New Wolf Packs in Oregon and Washington State!
This is why we need to sustain federal protections on the Northern Rockies wolf -- without healthy populations across entire states, wolves cannot branch out to recolonize their former habitat. Here is a sign of progress, and what we can expect if the protections are allowed to remain.
***
Biologists confirm first breeding wolf pack in Oregon
by Michael Milstein, The Oregonian
Monday July 21, 2008, 2:19 PM
Oregon Fish and Wildlife Department
Biologists in northeast Oregon have confirmed the presence of Oregon's first reproducing pack of wild wolves since the predators were exterminated from the state decades ago.
State biologist Russ Morgan and another biologist heard the howls of at least two adult wolves and two pups in the predawn hours Friday in northern Union County, north of La Grande, Morgan said Monday.
The biologists themselves were howling under a bright moon, trying to produce an audible response from wolves, a common method of surveying for the animals.
"It was pretty thrilling to get a response like that," said Morgan, who has been conducting the howling surveys for years. "It was definitely surprising after two years of looking."
The biologists did not see the wolves but could tell from the howls that there were both adults and pups. Morgan estimated they were less than one-quarter mile away. "We could clearly hear a couple of pups at the same time. There very well may have been more."
Biologists had seen scattered signs of wolves, including tracks and scat, in the area since November, he said. Several single wolves have been spotted in northeast Oregon over the past decade, but until now, biologists had seen no evidence that the animals had paired up to reproduce.
The pups probably were born in early to mid-April and are now out of their den and traveling with the adults.
"We've been chasing around single wolves, but this is pretty important because it's the first breeding," said Morgan, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's wolf coordinator, based in La Grande.
The reproduction of wolves in Oregon reflects the resurgence of a species that once was the target of government-sponsored bounty, trapping and poisoning programs. An early priority in the settlement of the West was to eradicate major predators to make the land safe for livestock.
Biologists now recognize that predators have ecological value, although many people in rural communities oppose the return of wolves to the region.
The federal government reintroduced wolves to central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in 1995 as part of a regional plan to restore the species. The wolves multiplied quickly and have spread into neighboring states.
Last week, biologists in northern Washington's Okanogan County caught and placed a radio collar on a lactating female that had been nursing pups -- the first evidence of a reproducing wolf pack in Washington.
To reach Oregon, wolves would have to cross the Snake River.
The biologists heard the Oregon wolf pack on the edge of the 177,000-acre Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness, part of the Umatilla National Forest. It's rugged, remote and thickly forested, with plenty of potential prey for the wolves, Morgan said.
"Time is going to tell us whether they can make a living there," he said. "Right now, there is no reason to think they can't."
Wolves in Oregon are protected by state and federal endangered species laws.
In February, the federal government dropped its protection for wolves in eastern Oregon in conjunction with its decision to remove wolves in the Northern Rockies from the threatened and endangered list. But last week, a judge in Montana overturned that decision and reinstated the protections.
Biologists probably will try to fit one or more of the Oregon wolves with radio collars to help track their movements and help biologists understand where they are frequenting. Although the area is remote, state officials will alert local livestock ranchers.
-- Michael Milstein
***
I personally adore the idea of biologists howling at the moon, hoping for an answer.
But the Oregon pack is not the only new pack! Here we have an article from the Methow Valley News in Washington state.
DNA samples confirm gray wolves are back in Methow Valley
Six pups are part of first confirmed wolf pack in valley in more than 70 years
by Joyce Campbell
Updated 7/24/08
A pair of wolves and six pups living in a remote area of the Methow Valley has been positively identified as wild gray wolves, according to state wildlife officials. DNA testing on the two adults has confirmed the first documented resident wolf pack in Washington state since the 1930’s.
"They are definitely wolves," said Scott Fitkin, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist who helped radio-collar the pair of wolves. Test results of DNA evidence was announced by the WDFW on Wednesday, July 23, according to Fitkin.
The male and female wolves were captured and radio-collared on July 18 by wolf experts from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and Nez Perce tribe, assisted by biologists with WDFW and the U.S. Forest Service.
