Druid wolf pack dwindles in park
By MIKE STARK
Gazette Wyoming Bureau
The mighty Druid Peak wolf pack, once the largest and most recognized pack in Yellowstone National Park, is slowly vanishing in the rugged wilds of the Lamar Valley.
At the height of its strength near the end of 2001, the pack had 37 members and was one of the most popular attractions for park visitors.
But over the last year, some members of the Druids have died and others have splintered off to form four other packs.
The pack now has only eight members, two of which are only part-timers, and is facing an uncertain future as its leaders age and other, younger packs are expected to make incursions into Druid territory.
“I think they’re getting by on borrowed time now,” said Doug Smith, Yellowstone’s lead wolf biologist. “They had their day, and now it’s the other packs’ day.”
Formed in 1996, a year after the wolf reintroduction program started in Yellowstone, the Druid pack grew into a dominant force in the Lamar Valley.
The pack ballooned in 2000 after three females gave birth to 21 pups, 20 of which survived. In most packs, only one female typically gives birth each year.
As the Druid pack expanded, it took over more territory, eventually nudging out the Rose Creek pack on the western end of Lamar Valley. But the pack got so big that feeding all its the members became more difficult.
“The average pack size in Yellowstone is 10 wolves,” Smith said. “There’s an equilibrium with the size of the prey base. When you get much over that, you have to kill more elk, which is hard because the elk are good at rebuffing wolf attacks. With 37 in the pack, they couldn’t keep up.”
Although several members of the pack died, many simply left the pack. One joined a group of wolves north of Yellowstone and others banded together to form their own packs.
“Some of their key individuals left and were the foundation for other, new packs,” Smith said.
The Geode Creek, Slough Creek and Agate packs were started by Druid wolves. Another recently formed pack, led by wolf No. 261, hasn’t been named yet.
At the core of the remaining Druids are the aging alphas, No. 21 and No. 42, both born in 1995.
“They’re old and they show it,” Smith said. “They don’t kill elk anymore. They let the younger pack members do it. And when they move, you can see them kind of creak.”
No. 42 is the last of the living wolves in Yellowstone that was part of the batch reintroduced in the park in 1996. Her sister, No. 41, lives east of Yellowstone in Sunlight Basin.
“She’s remarkable and historic,” Smith said of No. 42. “She was jet black to begin with and now she’s totally gray.”
Smith speculated that some of the younger packs might start moving into the Druids’ homeland, which could spark territorial skirmishes. Spin-off packs have already reclaimed the territory that the Druid pack took from the Rose Creek wolves.
“It’ll be interesting to see what happens now,” he said. “I don’t think they will be dominating anymore.”
The fate of the Druid pack may have been sealed in that fertile season of 2000 when so many pups were born. That led to a burgeoning membership that was good for expanding territory but eventually became too much to handle. Something had to give.
“We weren’t surprised,” Smith said. “For everything in life, there’s a cost.”