Yellowstone Park Wolf Update
August 17, 2000
I want to thank Ladywolf for maintaining my web page while I was gone, and covering the silliness over the Stanley Pack, the 3 dead sheep and the bravery of the Boulder/White Clouds Council Folks. Hopefully, the Forest Service in the area now knows it needs to pay attention to matters like wolves. Thank you for any phone calls you made.It sure helped to have a professional like Carter Neimeyer show up on the scene to deal with the problem. Carter is Roy Heberger's replacement. After a long career Roy retired in July. Roy received the "Alpha" award at the Interagency wolf conference at Chico this last April. Carter is a previous recipient.
Wolf monitoring flights for Idaho and Montana are pretty much on hold due to intense smoke and fire.
There is some Yellowstone wolf news, however. Fire in Yellowstone have been relatively tame so far this season.
The number of Druid pups consistently seen is now down to 15 (from 21). They have become visible once again from the road.
The new "Gardiner" pack with 3 pups and led by no. 152F has been in Gardiner's Hole.
The Rose Creek Pack is in its usual haunts. The females with pups appear to be 18F and 156F. 156F just dropped her radio collar.
The Nez Perce Pack is in Alum Creek (Hayden Valley), but with sometimes wandering member 92M is near Delusion Lake (down by Yellowstone Lake).
The Chief Joseph Pack is in new territory -- Sphinx Creek in the Madison Range about 10 miles west by northwest of the Park. I understand the backcountry of those mountains is closed due to the Beaver Creek fire.
The Soda Butte Pack with its lone pup is still at its den site in the Yellowstone River delta area of the remote Thorofare area of Yellowstone.
As almost always, the Leopold Pack is on the Blacktail Deer Plateau.
Number 5F is still apart from her former pack, wandering alone, but apparently in good condition. The rest of what is now the Crystal group (rather than pack) is in Mist Creek on the Mirror Plateau.
Famous wolf number 9F unfortunately got her first taste of cattle flesh due to a depredation by a grizzly bear. Here is the story as written by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
". . . a freshly killed cow was located near the old #9 den site and #9 was nearby. The carcass was being fed on by a female grizzly with 2 cubs. As the plane circled the bear became nervous and moved away from the carcass, and #9 rushed in to feed. The bear then rushed back to defend the carcass. This went on for several minutes but finally the bear moved off (probably because it was the animal most disturbed by the circling aircraft) and #9 claimed the carcass. WS investigation indicated it was a confirmed grizzly kill, but this does indicate that a host of scavengers and predators are in competition for carrion and kills. A similar situation occurred on an allotment near the Gros Ventre pack rendezvous site, which confirmed grizzly kills were usually also visited by wolves. The reverse has also been documented. Grizzly bears commonly take wolf kills away from entire packs. This situation complicates identification of the cause of livestock losses and emphasizes the need for quickly finding and investigating carcasses to accurately determine cause of death."
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