Wolves Arrive in Yellowstone

      AFTER MY TRIP overseas I returned to Big Bend for my second winter season. That fall Yellowstone hired two wolf biologists to plan the reintroduction and to monitor and research the wolves after their release: Mike Phillips and Doug Smith. Mike, the only biologist in the country with wolf reintroduction experience, was designated the project leader. He had worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service as the Red Wolf Recovery Program coordinator and had overseen the reintroduction of that species in North Carolina.

      Doug had spent many years researching wolves in Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior under the supervision of Rolf Peterson of Michigan Tech. He later did wolf studies in northern Minnesota for the US Fish and Wildlife Service under Dave Mech, who was also a professor at the University of Minnesota. Dave had helped Durward Allen of Purdue University start up the Isle Royale wolf study back in 1958. It became the longest-running wolf research project ever undertaken. Rolf took over supervision of the study in 1974. Doug’s experience with Dave and Rolf meant that he was trained by two of the top wolf biologists in the world. Mike had worked on Isle Royale with Doug, so they knew each other.

      In January of 1995, I went on another speaking tour, this time in Ohio. That happened to be the same time the wolves arrived in Yellowstone. Fourteen wild wolves, members of three packs and one lone male, had been captured in Alberta, about 550 miles north of Yellowstone. They arrived in the park in a horse trailer on January 12, and I watched the CNN television coverage of the event.

      When I got back to Big Bend, I got more detailed information from friends in Yellowstone. The three packs had been put in separate acclimation pens in the northern section of the park near where I had been based at Tower Junction. That was an area with a high density of elk, the primary prey species for the original Yellowstone wolves, as well as for the packs newly arrived from Alberta. Each pen was about an acre in size.

      The first two wolves captured were a mother and her female pup from the McLeod pack. Another female pup from that family had just been shot and all the other members of that pack, including the alpha male, likely were dead, killed by hunters and trappers. The mother (designated as wolf 9) and pup (wolf 7) were the only known survivors. They were placed in a pen built in Lamar Valley behind the Yellowstone Institute. Because the pack did not have a breeding male, a wolf captured as a lone male was also put in that pen. He was given the number 10. The group was named the Rose Creek pack.

      The pack described in the prologue ended up in a pen six miles east of Tower Junction and became known as the Crystal Creek pack. The alpha pair (female 5 and male 4) and their four male pups were the wolves television crews filmed when rangers and other park staff unloaded their metal cages from the truck and took them up to the pen on a sled pulled by mules. The pup designated as wolf 8 was the little gray in the prologue. At 72 pounds, he was the smallest of the four brothers and of all the fourteen wolves brought in from Canada. The last one in his pack to be captured, he almost got left behind.

      The five members of the Soda Butte pack, known in Canada as the Berland pack, ended up in a pen in Lamar Valley, east of the Yellowstone Institute.

      As death threats had been made against the wolves, armed law-enforcement rangers guarded the packs twenty-four hours a day while they were in the pens. Those rangers, who trudged through deep snow in subzero temperatures throughout the long Wyoming winter nights, were the unsung heroes of the story. Thanks to their dedicated work, no wolves were harmed while in their pens.

      During the ten weeks the wolves were in confinement, Park Service employees brought in elk, deer, and bison carcasses twice weekly to feed the packs. These were mostly animals killed in collisions on local highways. Wild wolves need an average of 10 pounds of meat per day in the winter to meet their energy demands. For the six wolves in the Crystal Creek pen, that amounted to over 350 pounds per week.

      On March 21, at 4:15 p.m., Mike Phillips and Steve Fritts of the US Fish and Wildlife Service opened the gate of the Crystal Creek pen, then quickly walked back to the road. Everyone expected the wolves would notice the open gate and immediately run out. But they stayed in the pen. There was only one gate, and since humans always entered the pen through that gate, the wolves were probably afraid of approaching it.

      On March 23, the biologists cut a hole in the fence, well away from the gate, and placed a deer carcass just beyond that opening. The next day a monitoring device indicated wolves were going through the opening to the carcass but returning to the pen after feeding. The pack had not yet figured out that they were free to leave. On March 30, five of the six wolves permanently left the pen, and the final one joined them the next day. It was a ten-day process, but by March 31 all the Crystal Creek wolves were roaming freely in Yellowstone.

      Park Service employees, park visitors, and local residents regularly saw the Crystal Creek wolves exploring the region around their pen. They were also seen playing together, a sign that the wolves were getting comfortable with their new home. Those were the first sightings of a free-roaming wolf pack in Yellowstone in sixty-nine years. The family stayed near the pen for the next four weeks, feeding on winter-killed elk and hunting elk on their own.

      THE THREE WOLVES in the Rose Creek pen had a different story. The big male, wolf 10, who at 122 pounds was above-average size for an adult male, left that pen soon after the gate was opened on March 22. That made him the first of the wolves from Canada to leave a pen. The two females, like the Crystal Creek wolves, were more hesitant about departing. The mother wolf seemed afraid of the open gate and refused to approach it. We did not know it at the time, but she was pregnant. She and the male had formed a pair bond during their time in the pen.

      The male stayed just outside the pen. That would have been very dangerous from his point of view, for he knew the area was the most likely place for humans to appear. But he loyally waited for his new mate and her daughter to come out. It would be like someone who had escaped from prison staying nearby and waiting for his friends to break out, regardless of guards patrolling the area and the high probability of being recaptured.

      On March 23, the biologists hiked up toward the Rose Creek pen, intending to cut an opening in the back side of the fence, like they had just done at the other pen. A blizzard drastically cut visibility as they approached the site. Near the pen they heard a howl, then saw 10 staring at them, just fifty yards away. The crew, not wanting to disturb him, turned around and quickly hiked back down the trail. The male followed