He's done it again! Number 29M has escaped from the Nez Perce enclosure in Yellowstone National Park for the third time!He climbed a tree inside the enclosure and jumped out last March. In late October he escaped over the fence. It is thought that he jumped up on the "wolf house" in the enclosure (a place for timid wolves to hide), and scrambled up the chain link fence and through the overhanging barbed wire. Free the second time, he dug back under the fence freeing his pack mates. Now he has done it again, and the Park Service doesn't know how he did it. He is hanging around the enclosure obviously planning another get-away for his mate, no. 37, his pups and the two Sawtooth yearlings. Park personnel are reportedly on hand to foil his plans.
The pack was freed in June and spent the summer in the center of Yellowstone -- the Hayden Valley. However, in autumn they suddenly headed a hundred miles due west to an area between Dell and Dillon, Montana. There one or more of them killed some cattle. The mother of 29 and 37, no. 27F was shot by ADC there and the rest returned to the Nez Perce enclosure. Soon, no. 29 escaped, this time digging out his pack. They went directly to the Blacktail (state) game range southeast of Dillon. They killed no cattle, but were recaptured. Obviously no. 29 plans to do it again (a question for the biologists -- do wolves really plan?).
Number 29, and 37 were part of the ill-fated Halfway Pack brought down from British Columbia in 1996. Renamed the Nez Perce Pack, they were released in March 1996 only to immediately scatter. There had been great hopes for the pack. They were huge. No. 28, the alpha male, weighed 135 pounds. They were feasting on a bison in northeastern B.C. when captured. Number 27F, the alpha female, was so fierce that she jumped at the helicopter twice as trappers were trying to dart her.
No. 28 and 27 are dead now. Twenty-eight lived a solitary life north and northwest of the Park after release. At death he weighed 140 pounds. He got into no livestock trouble, but was shot illegally by an unknown person. Number 27 lived north of the Park. Her history was so long and complicated that I direct folks to my Yellowstone wolf history page. She was finally shot by ADC this October. Her pup, no. 26F became, and is, the leader of the Washakie Pack south of the Park. Another pup, no. 30F is now the alpha female of the Thorofare Pack at the remote SE corner of Yellowstone Park.
I am recounting all this because the pack seems to hate the Nez Perce pen and Yellowstone, despite all the prey in the Park. I don't really know if they hate the Park, but none of them will stay in it. Perhaps this is just chance, but there has been speculation about the Nez Perce Enclosure ever since Gary Ferguson revealed in his book The Yellowstone Wolves: The First Year, that the pack continually tried to escape the enclosure. No. 27 and 28 lost a number of teeth tearing at the fence, no. 27 in particular.
Hypotheses include: the enclosure was too small; the wolves don't like hot springs and geysers (which are in the vicinity); the wolves were frightened by the snowmobiles (other enclosures were in parts of the Park not frequently by these noisy, smelly machines). I have learned from non-Park sources that rogue snowmobilers probably illegally visited the enclosure and maybe tried to terrorize the wolves. Perhaps the snowmobilers just wanted to see the wolves like everyone else does.
Is there merit to sending captive wolves to the safe and guarded Rose Creek enclosure? The trouble is, any wolves released there would be right in the middle of the disputed territory of the large Rose Creek and Druid Peak packs. Were the wolves held there, but released elsewhere, they might immediately leave the Park again. However, no matter where held or released, it looks like the pack hasn't forgotten Dillon and whatever delights exist there, hidden to human eyes.
It has been suggested to me that the pack may be looking for its two lost pups. Three pups were born to no. 29M and 37F last spring. Only one pup was with the pack when the pack was captured in the Dillon area after its first foray to the west. Indeed, the Western Livestock Journal confirms that two wolves without radio collars have been sighted in the Dillon area in recent weeks. The three pups were not originally collared when they were released last June because they were too small. The two that disappeared never received collars.
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