Wolf Comeback Brings Howls From Ranchers

Once gunned down on sight or poisoned with strychnine-laced bait, the endangered Rocky Mountain gray wolf is trying to make a comeback in this remote valley on the North Fork of the Flathead River.

The howls of a wolf pack--unheard in the West for half a century--are once more echoing off the stony peaks in Glacier National Park. Biologists tracking this group report that individual wolves have recently split away from the pack to form two more packs that are now ranging nearby, along the U.S.-Canadian border.

Farther down the west side of the Continental Divide, a few lone wolves are prowling the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in central Idaho. In all, 20 to 30 wolves are moving south slowly in a migration that may or may not succeed.

Importing Canadian Wolves

In an attempt to assure the wolf’s comeback, the National Park Service wants to capture Canadian wolves and reintroduce them in Yellowstone National Park, 400 miles south of the border.

Wolves were once a natural part of the Rockies, and the absence of these predators “is the single greatest departure from . . . maintaining a natural ecosystem in Yellowstone,” according to a Park Service policy statement. “Now is the time to reintroduce the wolves,” Yellowstone Supt. Robert Barbee said in an interview.

In the natural scheme of things, wolves prey on elk, deer, moose and bison. Hunting in packs, these voracious predators thin the herds. Park biologists say that without the wolf, elk populations have soared, until today an estimated 30,000 range across Yellowstone, a number that park rangers would like to see reduced.

However, the wolf’s future in Yellowstone and the West is still very much in doubt. Ranchers, politicians and environmentalists are locked in a battle over whether wolves should be put back in Yellowstone or anywhere else. Cattle ranchers are afraid that the wolves could never be contained within a national park or wilderness area.

“I don’t want the wolf near me,” grumbled Wyoming cattleman Jack Turnell, owner of the 120,000-acre Pitchfork Ranch southwest of Cody.

Echoing those sentiments, sheep rancher James Siddoway, president of the Idaho Wool Growers Assn., said, “If we allow reintroduction of the wolf . . . we won’t be be able to control depredation on livestock, no matter what they (pro-wolf advocates) say.”

The predator they fear is Canis lupus irremotus, one of 24 subspecies of gray wolf that once inhabited most of North America. Larger than its Eastern cousins, the male Rocky Mountain wolf weighs 100-plus pounds and stands 30 inches at the shoulder. These animals live in small, tightly organized family groups. Each pack is dominated by an alpha male and female, the only mating pair in the group. The wolves are highly social and often playful among themselves but they shy away from people.

Appeared Six Years Ago

While wolves in the Lower 48 states were wiped out by settlers, hunters and government trappers, they survived and even flourished in the wilds of Canada and Alaska. No reproducing pair of Rocky Mountain wolves had been seen in the Western United States in more than 50 years until a pair appeared on the Flathead River six years ago.

While stockmen may still believe wolves are savage beasts, the public’s attitude seems to be changing. Park Service surveys of Yellowstone visitors show that they no longer believe that wolves are the evil creatures depicted in fables. Opinion polls in nearby states show strong public support for a return of the wolf.

But this positive image suffered a setback last June when a pack of seven wolves began killing livestock on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation near the town of Browning, Mont., east of the Continental Divide. Wolf experts claim that this rogue pack went after livestock because game was scarce on the reservation. But stockmen who graze cattle on the prairies east of Glacier scoffed, saying, “A wolf is a wolf.”

The Indians are also divided on the issue. Fred Crossguns, a rancher and tribal game warden, called in federal trappers to help eliminate the wolves, while Blackfeet traditionalists protested the killing. Buster Yellow Kidney explained: “The old Indians lived side by side with the wolf. . . . They were very much a part of our sacred ways.”

The controversy over bringing wolves back to the Rockies has pitted National Park Service Director William Penn Mott Jr.--who favors the plan--against the state governments of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, plus the powerful Wyoming congressional delegation that has taken the issue directly to Mott’s boss, Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel.

“I am every bit as committed to preventing government introduction of wolves in Yellowstone as Bill Mott is determined to put them there,” Rep. Dick Cheney (R-Wyo.) wrote Hodel, warning, “If he (Mott) wants a fight, I am ready.”

