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