Sheep Mtn. alpha female dies. Aversive conditioning experiment jeopardized.

Plans to aversively condition the Sheep Mountain Pack got a sharp setback this week when no.16F, the pack's alpha female, died of natural causes while in captivity on Ted Turner's Flying D Ranch west of Bozeman.

Four of the six remaining Sheep Mountain wolves had been captured and placed in a one acre enclosure at the Flying D. They were being held to train them to avoid cattle by the use of dog training shock collars. Apparently the training had not yet begun.

Number 16 died of liver and kidney disease according to Ed Bangs, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s wolf recovery coordinator for the Northern Rockies.

In 1999, six members of this once big pack were shot for livestock depredations north of Yellowstone Park in the pack's home range. During the May 2000 capture operations one of the six remaining members of the pack was accidentally killed when a tranquilizer dart pierced her lung. Later the remaining member of the pack was shot by Wildlife Services after it proved impossible to capture her. 

The idea behind the training was to create a livestock averse wolf pack immediately north of Yellowstone Park that would be a barrier to the dispersion of livestock naive wolves from Yellowstone Park. The problem is that, while there are plenty of elk and deer just north of the Park, there are also many cattle on private land year-round, and also on public land during the summer. Because the area is a natural wolf migration area, there will almost always be a wolf pack in the area. If a livestock averse pack could be created there, dispersing wolves from Yellowstone would avoid the area, and yet the area would have a wolf pack. Otherwise, the likely future history will be pack after pack forming in the area only to be controlled in a year or two because of livestock depredations.

Now with just three wolves left, the chances that a pack large enough to deter migrating wolves is in question.

Apparently the experiment will continue, however. The collars will allow researchers to deliver a shock to wolves if they approach cow calves placed in their small enclosure.

The Fund for Animals recently launched a public relations campaign against this experiment, but the low voltage shocks and the common use of these collars to train dogs did not appear to be a case of animal abuse to me. I do wonder why the aversive conditioning had not begun because it would be nice if a good deal of the conditioning had already been completed and the three remaining wolves released now before dispersers from Yellowstone reoccupy the area. Indeed, perhaps they already have begun to occupy the area.

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Number 16F was five years old, and one of the 3 remaining pups still known to be alive from her mother's, no. 9F's, 8-member 1995 litter. Her sister, no. 18F is the alpha female of the Rose Creek Pack and her brother, no. 21M is the alpha male of the Druid Peak Pack. Other than her brother number 23M, who was never radio-collared, and whose fate was never known after he dispersed, the rest of the 1995 litter has now died or been killed.