Wolf Recovery Plan

Normally, the Park Service has a broad mandate to act on its own in such matters, but because the wolf is an endangered species, the final decision on reintroduction rests with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, administrators of the Endangered Species Act. Both the Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service are agencies of the Interior Department.

As required by the act, the Fish and Wildlife Service prepared a “Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Plan.” The plan, which was approved this summer, calls for the reintroduction of 30 breeding pairs of wolves into wilderness areas, 10 each in northern Montana, central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. The reintroduction appears to be occurring naturally in Glacier and in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness but, because Yellowstone is so far from the Canadian border, the wolves probably would have to be transplanted there.

Mott applauded the plan and announced that he would press for the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone. Ranchers and their political allies then redoubled their opposition to wolves in Yellowstone, this time taking their complaints directly to the White House, according to a spokesman for Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.).

Immediately controversial, the recovery plan put Fish and Wildlife Service Director Frank H. Dunkle in an awkward position. A conservative Montana Republican appointed in 1986, Dunkle found himself opposing a plan that his agency had prepared and that he had earlier approved. Responding to questions about Mott’s attempts to launch wolf recovery in Yellowstone, Dunkle told The Times, “I’m not going to be a party to reintroducing wolves . . . anywhere.”

Top Interior Department officials refused to discuss the conflict between Mott and Dunkle, but a spokesman for Hodel said: “Mr. Dunkle is our spokesman. . . . He is responsible for whatever action does or does not take place.”

Environmental Groups

Lined up with the Park Service on the pro-wolf side of the battle are powerful environmental organizations such as the Defenders of Wildlife and the National Wildlife Federation.

“It’s really important that we, as a nation, restore this predator to the world’s premier park . . . send a message that predators are important and have a place in the ecosystem,” said Defenders spokesman Hank Fischer.

Until six years ago, arguments over the wolf were academic. Occasionally, lone wolves had been reported as far south as Yellowstone, but there were no known wolf packs anywhere in the Rockies until the single mating pair settled in the North Fork country in 1981, according to Robert Ream, a wildlife biologist. Ream directs the University of Montana’s federally funded Wolf Ecology Project, set up to study the wolf re-entry into the northern Rockies.

The wolf pair and their seven pups became the nucleus of the “Magic Pack,” Ream said, explaining that the name was given because the pack would disappear for long periods, then reappear somewhere else “as if by magic.”

Working on a shoestring budget, Ream and his two assistants began tracking the pack, winter and summer. Over the years seven of the wolves were captured, fitted with radio collars and released so their movements could be traced from a low-flying airplane. By 1985 the Magic Pack had staked out territory on Camus Creek, in Glacier National Park, 35 miles south of the border. Then came another litter, the first born in a Western national park since the early part of the century.

16 Pups Last Season

Last winter something happened that Ream and other researchers had never seen before. The Magic Pack--numbering 12 by this time--divided and soon divided a second time, forming three independent groups, each dominated by an alpha male and female. This past season the three packs produced 16 pups, bringing the total population in the three groups to 26.

However, not all of the news was good for Ream. Nine wolves from two of the packs were killed by Canadian hunters this fall before Ream convinced authorities in British Columbia that the hunt was jeopardizing the wolves’ existence in the United States. The hunt was closed Oct. 23.

Despite this loss, Ream is still optimistic about the future of the wolves along the Flathead. The surviving wolves are well established, and Ream said Dunkle has agreed to fund the university study for at least another year.

More worrisome for Ream and other wolf experts are the wolf attacks on livestock this summer on the 1.5-million-acre Blackfeet Indian Reservation, east of the Continental Divide. While there is no apparent connection between this rogue pack and the wolves being studied by Ream, wildlife experts fear the political reaction to livestock kills could set back wolf recovery everywhere.

The Blackfeet reservation abuts Glacier Park’s eastern boundary. It is land of open prairies creased by meandering streams. The river bottoms, shaded by aspens and willows, are a haven for antelope, elk, deer--and now wolves.