"They found the pups, found the rendezvous site and trapped two animals, possibly the alpha male and alpha female," said Tom Buckley, spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is monitoring the situation. "They took hair samples and ear plugs and sent them to a lab to identify more concretely that they are 100 percent wolves, not somebody’s hybrid."
Biologists on the interagency team investigating wolf reports have had mounting evidence of the existence of a pack of wolves in the Methow. Photographs, reports by trained biologists and a howling survey have all pointed to the existence of a wild wolf pack, but the issue of wolf-dog hybrids left some doubts. The recent availability of new genetic testing methods has made DNA testing the new standard of positive identification.
At daybreak Friday (July 18), a Washington state wildlife biologist and two expert wolf specialists from Idaho checked their trap line and found both a male and female canine in the padded leghold traps.
They tranquilized the animals, weighed them, tagged the ears, fitted them with radio collars and took DNA samples. Hair and the patch of skin from the ear tag punch would soon be on their way to a lab in California to confirm if these were wild wolves.
The lactating female weighed 70 pounds, according to Fitkin. "Wolves are always lean," he said.
It was the third night of trapping in an area where 10 days earlier, Fitkin led a howling survey that confirmed the presence of wolf-like adults with pups. "They won’t stay much longer where they are," said Fitkin. He said a wolf pack would typically have a 200-square-mile territory.
To protect the animals, biologists are not specifying the location where the wolves were trapped.
The same day that Fitkin and the trappers radio-collared the wolves, a remote motion-sensor camera captured what biologists believe to be some other members of the pack - six pups.
"This is the most exciting result. It’s unexpected, but exactly what we wanted," said Jasmine Minbashian, who leads the citizen wildlife-monitoring program for Conservation Northwest. "We’ve exceeded our wildest dreams to be helping photograph the first wolf pups in this area for a long time."
The non-profit conservation group has four cameras and two teams of volunteers in the Methow Valley investigating recent wolf sightings and older unconfirmed wolf sightings. The group is working and coordinating with WDFW and Forest Service biologists on camera placements in various locations from the Twisp River to the Chelan-Sawtooth Wilderness area.
Following the release of the radio-collared adults, biologists used radio telemetry to track both the male and female to the area where the howling of adults and pups confirmed that the pack had successfully reunited.
Biologists and technicians will track the animals to see where they are going and see if they have an established territory, said Buckley. He said they wouldn’t go beyond where the food is that they need.
"They can be observed if they go to an area where they might be in trouble, like hanging out next to a grazing area," said Buckley. "Trackers can observe, monitor and find them again to put more collars on or take proactive means of avoiding conflict."
Buckley said the Defenders of Wildlife organization has extended its compensation program for losses due to wolf predation to include Washington state.
Though Washington state has not been home to a wolf pack since the 1930s, state wildlife officials have been expecting them to cross the border from Canada and disperse into the state from recovered populations in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.
A state wolf conservation and management plan has been drafted, and a collaborative effort of the WDFW, the Forest Service, the USFWS and Conservation Northwest was initiated in June to investigate an increased number of unconfirmed reports of wolf observations and activities.
A pure gray wolf was killed in a traffic incident 40 miles northeast of Spokane in June, according to a WDFW press release July 17. DNA tests confirmed the animal was 100 percent wolf, and that its DNA was similar to that from wolves in northwest Montana and southern British Columbia. A second animal was similarly killed in the area two weeks later, but testing proved it was a wolf-dog hybrid.
The WDFW is leading the investigative fieldwork on the now confirmed wild gray wolf pack in the Methow. The agency decided to trap and take DNA samples of the canines heard howling in the Methow Valley and sent the DNA samples to the University of California-Los Angeles Conservation Genetics Resource Center.
DNA tests showed that the wolves originated from a population in the northern British Columbia and Alberta provinces of Canada.
"This is a natural colonization," said Fitkin. "The wolves are naturally immigrating."
Fitkin and his team will continue to monitor the movements of the collared wolves and wolf pups as they move around the summer rendezvous area.
"I’ve been waiting for this for 18 years," said Fitkin, who said he was very excited by the findings of the investigation. Fitkin has been involved in wolf research in the North Cascades since 1991.
