Wolf pack found in refuge for elk
By MIKE STARK
Gazette Wyoming Bureau
Maybe someone showed them a map. Or they got a tip from a friend.
Whatever the case, a pack of wolves missing from Yellow-stone National Park since mid-December was spotted Tuesday in a logical place: The National Elk Refuge near Jackson, Wyo.
During a flight over the area, scientists noticed the 17-member Nez Perce pack on the north end of the refuge. It was the first time the wolves had been seen for about six weeks.
“As far as we know they just showed up on the refuge today or maybe yesterday,” said Bruce Smith, refuge biologist. “If there had been a pack of 17 wolves out here, someone would have seen them.”
He said there may be some elk or bison on that end of the 25,000-acre refuge, but most of the elk are in the southern half where there’s lower elevation, less snow and more forage.
Wolf managers have been trying to track down the Nez Perce pack for weeks but have been hindered by poor weather and have made only a few aerial searches.
Some of the wolves in the pack have radio collars, the technology is only good when the general area of the wolves is known. Researchers from Idaho on other business dialed in the wolves’ radio frequencies as they flew over the Jackson area Tuesday and stumbled onto the Nez Perce pack.
No one knows how the pack got to the refuge, when they arrived or how long they’ll stay.
The wolves are in close proximity to two other packs, the Teton and the Gros Ventre.
“These guys are going to run into other wolves pretty quick. The question is will they hang around or not,” said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Helena. “When they run into Teton, I imagine they’ll book it back toward home.”
Wolf managers have no plans to do anything with the Nez Perce pack except to keep an eye on them.
“They’re not doing anything wrong. They’re perfectly fine on the elk refuge,” said Doug Smith, Yellowstone’s lead wolf biologist.
The Park Service and FWS are in the midst of adding new collars to wolves in the region. Smith said he’d like to dart and collar the Nez Perce pack but won’t do it on the national refuge.
If the wolves wander out of the refuge to a good spot, managers may move in to collar a few Nez Perce wolves, he said.
This isn’t the first time the Nez Perce pack has disappeared. The pack left Yellowstone in November 2001 and showed up in eastern Idaho near Afton, where it caused a stir locally for a few days before returning to the park.
It’s also not the first time a wolf pack has wandered onto the elk refuge.
In 1999, two packs showed up in January and stayed into April. They killed about 60 elk “and then they just left,” said Jim Griffin, assistant manager at the refuge. Members of the nearby Teton and Gros Ventre packs occasionally stroll onto the refuge but usually not as a pack, Griffin said.
Refuge workers had no idea that the Nez Perce pack was on the remote northern end of the refuge until they got a call from FWS Tuesday afternoon, Griffin said.
“It was kind of an unusual call,” he said. The refuge is a place where animals are protected, including wolves, he said.
“This is a place where they can be,” Griffin said.
It’s not uncommon for wolf packs to leave their home territory to wander a bit. Bangs speculated that the Nez Perce pack, which is based in the central portion of Yellowstone, may have left to look for food.
“There may not be enough food for a pack that size in the central part of the park,” Bangs said.
As wolves have culled the weak and feeble elk, the herds are populated by more healthy members, which are more difficult for the wolves to catch and kill, Bangs said.
Wolves also leave their territory to scope out the competition among other wolf packs.
Bangs said the Nez Perce pack probably passed through other pack territories and will do so again if they head back toward Yellowstone. But if the wolves find enough to eat where they are, they might stick around for a while.
“It’ll be really interesting to see how long they stay,” Bangs said.
http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?display=rednews/2003/01/29/build/wyoming/50-wolfpack.inc