Monday, November 13, 2006

Snowy Yellowstone a wondrous backdrop for wolf-watching

By John Flinn - San Francisco Chronicle

Yellowstone National Park · The wolves were at our door -- almost literally.

They killed a big bull elk on the steps of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel dining room the night before we arrived. Now, as we crunched across the frozen parking lot in the predawn darkness, we could hear their not-so-distant howls.

Afraid?

Enthralled was more like it. This is what we'd come for. Since their reintroduction here 11 years ago, Yellowstone National Park has become the premier venue in North America -- possibly in all the world -- for viewing wild wolves. To wildlife enthusiasts, they're a bigger attraction than Old Faithful.

It's possible to see them most times of the year, but winter is best -- especially February through April (January is usually too cold). The wolves are more active during the day, their dark gray coats stand out against the white snow, and they follow their prey from the high country down to valley bottoms more easily accessible to humans.

Winter is also when Yellowstone is at its most beguiling. The geysers are more sharply etched as they erupt into the biting-cold air. The hot, sulfurous clouds billowing out of fumaroles and mud pots gain dramatic definition. Bison, their shaggy beards coated with snow, snort steam as they use their enormous heads as snowplows.

On the down side: It's cold. Sometimes really cold.

Last winter my wife, Jeri, and I joined a wolf-watching program run by Xanterra Resorts, the park's concessionaire, and the Yellowstone Association Institute. The "Winter Wolf Discovery" package, which comes in two- and three-day versions, includes lodging at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel inside the park, several meals and daily tours guided by sharp-eyed wildlife biologists.

At a briefing the night before our first outing, our guide, Brad Bulin, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, told us that wolves once ranged over most of North America. But by the early 1920s they were gone from Yellowstone and most of the West -- poisoned or shot by bounty hunters because they posed a threat to settlers' livestock.

In the 1970s, after gray wolves had been placed on the newly created Endangered Species List, wildlife biologists began a campaign to return them to Yellowstone. Opposition from local ranchers stalled the effort for two decades, but in 1995 biologists captured 14 gray wolves in the Canadian Rockies and set them free in the Yellowstone backcountry. The following year, they released 17 more.

The wolves quickly formed into packs, established territories and began to breed. The last of the original transplanted wolves died in 2002, but their progeny are thriving. Or at least they were until last year (more on that later).

Leaders of the pack

The first morning, five minutes from the hotel, our van came across six members of the Swan Lake pack. These were the wolves we'd heard howling before dawn.

We spilled out of the van, fumbling with binoculars, spotting scopes and telephoto lenses. But we didn't really need them. The wolves were perhaps 90 yards away on a snowy hillside -- distant enough for safety, but near enough that we could watch them with our naked eyes. Wolf sightings this intimate are rare.

A pair of frisky young wolves was play-fighting: wrestling, gnawing at each others' necks and tumbling over one another in the snow. "They're starting to establish their positions in the pack," Bulin said. "It's a process of figuring out who's the future alpha."

We drove into the Lamar Valley in the northeast corner of Yellowstone. Cradled between Specimen Ridge and the Absaroka Mountains, the broad, glacier-carved valley is sometimes called "North America's little Serengeti." It's one of the finest places on the continent for spotting wildlife. There's a plentitude of elk, bison, pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep, moose, bald eagles and, in summer, grizzly bears. And this prey-rich valley is the best spot in all of Yellowstone to see wolves.

If you're not up for a full wolf-viewing program, you can do pretty well on your own by driving into the Lamar Valley (the road is kept open in winter) and looking for clusters of parked cars and big spotting scopes on tripods. These belong to the wolf watchers, sometimes called "wolfies" -- amateur enthusiasts who flock to Yellowstone to observe and keep tabs on the animals.

Wolf watching, they tell you, is dangerously addictive, especially once you learn to recognize individual wolves, to understand pack behavior and to appreciate the drama that unfolds as wolves battle for territory and dominance.

Wolf packs constantly encroach on each other's fiercely defended turf. As alpha males and females fall in battle, their groups disperse or reform into new packs. Last winter, for example, according to a dispatch on Forwolves.org, the Nez Perce pack disintegrated when its alpha female was killed next to Old Faithful by "the new power on the Madison and Firehole rivers, the Gibbon pack."

"Watching all this," said a wolf watcher who invited me to look through his scope, "is the ultimate reality show."

