By JUSTIN PITTMAN staff writer
The gray wolf quickly rose to alpha status in Kittitas County news this year after researchers discovered the fourth of Washington’s five confirmed wolf packs in the Teanaway area.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed the pack’s existence July 5 after four adult wolves were captured on motion sensor cameras in the Teanaway area, about 10 miles north of Cle Elum. WDFW and other groups, including Bellingham-based, nonprofit wildlife advocacy group Conservation Northwest who captured the decisive images, placed motion triggered cameras around the Teanaway following several reported wolf sightings in the area last fall. WDFW wildlife diversity division manager Rocky Beach suspects the pack includes several pups that have not been caught on camera.
Once the sightings were confirmed, WDFW biologists captured an adult female wolf, fitted her with a radio tracking collar and took several hair and tissue samples.
DNA tests conducted at the University of California-Davis confirmed the animal is a wild gray wolf, and the tests will be used to determine where the pack originated. Biologists have expected wolves to migrate to Washington from Canada, Idaho and Oregon since their successful reintroduction in those areas.
State plan
The Teanaway Pack’s discovery thrust Kittitas County into the middle of an already raging debate over how to create a plan for the management of Washington’s re-emerging gray wolf population.
About 100 people packed the Ellensburg Comfort Inn and Conference Center Aug. 27 for an all-day meeting, hosted by WDFW, to discuss the statewide wolf recovery plan recommended by the majority of a 17-member Wolf Working Group. The six-member WDFW Commission created the working group in 2007 to develop a plan for managing gray wolf populations as the animal returned to Washington.
The meeting was one of a string of 19 public forums convened to solicit public comment on the topic. Members of the public submitted about 65,000 written comments. Perspectives ranged from advocates who say wolves play a vital role in the ecosystem to hunters and ranchers who fear they will eat too many elk, deer and livestock.
Plan approved
On Dec. 3 the WDFW commission approved a modified version of the plan recommended by the Wolf Working Group.
Members of the commission described the plan as a good compromise that will keep wolf management in the hands of state officials, rather than the federal government, according to an Associated Press report. They stressed that the management of wolves in Washington was a work in progress and that the plan was merely a guide for future action.
“As long as we have no plan, we are extremely limited in our management authority,” Commission Chairwoman Miranda Wecker told the Associated Press before the vote was taken.
The new management plan calls for the existence of 15 successful breeding pairs for three years or 18 breeding pairs for one year before the wolves can no longer be considered endangered.
To delist the wolves with 15 breeding pairs, four of the pairs would need to be present in Eastern Washington, the southern Cascades and northwest coast area of Washington and the north Washington Cascades.
The additional three pairs could be present anywhere in the state. To delist the wolves with 18 pairs, four pairs would need to be present in Eastern Washington, the southern Cascades and northwest coast area of Washington and the north Washington Cascades and, the additional six pairs could be present anywhere in the state.