In addition to the news about the proximity of the Soda Butte, Washakie, and Thorofare packs, there is more Yellowstone wolf news. Here it is.
Druid Peak Pack-
As I predicted, with the movement of the two pups from their Druid Peak fortress, the pack has moved away from the popular viewing area near Soda Butte with all the people and traffic. They have moved upstream on the Lamar River, out of the valley to the vicinity of Timothy Creek.The Rose Creek Pack-
This pack with its ten pups (all of which appear to still be alive, making a pack with 24 members!!) has moved up onto the Buffalo Plateau where it summered last year. The pack is observed by flight, but there are no researchers up there at present watching this pack. Folks may recall that approximately this number went up there last summer, but only 15 returned, with many pups perishing because of the scarcity of prey.A note about this: Doug Smith pointed out to me that even with the abundance of elk in Yellowstone it is not easy to feed this many pups. Moreover, the summer of 1997 was perhaps the worst possible year to have a large litter. The severe winter made it so there were few elk calves to be preyed upon. Killing an adult healthy elk in the middle of the summer and early fall is not an easy task. There are more elk calves this summer. He indicated, however, that a pack this size would need about one a day. I was also surprised to learn that not all adult pack members work equally hard hunting for prey. Smith said number 8, the alpha male is working his tail off; and now number 9, the alpha female is helping hunt too, but it is hard to generalize about the rest of the pack.
Chief Joseph Pack-
They are in their home range in the NW corner of the park. They have been seen a number of times by tourists down along U.S. Highway 191 in the meadows along the headwaters of the Gallatin River.Chief Joseph II (wolf 16F and her pups)-
She remains in the Absaroka/Beartooth Wilderness, now about ten miles due north of the Park. So far, she has been able to keep her pups fed. All of them were recently observed. It is likely she was bred again this year by number 34M, the alpha male of the Chief Joseph Pack. Were it another male, a lone male, he would have most likely paired and stayed with her.Leopold-
Hardly ever seen by Park visitors, they are now even less visible, having moved southward on the Blacktail Deer Plateau up to the edge of the Washburn Range (the north rim of the Yellowstone Caldera).Nez Perce-
Apparently the wolves that were released from the pen are with no. 48F and 29M and all the pups, except, oddly, number 67F (the mother of the four surviving pups born this spring in the Nez Perce pen). The wolf team is doing a bit of extra work trying to radio track her. The pack is sometimes visible in the Nez Perce Creek area, and I have had a number of reports from folks who saw them in the nearby Lower Geyser Basin area.Plans were to change the name of this pack from "Nez Perce," but this is on hold for a while. Number 29M is an original member of the Nez Perce Pack and his mate 48M, is his sister (daughter of the late 27F), although she was born in 1996 (Number 29 was born in British Columbia in 1995). The rest of the wolves in this pack are from the now extinct NW Montana Sawtooth Pack as well as 29's son from 1997, number 92M.
Summary-
There is a lot of interesting Yellowstone wolf news, but as far as observations go this is about poorest time since the reintrodution for easy viewing of the wolves, although there are now over 115 of them.
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