Kills and coyotes

Down on the valley floor, next to the river, a lone wolf was keeping watch on a recent kill -- an elk or a bison -- while bald eagles and ravens perched nearby. Ten or 11 other members of the Slough Creek pack had gorged themselves on the carcass -- 20 to 30 pounds of meat apiece at one sitting is normal -- and now were staggering drowsily and lying in the snow to sleep it off. Biologists call this being "meat drunk."

The wolf guarding the kill kept a wary eye on what looked like two small and timid wolves crouching low in the snow a respectful distance away. They were, in fact, coyotes.

Wolves are typically larger than coyotes. Before 1995, Yellowstone supported one of the nation's largest and most stable coyote populations. But within two years of the wolves' arrival, half the coyotes were dead, often after making the fatal mistake of trying to stand their ground. The survivors learned they're no longer at the top of the food chain and now spend a lot of time looking over their shoulders. That's how you spot the difference: Wolves strut, coyotes skulk.

For the first decade after reintroduction, Yellowstone's wolves multiplied and thrived. From a start of 31 wolves, the park's population had grown to 171 by 2004. It was, according to Dan Stahler, a Yellowstone wolf biologist, a "very healthy population."

"With the wolves here," he said, "Yellowstone feels more whole, more together. For the ecosystem to function as nature intended, wolves were the last missing piece of the puzzle."

A few wandered out of the park and were killed by ranchers, many of whom still see the predators as a menace to livestock. But a program run by a private group, Defenders of Wildlife, has somewhat defused the situation. Ranchers who lose sheep and cattle are compensated at market value.

A year ago, Yellowstone supported one of the highest wolf densities ever recorded anywhere, according to Stahler. But the census conducted at the end of 2005 brought troubling news: The population had fallen by almost one-third, to 118. Only 22 pups had survived, compared with 69 the previous year.

Biologists aren't sure of the reason, but a leading suspect is canine parvovirus, the same disease that affects household dogs.

"What are we going to do about it? Not much," Stahler said. "Our feeling is that it's best to let nature take its course. Potentially, this is a mechanism for saying that the ecosystem had more wolves than it can support."

Because Yellowstone's wolf population had been so large and healthy, Stahler believes it will probably bounce back quickly to a sustainable number.

"We're concerned about this, and we need to stay on top of it," he said, "but we're not alarmed. At least not yet."

  • South Florida Sun-Sentinel
  • (Virtually) Run With The Wolves

    Minnesota Zoo Computer Program Allows Users To Live (And Maybe Die) In The Wild

    Mary Tan- WCCO-TV


    (WCCO) Apple Valley, Minn. The Minnesota Zoo is developing a video game that simulates being in a pack of wolves in the middle of Yellowstone National Park. The computer-animated simulation, called Wolfquest, is designed to put players in real-life situations in the middle of the wild where the wrong decision may make all the difference between life and death.

    "We want our players to gain an empathy for wolves -- what it is to be a wolf, [to] gain an emotional connection, to be with them," said Grant Spickelmier, a naturalist at the Minnesota Zoo.

    The object of the game is fairly straightforward: find food, care for your offspring, avoid predators and otherwise stay alive.

    The backdrop of Yellowstone was chosen for its scenic and natural beauty.

    The game is designed as an educational tool for children -- boys and girls -- from 9 to 13.

    "We want to make a game that's attractive enough that they would pick it up on their own," said Spickelmier, adding, "they get hooked and, hey, maybe they'll learn something about wolves."

    The game is expected to be finished and beta-tested by December 2007.

    The goal is to put Wolfquest on the zoo's Web site and free for anyone to use.

    Local zoo educators are also working with the Phoenix Zoo, the National Zoo in Washington D.C., and the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minn.

  • WCCO-TV
  • Endangered wolves on display at Minnesota Zoo hopes to breed wolves

    Three of North America's most endangered wolves went on exhibit at the Minnesota Zoo on Thursday. Zookeepers hope the captive-bred female Mexican gray wolves will breed with the zoo's four male wolves already on exhibit on the Northern Trail.

    Mexican gray wolves were wiped out in the United States by the middle of the 20th century, but the subspecies found a sliver of hope in the late 1970s after a trapper working for the government captured five wolves in Mexico.

    The zoo has been part of a two-nation effort to breed those captive wolves and return their descendants to the wild; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked the Apple Valley zoo to help in 1994.

    One of the zoo's former wolves was released into the Blue Mountain Range in Arizona earlier this year.

