Second wolf pack wiped out
By The Associated Press – 3/15/04
BOZEMAN (AP) ý Federal wildlife agents in a helicopter on Friday wiped out a second wolf pack that has been attacking cattle in the Madison Valley.
They spotted the wolves in a sagebrush plain east of Ennis Lake early Friday morning and swooped in to shoot all of them, said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Federal agents killed five of seven wolves in another pack, the Sentinel pack, on Thursday, also for killing livestock. One other wolf of the pack was shot earlier, possibly illegally, and may die.
ýýThere are basically not any wolves left in the Madison Range,’ Bangs said late Friday afternoon.
The pack that was killed Friday is believed to have been offspring from the Sentinel pack. It had no name because officials were unaware of it until it attacked two cows on a ranch east of the lake. The now exterminated pack was dubbed the Ennis Lake Pack.
Bangs said officials thought the pack had only four wolves. The fifth wolf was wearing an old radio collar and turned out to be the alpha male from the Nez Perce Pack that roams the region south of Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park. The wolf was last tracked in December 2002.
Trappers hope the last healthy wolf of the Sentinel pack will return to the injured wolf so both animals can be killed. If the last wolf doesn’t show up by Monday, the injured wolf will be shot, Bangs said.
Bangs said the illegal shooting last year of three collared adult wolves may have contributed to both packs getting into trouble. Those shootings are still under investigation.
ýýBoth of these packs were in the valley for two years, and we weren’t having problems,’ he said. ýýWhen you lose the ones that normally lead the pack, you basically have a bunch of teenagers walking through cattle.’
Although the packs known to live in the Madisons are basically gone, Bangs said inevitably other wolves will wander into the range.
He added that although the recent attacks grabbed headlines, wolves preying on livestock remains rare.