June 2, 2004

Idaho wolves have pups too, and the 2004 crop is now being discovered.

Here is a list of the packs and/or groups thought to have denned on the basis of seeing pups or the pack's April- May localization.

Big Hole, Buffalo Ridge, Eagle Mountain, Galena, Gold Fork, Gospel Hump, Hazard Lake, Morgan Ck., Moyer Basin, O'Hara Point, Orphan, Partridge Ck. group, Red River, Scott Mountain, Selway, Soldier Mountain, Steel Mountain., and B109F/190M. B141F/uncollared male.

The denning status of these wolves is unknown because there are no functioning collars in the packs: Bennett Mt., Castle Peak, Chamberlain Basin, Cook, Eldorado, Five Lakes Butte, Florence, Hemlock Ridge, Jureano Mt., Kelly Ck., Landmark, Lupine, Magruder, Marble Mt., Monumental, Thunder Mt., Timberline, Twin Peaks, and Wolf Fang.

Pups have actually been observed in the following packs.

Gold Fork Pack - 3 pups seen. This is a western Idaho pack in the general area of the Gold Fork River east of Long Valley. Last year the pack appeared to have had no pups. The pack has declined in size over the last several years. The alphas were both collared last year, but B116M dispersed and joined the Orphan Pack and the alpha female can no longer be located, so the identity of the alphas is not known.

Orphan Pack - a minimum of 4-5 black pups. This western Idaho pack has a territory just south of the Gold Fork Pack's. It was named after the alpha female B61F, who was somehow orphaned by her native Stanley Pack while she was just a pup. She eked out a living on her own until she was discovered by B28M, one of the reintroduced adult wolves. He befriended her and she became his mate in 2001. Each year she has produced just one pup, so this is her biggest litter. Unfortunately B28 is dead and B116M from the nearby Gold Fork Pack who seemed to have joined her, was just found dead. This is under investigation by USFWS Law Enforcement (LE) folks.

Eagle Mountain - 3 pups minimum. Maybe more. This pack formed in 2003 and had a minimum of 2 pups. It denned on the south side of the Lochsa River drainage in north central Idaho, in and adjacent to the northern end of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. This year there are at least 3 pups. The pack was founded by B136M and an uncollared female. He was a disperser from the Marble Mountain Pack.

Buffalo Ridge. 2-3 pups. This is the easiest-to-see pack in Idaho, living in Squaw Creek a few miles upstream from the hamlet of Clayton on Idaho Highway 75.

Currently the pack has 9 or 10 members, not counting the pups. This is its third year. I was recently fortunate to get a good look at two members of the pack . . . very nice looking gray wolves. The pack had been all grey wolves, but a new black wolf has been reportedly seen with them this spring. It must have joined the pack.

Lower Squaw Creek has some recreation homes at its confluence with the Salmon River, and then upstream for quite a way there is private land owned by the Thompson Creek mining company which operates a huge open pit moly mine in the adjacent drainage of Thompson Creek. The mine road does not go up Thompson Creek. Instead, it goes up Squaw Creek. Many miners have seen these wolves on the meadows adjacent to the mine road in their travel to and from work. I think the sheer amont of traffic protects the wolves. The brushy, marshy pasture is heavily posted "no tresspassing," and I think it protects the wolves.

Across Squaw Creek (hiking access photography point) to the Thompson Creek tailings pond dam.

Photo Ralph Maughan

Thompson Creek leases the meadows for cattle pasture. However, for the last 2 years we, the Wolf Recovery Foundation, and Defenders of Wildlife, have paid the lease-holder, a Challis area rancher, money for feed so his cows don't go in until mid-July. Hopefully again by this July the pack will have moved away, back to the remote Buffalo Ridge area.

Folks can get information about this pack and plaster wolf prints from Curt Hurless, who is no longer in the cattle business, but has a gas station and convenience store just about a half mile up the Salmon River from the mouth of Squaw Creek.

The pack was founded by alpha male B93M and alpha female B95F. Two members of the pack are limping, including the alpha male, B93. He has a severe injury to it and Jim Holyan of the Nez Perce Tribal wolf team reported to me that he was acting submissively to an uncollared wolf, a probable new alpha male.

Galena Pack- 3 pups.

This was a new pack last year, founded by B107F, a disperser from the Moyer Basin pack, and a male of unknown origin. Their range is the foothills and west side of the White Cloud Mountains in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. They are the third pack to inhabit this area, the other 2 (Stanley and Whitehawk) packs, were wiped out by the government after they killed some sheep and cow calves.

Sick and tired of livestock coming first in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area where the law says wildlife comes first, the Idaho Conservation League and the Western Watersheds Project went to federal district court and got an injunction to stop the government from killing wolves because they killed some livestock. The judge agreed that wolves come first and that the SNRA had to do new grazing plans for its sheep permittees to account for the presence of wolves. Moreover, the government couldn't kill any wolves for livestock depredations.

Last year, as in years before, the sheep were trucked in and dropped on the wolves in early June, but the wolf pack was harassed back into the mountains, and it appears all 5 of the pups survived, making a pack of 7. No wolves or sheep died last yea.

In 2004 the pack denned in the same general location, and this year no injunction has yet been sought. The principle sheep owner who has had run-ins with the wolves has agreed to keep his sheep well to the south in the headwaters of the Big Wood River until mid-July. In the meantime, Jim Holyan told me the pack seems to have already moved back into the mountains.

On May 21, we went on a tour of the area of the den with Curt Mack of the Nez Perce Tribe, Gary Gadwa, a local Idaho Fish and Game conservation officer, Carter Niemeyer of the USFWS, and a group of people interested in wolves. The tour was organized by Lynne Stone, director of the Boulder/White Clouds Council.

We learned that in April one of the pack's yearlings had been going to a nearby ranch house and "attacking the dogs," although after discussing the matter, it seemed more likely the wolf was playing with the dogs, "rough-housing" a bit, which can be injurious play for dogs. This "playful" wolf seems to have since moved away from the area along with his pack.

The den area was a wonderful place, with deer, elk, and antelope all over.

Some new probable packs-

At least 2 new pairs of wolves have probably had pups. B109F and B190M have a probable den in the area between Grandjean and Lowman on the west side of the Sawtooth Mountains above Idaho Highway 21 or above the road to Grandjean.

B141F, a disperser of the Scott Mountain Pack, which lives between Garden Valley and Deadwood Reservoir area (north of the South Fork of the Payette River) seems to have pups in the Grimes Pass area, south of the South Fork of the Payette River.

Misc.-

On May 21, Gary Gadwa of Idaho Fish and Game picked up a dead wolf that had been hit on Idaho Highway 21 near Capehorn Creek. It is thought the wolf was part of the Landmark Pack, once Idaho's largest pack (and maybe still . . . no radio collars). An investigation of the pack's traditional den site in the Frank Church Wilderness showed no denning activity there this spring.

The Chamberlain Basin Pack, deep in the Frank Church was one of Idaho's first 3 wolf packs, but there have been no radio collars since 2001, so Nez Perce biologists Kent Laudon and Anthony Novack are in the area trying to observe, trap and collar some of the wolves that are clearly still present.

http://www.forwolves.org/ralph/dennews1-id-04.htm