By Penny Preston
CODY – For the first time in Wyoming’s history, its biologists are trapping and collaring wolves. That used to be the job of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But, the Cowboy State took over wolf management last fall.
The trapping started right after Wyoming’s first wolf hunting season ended.
On the Yellowstone Highway west of Cody, a helicopter started its engine. Workers nearby untangled a net.
This was a first for Wyoming. The state’s Game and Fish Department hired trapper, and chopper taking off to hunt wolves from the air. They weren’t hunting them to kill them. The team was hunting wolves outside Yellowstone and Grand Teton, to collar and study them.
It’s an important part of Wyoming’s wolf management plan.
Wyoming Large Carnivore Section Supervisor Mark Bruscino said, “As part of managing the wolf population in Northwest Wyoming, we’re putting out radio collars in order to get an estimate on the number of wolves, number of breeding pairs, a look at reproduction.”
The Game and Fish Department’s helmet cam video showed a chopper following a wolf, and then shooting a net over it. Bruscino says his team collared fourteen wolves in nine packs outside the Parks.
“We’re taking samples as well as to look at the genetic makeup of the population, as well as screen them for any diseases,” said Bruscino.
Bruscino says the state’s trapping and collaring system is different than the feds.
Instead of immobilizing wolves with a dart gun, they shoot a net over them, muzzle the animal, then quickly gather the data before they collar and release it.
Bruscino explained, “We got collars almost in every pack that we wanted to get collars in.”
The data from the collars will report pack movement, and give state biologists a good minimum population estimate, so the state can maintain at least ten breeding pairs and at least a hundred wolves outside of Yellowstone Park and the Wind River Reservation.
But the biologists are already learning more than they expected.
Bruscino said, “It’s very interesting that we seem to have, as wolf populations go, a very healthy, well distributed wolf population. We did discover a couple of packs in places we didn’t think existed.”
Bruscino said the state hired one of the best wildlife wranglers in the world to net the wolves. The man lives in Cody.