by Mark Hadley
(Springville, UT) – After an exhaustive search Friday morning in a rugged, remote area east of Springville in north-central Utah, a wolf capture crew under contract with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources spotted tracks from a helicopter but didn’t find any wolves or wolf-dog hybrids.
The capture crew spent the morning following five sets of tracks. However, because of sporadic snow conditions on the ground, they were unable to locate the animals.
While the wolf capture crew was following the tracks, they located the carcasses of three big game animals on which they believe the wolves or wolf-dog hybrids, were feeding.
One of the dead animals was a moose, another was a deer and the third was an unidentifiable big game animal that had died earlier this winter. The wolves or wolf-dog hybrids had pulled the two animals out of the snow to feed on them.
Utah Department of Wildlife Resource biologists will visit the areas where the carcasses located and determine if they can find scat (droppings) left by the animals that were feeding on the carcasses.
John Shivik, mammals coordinator for the DWR said, “The scat may contain DNA that will tell us whether the animals are wolves or wolf-dog hybrids. He said it will take a couple of weeks for a lab at UCLA to analyze the scat and provide results.
Shivik said DWR biologists and USDA-Wildlife Services will play recorded wolf howls during the next few nights, in the area where the animals were spotted, to see if the animals will respond.
“Fortunately, the capture crew will be in Utah for a few more days, working on some other projects for us. So, if the animals howl back,” he said, “we’ll be able to pinpoint their location. And, then after sunrise the capture crew can fly to the location to see if they can locate the annimals,” he said.