar another wolf in the pack, since it [would] only have one collared member left. Helicopter and pilot availability and weather delayed control efforts but the landowners were given shoot-on-sight permits after the second depredation.
On the 11th [biologists] Asher and Ross met with Defenders of Wildlife representative Linda Thurston to hang fladry around the 22 acre sheep pen where the Lone Bear pack had just killed 2 ewes and injured a third that was killed on the 12th by the producer. Thurston spent the night monitoring the pack and determined #283 was in the area. WS has been requested to remove #283 and two other uncollared wolves and if possible radio collar another member of the pack..
Asher brought extra equipment to finish the fladry on the 12th and looked for where the wolves were crossing. That night Thurston ran wolf #283 from the area.
Asher, Ross and Thurston met with the producers and a fence builder to discuss fencing options. On the 15th WS tried to dart a member of the Lone bear pack but were unsuccessful. The Lone Bear pack by-passed the fladry and killed 3 additional ewes on the 16th.
[Wildlife Services] was requested to remove the entire pack.
Two wolves were killed on the 17th but the remaining pack members got away in the dense forest. The remaining pack members [2 ad and 3 pups?] will be removed when they move out into the open and weather permits."Update 10-10-2004.
Here is Ed Bangs' latest description of their attempts to kill the Lone Bear Pack and kill 2 of the Sheep Mountain Pack to the south.
I have mixed feelings about it, but there is always the knowledge that wolves dispersing out of Yellowstone will replenish packs the government kills off. If an outside-Yellowstone-Park pack has no radio collars, they are much harder to find and kill, so what remains of the Sheep Mountain Pack might now be safe.
[Bangs] "WS [Wildlife Services] tried to remove 2 members of the Sheep Mountain pack and all the Lone Bear pack several times but they were both in thick timber. Interestingly on the evening of the 6th, the Sheep Mountain alpha male was south of Dome Mountain just north of Gardiner, MT, and the next morning he was with the< Lone Bear female and 2 other adults, nearly 40 air-miles to the north.
On the October 8th, they were still together in the Lone Bear territory and WS removed an uncollared wolf with them.
Control is ongoing. We suspect that since they are both without mates because of multiple livestock depredations and subsequent agency control, they are probably 'dating'. If so, the Sheep Mountain male is unlikely to return to the Sheep Mountain territory. Leaving that pack without any radioed members. He was already slated for removal because of depredations."
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