The Owl Creek Pack which formed in the winter of 2003-4 has been completely killed by the federal government except for a female who has gotten away for the time being. Owl Creek is a many forked drainage that runs off the SE corner of Absaroka Range between Meeteetse and Thermopolis. Public access to the area is poor.

The pack repeatedly attacked and killed livestock, including a horse and a number of adult cattle. The attacks come mostly in the Wood River area on public and private land. The Wood River also flows out of the SE corner of the Absaroka Range south of Meeteetse.

Originally the pack appeared as a pair of wolves in a fork of Owl Creek in the fall of 2003. The male had been collared earlier when he was a lone wolf and numbered 318M. In late fall the pair picked up a lone adult male to make a trio.

Last spring the pack whelped 4 pups, but this was after the trio killed a adult cow in an area with a large amount of livestock. As a result, Wildlife Services killed the uncollared and non-breeding black male that had joined the pack.

There were no more known depredations on livestock until June when a calf was killed in the Wood River area. No control was ordered.

In November 2004, the pack killed 2 adult cows, and in tern 2, 95-pound pups were killed.  While 95-pound pups are not uncommon at 10 months, these were very large for 7 month pups.

In December 2004, the remaining wolves killed 2 adult cows, an adult horse, and then an adult cow. As a result all of the pack has been killed except a female, who is under death sentence. Mike Jimenez told me the remaining pups were also large, ranging up to about 100 pounds.  There are plenty of deer and elk in the area, but it is unusual for a wolf pack to kill so many adult cattle, and I think this might have been the first known adult horse directly killed by wolves.

A newspaper article indicated that about 30 Wyoming wolves outside the two national parks had been killed by the government this year. Jimenez told me this was about correct -- 26% of the population, he said. In addition there have been miscellaneous illegal killings and 4 deaths from unknown causes, meaning about 1/3 of the Wyoming wolves died this year. Nevertheless, the wolf population grew by a small amount, about 6%.

This does show the resiliency of an established wolf population, although the Wyoming wolves have a refuge in Yellowstone Park where they can't be legally killed. Because the Park has reached its natural capacity for wolves, it will be a continuous source of dispersers to Wyoming and Montana, perhaps allowing a higher mortality rate (for whatever reason) than might be the case in NW Montana or Idaho.

There is a rule-of-thumb based on Canadian studies that a wolf population with an adequate prey base can withstand about 33% mortality a year without suffering a decline.

Assuming government wolf "control" doesn't increase, perhaps the greatest threat to Wyoming wolf and grizzly bear populations is the political management of the elk, which is moving in the direction of elk slaughter rather than feedground modification.

There is some irony that federal wolf recovery coordinator Ed Bangs recently told the Billings Gazette that he estimated the new Montana/Idaho rules will mean that about 10 % of the wolf population will be killed legally each year. Under federal management in Wyoming over 25% were legally killed this year. Of course, this generalization should be tempered with the usual caution when one looks at percentages based on small numbers.

Update 1-21-05. Apparently there were two, rather than just one wolf left.  Wood River rancher Craig Griffith had been issued a shoot-on-sight permit for 2 wolves due to prior livestock kills. According to the Cody Enterprise on Jan. 14, he shot an Owl Creek pack wolf that had killed another of his cows. It was a sub-adult wolf. So the alpha female is still in the area. This was a big story in the local papers, but under the new management given to Idaho and Montana ranchers won't even need permits to kill wolves that are chasing or feeding on carcasses of their livestock.