    With only about 60 Mexican gray wolves left in the wild, international wolf experts rate recovery of this species as the highest priority of gray wolf recovery programs worldwide

  • St. Paul Pioneer Press
  • Italy claims Swiss are killing protected wolves

    By Peter Popham

    ROME - Italy is this week to call on its European neighbours to put a halt to the "extermination" of wolves, which it claims is putting at risk decades of effort in bringing the beautiful but ferocious mammal back to the wild. Despite theoretical protection under EU law, wild wolves continue to be targeted in Europe; the most recent kill was in Goms, Switzerland, at the end of last month.

    According to Italian conservationists, "decades of conservation work" are now at risk from the hunters, who despite the legislation do not hesitate to shoot wolves dead on sight. Tomorrow, at a meeting of the Convention of the Alps in Austria, Italy is preparing to take up the cudgels on behalf of the predator.

    After disappearing from most of Europe early in the 20th century, wolves have gradually returned in small numbers and are found now in most parts of the Italian peninsula and in France, Switzerland and Germany. The species is protected by the Bern Convention of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, of which all EU members are signatories.

    But this has not deterred hunters and farmers in France and Germany from attempting to wipe out the hated sheep-lifter all over again.

    It is a repeat of the fate that befell Bruno the bear, whose unhappy story made news day after day in the summer. The brown bear happily and safely resident in Italy made the mistake of straying across the border into Baviara, where it was shot by a hunter, despite its status as a species theoretically protected across the EU.

    "In Italy the wolves must be protected," commented Italy's environment minister, Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, who also heads the Green Party. "In France and Switzerland on the other hand they are massacred. The situation is unsustainable. I have already raised the issue at the Council of European Ministers and with Stavros Dimas, the EU's Environmental Commissioner, who has taken on the task of drafting a directive for the protection of the species across borders.

    "We have got to get out of this surreal situation as quickly as possible," the minister went on. "The EU finances the protection of the wolf and the EU member states kill them. This is no good. We don't accept a repetition of the Bruno saga, the bear which Italy succeeded in protecting but which, as soon as it set foot in Bavaria, was shot."

    The appeal to the minister to do his bit to save wolves straying across Europe's borders was launched by Legambiente, Italy's largest environmental organisation. "One can't protect them by day and kill them by night," said Damiano di Simine, head of the organisation's Alpine observatory.

    "In Bavaria no bear had been seen in more than a century and the first to arrive was riddled with shot. With chronometrical precision Switzerland does away with all wolves, and is charged with the killing of at least 25 wolf cubs, which amounts to a generalised licence to kill. France is proposing to eliminate six wolves."

    Italy's own record is not spotless. "We ourselves have a problem with poaching," Alberto Meriggi told La Repubblica newspaper, a researcher at the University of Pavia and an expert on the distribution of wolves in the northern Appenines.

    "But our decision to apply the law protecting wolves without exception has allowed the Appenine wolf to return vigorously throughout the peninsula. The first traces were in 1986 in the province of Genoa, then three years later in the maritime Alps, in the province of Cuneo. Today once again the Italian wolf is in resurgence. We must be careful not to allow the destruction of decades of work."

  • INDEPENDENT
  • 5 wolves killed after attacks on cattle

    By The Associated Press

    AVON - Wildlife officials killed five wolves this week on private land south of here, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks said Thursday. The agency authorized U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services to kill the animals after a series of attacks on livestock. Since February, three cattle were confirmed to have been killed by wolves, and one calf was probably killed by wolves, FWP said.

    Wildlife Services investigated the most recent depredation on Sunday and killed the wolves the next day.

    "The Spotted Dog pack territory is mostly comprised of private lands managed for livestock production, both cattle and sheep," said Carolyn Sime, FWP wolf program coordinator. "Previous lethal control in September left at least nine wolves in this large pack. Removing additional wolves is part of our incremental approach to addressing confirmed livestock kills."

    A collared female and up to five other wolves remain in the pack, the agency said.

    USDA Wildlife Services is a cooperating federal agency that investigates injured and dead livestock to determine the cause, and carries out the field response at the direction of FWP.

    Both agencies work to help reduce depredation risks and address wolf-related conflicts, FWP said.

  • Billings Gazette
  • Sanctuary installing security measures after poisonings

    BROKEN ARROW, Okla. A Broken Arrow animal sanctuary is installing security measures to protect its animals after three wolves were poisoned to death. Safari's Interactive Animal Sanctuary handlers believe trespassers threw poisoned meat over the fences where the wolves are kept. At least three died and the deaths of two other animals earlier this year are thought to be suspicious.