‘Wolf That’s the Outlaw’

Nearly a third of the reservation land was sold to white ranchers like Roy Williams, 75, who came to the area half a century ago. Rugged, uncompromising men, they fought grizzlies, cougars, wolves, coyotes and fierce winters to make their ranges safe for cattle and sheep. This summer the pack of seven wolves began killing their stock but, because the animal is an endangered species, the ranchers could no longer shoot them.

“The parks are for the wolf, but when they get out on the range, it’s the wolf that’s the outlaw, not me,” said Williams, a snowy-haired Lorne Green look-alike. Riding tall in the saddle, the rancher showed visitors the remains of one of his cows. “Those bleeding hearts (who favor the wolf) should have to watch wolves eating their way through $5,000.” That, he said, is the value of the stock he has lost in the past year.

Before government hunters could be called in to go after the protected wolves, they had to ask the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for “lethal authority.” After some delay, permission was granted.

Using a helicopter, nets, rifles and even a “Judas wolf” that had been captured, fitted with a radio collar and released again, the trappers set out after the raiding wolves in July. But the wily wolves proved surprisingly elusive. It took two months and $41,000 to rid the reservation of six of the seven animals. Meanwhile, ranchers and their political allies pointed to what was happening around Browning and demanded that wolves be kept out of Yellowstone.

Dunkle agreed. He said the wolves had left the elk herds in Glacier Park to prey on livestock, adding, “There is nothing to say that if the wolf was introduced into Yellowstone, it wouldn’t do the same thing there.”

Most Prefer Elk, Deer

Wildlife experts disagree. They say that most wolves prefer elk and deer and that the rogue pack probably wouldn’t have been killing livestock if there had been game on the reservation. Earl Old Person, chairman of the Blackfeet Tribal Council, acknowledged the scarcity of elk, explaining that both hunger and unemployment are high on the reservation, forcing Indians to kill game all year long to survive.

“Wolf depredations on livestock are neither as widespread nor as serious as generally believed,” according to John Weaver, a U.S. Forest Service biologist and member of the wolf recovery team advising the Fish and Wildlife Service. After reviewing scientific wolf studies in Canada, Alaska and Minnesota--where there are large populations of Eastern timber wolves--Weaver concluded that wolves would normally bypass domestic livestock, given a chance at wild prey.

Proponents of wolf recovery quickly acknowledge that some wolf predation can be expected, but they say the numbers would be small and the problem can be controlled.

“It’s wrong to say that wolves don’t cause problems. . . . Wolves that get into conflicts like those at Browning must be killed,” said Tom France, of the National Wildlife Federation. He pointed out that such problems are controlled in Minnesota, where 1,200 wolves live in forest wild lands next to livestock ranges and small farms. Livestock kills in these areas are small and farmers are compensated for their losses, he said.

France pointed out that under guidelines set out in the Fish and Wildlife Service’s wolf recovery plan, the wolves reintroduced into Yellowstone would be classified as an “experimental population,” allowing government trappers to trap or kill any animals that strayed out of bounds and killed livestock.

Ample Base in Yellowstone

Most experts think that the wolves would have an ample base in Yellowstone Park’s 2.2 million acres. In addition to the 30,000 elk ranging there, there are 3,000 bison, 2,000 deer and hundreds of antelope and moose. Park biologists say 10 wolf packs would help control an overabundance of some of these game animals.

Before it could introduce wolves into Yellowstone, the Park Service would have to prepare an environmental impact statement, a process that would take two years, Supt. Barbee said. If the impact statement is approved after extensive public hearings, the Park Service would then have to get permits from the Fish and Wildlife Service to import the wolves, Barbee said. He added, “We can’t proceed without Dunkle’s blessing.”

In the meantime, the Magic Pack’s recolonizing efforts in the northern Rockies are being watched by experts like L. David Mech, director of wolf studies at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s wildlife research center in St. Paul, Minn.

“The wolf’s chances of recovery in the West are slowly improving and the main reason for that is what is happening there in Montana,” Mech said.

However, it was hard for him to be overly optimistic with only 19 wolves surviving on the North Fork. He said that wolf recovery is now “at a critical point,” adding that if the three packs thrive for another two years, “we won’t be so worried.”