By ANDY MATARRESE, staff writer
Kittitas County’s Teanaway wolf pack seems to be mostly content staying in its range in the Teanaway area and northwestern edges of the county, away from people and livestock, say land managers.
“That group has been really good. I don’t know how to put that in a different way,” said Capt. Rich Mann of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s law enforcement division.
“Knock on wood,” he added.
The Teanaway pack was first documented in summer 2011 and had at least six members as of the end of 2013, including a breeding pair.
There might be up to eight now, Mann said, citing other information he’d heard from the agency. That count could change after the wintertime, said department wildlife biologist William Moore, when the agency does surveys wolf populations.
There is an alpha male and female pair, he said, with at least one other adult, and the breeding pair’s pups.
It’s difficult to peg a number to the size of the pack this time of year, he said. WDFW’s wolf watchers wait until after winter, which can be perilous for pups, to make their count.
“The pups are a real variable, because survival rates aren’t 100 percent. That’s why we wait until December,” he said.
There were 13 confirmed packs statewide at the end of 2013, according to WDFW, five of which have successful breeding pairs, for a minimum count of 52 wolves.
The state defines a pack as two or more wolves traveling together in a fairly consistent area, and a breeding pair as two adults with at least two pups, said WDFW wolf specialist Scott Becker.
“We have good ideas of what’s in there, but we don’t really like to give a lot of information out because it is subject to change, and it can change a lot,” he said.
He said at least two new packs have been documented in the northeast part of the state this year as well.
Becker said he thinks the Teanaway pack has had a breeding pair since 2011, a sign it’s doing well.
Wolves are still considered endangered in Central and Western Washington, and WDFW’s management plan calls for delisting wolves after a certain number of packs form in the state.
Livestock attacks
Keeping track of the breeding pair and communicating with sheep herders nearby seems to have been effective in avoiding conflicts with the pack, Mann said.
Most of Kittitas County’s livestock predation issues this year came from roaming mountain lions, he said.
So far in 2014, there have been 36 total confirmed instances of wolf depredation in the state, with one wolf killed. Of those instances, 33 of the animals were sheep, two cattle and one a dog.
The packs that have attacked livestock so far this year were in the northern Cascades — the Lookout pack — or northeastern Washington — the Profanity Peak and Huckleberry packs.
In August this year, a WDFW-contracted marksman shot and killed a female member of the Huckleberry pack, which had been preying on a flock of sheep in northeast Washington.
Range
Typically, the Teanaway pack likes the Teanaway River drainage, but sometimes ventures more north and west into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness and high country areas, Becker said.
Mann, Becker and Moore said they don’t expect the Teanaway pack to move much as the seasons change.
“They’ve been pretty faithful to their home range, at least the breeding pair has,” Moore said.
Both the male and female have radio tracking collars.
He said packs may move to lower elevations during the winter to follow game, but they have been known to stick around higher altitudes long after the deep snow falls.
Still, their range is so long — 20 to 30 miles in a day — they tend to go where they want, Becker said, and not necessarily follow the weather.
“Wherever they can find prey is where they’re likely to be,” he said. “I think there’s enough big game, as far as elk and deer over there, they likely don’t have much of a problem.”
Many wolf sightings have been reported in Kittitas County this year, according to WDFW’s database, but most are unconfirmed.
Mann said some younger members of the Teanaway pack had reportedly wandered off for a time earlier this year to come back weeks later.
Moore said that’s typical. Wolves will roam away from their pack sometimes, and it’s entirely possible to see wolves in Washington that aren’t from a “local” pack.
“They’re kind of the marathon runners of the predator world. They can cover a lot of country,” he said. “Three hundred, 400 miles is not uncommon.”
He said the pups in the Teanaway pack are likely old enough to start moving around with the pack a little more, which affects the whole group’s range.
Wintertime is also a good time to track them, Becker said. Packs tend to be more cohesive in the cold, he said. The snow also leaves tracks to count and makes it easier to see the animals during arial surveys.
He said the agency will likely have its accounting of the state’s wolf population by around March next year.
“It’s been quiet up there,” Becker said, adding, with a laugh: “That’s the kind of wolves you like to have around.”