Part of Rose Creek Pack leaves Yellowstone!

This is the time of year when young wolves often disperse from their pack. For some time folks have wondered if Yellowstone's largest and most famous pack would stay together. The eleven member Rose Creek Pack may be spliting, or some members may just be exploring.

On Monday, it was reported to me that the pack had been spotted north of Yellowstone Park in a human-inhabited area three miles north of Gardiner, Montana. The Rose Creek pack had spent its entire existence in the Park's Lamar Valley, Slough Creek, and adjacent mountain slopes.

More recent information indicates the following. Yesterday the alpha pair Nos. 8M and 9F were located inside the Park with pups 21 and 23. In fact, they were near the Rose Creek pen just above the Lamar Valley.

Wolves 16F, 17F, and 34M (another former member of the Chief Joseph Pack) were located eleven miles north of Gardiner--eleven miles north of the Park boundary on Dome Mountain near Yankee Jim Canyon. Today they couldn't be located. Perhaps they returned to the Park and joined the rest of the pack.

An interesting sidelight is the fact the no. 34M was with the Rose Creek female yearlings rather than no. 33F. We might conclude that the Chief Joseph Pack is no more. No. 32F, the alpha female, was run over by a semi-truck last summer. No. 31M joined the Druid Peak Pack last fall, and now 34M was with two of the Rose Creek females born to (now famous) wolves R9 and R10 near Red Lodge, Montana in the spring of 1995.