    Safari's president and founder Lori Ensign said yesterday that the sanctuary hadn't had any problems in its 11 years of existence. Ensign is spending thousands of dollars for lighting, higher fencing and other security measures for the animals, which include everything from raccoons to bears.

    Safari's and its supporters also are offering a $1200 reward for information leading to an arrest in the October killings. Authorities say investigators are still waiting on toxicology results to determine what kind of poison was used to kill the wolves.

  • KTEN-TV
  • No scientific basis for current wolf control program

    By Gordon Haber

    Alaska’s aerial wolf-killing program now covers five areas equal to about two-thirds the size of Wyoming. Wolf control using snowmachines, other non-aerial methods, and even by allowing hunters to shoot adults while they are raising dependent pups at spring-summer dens and rendezvous sites is effectively under way over additional, much larger areas as well. Altogether, at least 1,500 wolves are killed annually in Alaska.

    For most of this killing, state biologists and the Board of Game avoid the public process and written findings required for control programs by claiming they are merely providing wolf “harvesting” opportunities. However, they are unable to avoid these requirements for the five areas where airplanes are used. The details are revealing.

    Foremost, the available information does not support the underlying claims about moose, caribou, and related hunting problems.

    For example, state biologists continue to mislead Alaskans about the need for predator control in the McGrath area, where local hunters have enjoyed among the highest moose-hunting success rates in the state for at least 14 years. This is reminiscent of claims about the nearby Nowitna area in 1979, where state biologists insisted moose had declined from 2,000 to 1,000 and began an aerial wolf control program, only to determine a year later that there were actually 3,500-5,000 moose in the area. This past spring, state biologists convinced the board that it was necessary to triple the size of the Fortymile aerial wolf control area to boost caribou numbers — where caribou numbers have already doubled since 1997!

    The only condition that might necessitate killing wolves to provide a sustainable ungulate harvest is the so-called predator pit, a low stable state that can occur at varying densities both naturally and via human causes. Because ungulate recruitment increases and decreases in counterintuitive ways across wide ranges of population densities, merely showing that there is low calf survival or that survival increases following a predator reduction does not suffice to identify a predator pit. Low calf survival and similar responses to predator reductions can also occur at high populations.

    Recruitment information must be interpreted with good population estimates, and vice versa, in order to confirm a predator pit. But there are few if any reliable estimates of populations and their trends for the control areas, and the available information provides more reasons to question than accept the claims about current predator pits.

    Game Management Unit 20A, south of Fairbanks, illustrates the importance of identifying this condition accurately and not otherwise jumping to conclusions about negative impacts on moose and moose-hunting even when wolves are at natural levels. Moose in 20A were overhunted into a likely predator pit in the early-mid 1970s, then rebounded during wolf control from 1976 to 1982. According to state reports, wolves recovered to natural or near-natural levels by mid 1983 and for the most part have remained there since. Yet during this period of relative wolf abundance — 1983-2006 — moose numbers increased another two-to-three-fold (within an upper “stable state”) and 20A has become the best moose-hunting area in Alaska.

    In contrast to 20A wolves, 20A bears have remained at low levels, due to past heavy hunting and for other reasons. Thus the 1983-2006 observations also debunk the notion (e.g., at McGrath) that unchecked wolf predation during the winter will undo early calf-survival gains from reductions in bear predation.

    Data from neighboring Denali National Park (in my doctoral dissertation), based on all the ungulates that two groups of wolves ate during 2,666 miles of their travels over a series of mild, severe, and average winters, help to explain why. The wolves scavenged rather than killed 60-77 percent of the moose they ate (47-48 percent of the moose, sheep, and caribou they ate combined) and killed only 2.0-8.9 percent of the moose they encountered. The state’s findings for the control areas are full of speculation about predation impacts but mention nothing about this Denali research, the most detailed and extensive body of wolf foraging information ever published.

    I invite readers to consider the details of these and related arguments. They appear in a 67-page scientific review — with citations to 81 other reports — that I submitted to the Board of Game at the March-May 2006 meetings (as RC-35 and RC-201). The board neither considered nor even mentioned this and other scientific opposition during its subsequent deliberations.

    Once again, agency biologists and the board have been able to avoid meaningful review and sell their gratuitous control programs to Alaskans under the guise of “science.”

    Gordon Haber, Ph.D., has studied wolves and wolf-ungulate systems in Alaska since 1966.

  • Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
  • Wolf Saga returns

    Sorry for the interruption in posting to Wolf Saga. Personal and technical demands required my attention.