Anyone with concerns about wolves may contact Fitkin at 996-4373.
***
And there's a video clip with sound of the pups howling. Squeeing may now commence.
There will be the usual pissing and moaning, of course, from local ignoramuses, but this is a very positive sign. When I was a kid, we didn't have wolves in the lower 48. This is something I dreamed of, something I have wanted more than half my life.
When I was small, this is what the wolf's range looked like.
Now we have something closer to this, though this is obviously a year or two out of date:
By comparison, the wolf's range used to look like this.
I don't expect the wolf will ever return to its full range. There's too much in the way. Too many roads, too many fences, too many cities. That's okay. I don't hate people, or people places. I do think that we have too much, and that owe the wild things as much as we can give them, as much as they can reclaim, though. I think we especially owe wolves that because what we did, we did without cause and for false reasons.
I have witnessed, even in my short life, a shift in attitude toward the wolf. I was about fourteen when the wolf reintroduction fracas was going down in Yellowstone. I saved newspaper clippings and magazine articles. I read them over and over, hoping that the release would happen. I remember the furor it provoked, the hate and frothing bile, the unreasoning fear.
I remember hearing of the death of the Rose Creek pack's alpha male, 10M, killed one winter by a man named Chad McKittrick who claimed he had mistaken the wolf for a dog. 10's heavily pregnant mate escaped, but 10 died almost instantly, right under the eyes of the scientists following their radio signals from an airplane above.
Before the scientists could summon authorities, McKittrick and a friend took 10's body to his truck, drove some distance away, skinned and decapitated the wolf, and removed the radio collar and the ear tags. His mate, 9, found 10 before the scientists. She dug a shallow, makeshift den near his body, which had been thrown into the brush near a cottonwood grove. Only at the last moment, about to give birth, did she leave him for the dubious shelter of a pine tree. She gave birth to eight pups there, which were later rescued, raised, and released to become a core part of the Yellowstone breeding stock.
I cried at the news of 10's death. McKittrick was arrested after a friend turned him in, and later he was convicted and appeals thrown out.
There have been shootings, too, during the latest furor over the delisting. Human stupidity, human hostility, will always lead some to destroy what they do not understand.
The improvement in attitude is nevertheless profound. Support for the wolf is greater, ten times stronger. Defenders of Wildlife, who founded the effort to reintroduce the wolf, is much more powerful. We have come a long way in just a decade and a half. I think the reappearance of wolves in two states in a month's time is a very positive sign.
Wolves are very much like us in some ways, perhaps more like us than any animal besides apes and some monkeys, and I think that is why humanity has loved them and hated them in turn. We project onto them our best and our worst traits depending on the climate of the times. We also see in them nature writ small -- how we feel about the wolf is how we feel about our wild places, our wild creatures. Some see in wolves, as they see in nature, nothing but something to use or destroy.
The wolf, meanwhile, has not changed, and remains what it was at the dawn of our species.
There are threats, still. Always, there is the threat of human ignorance and fear. The outcome is not foregone, though, for 10's descendants and those like them. 10's death itself showed that. I listen to the pups learning to sing and I smile, because in that awkward, broken howling I hear hope.
***
Biologists confirm first breeding wolf pack in Oregon
by Michael Milstein, The Oregonian
Monday July 21, 2008, 2:19 PM
Oregon Fish and Wildlife Department
Biologists in northeast Oregon have confirmed the presence of Oregon's first reproducing pack of wild wolves since the predators were exterminated from the state decades ago.
State biologist Russ Morgan and another biologist heard the howls of at least two adult wolves and two pups in the predawn hours Friday in northern Union County, north of La Grande, Morgan said Monday.
The biologists themselves were howling under a bright moon, trying to produce an audible response from wolves, a common method of surveying for the animals.
"It was pretty thrilling to get a response like that," said Morgan, who has been conducting the howling surveys for years. "It was definitely surprising after two years of looking."
The biologists did not see the wolves but could tell from the howls that there were both adults and pups. Morgan estimated they were less than one-quarter mile away. "We could clearly hear a couple of pups at the same time. There very well may have been more."
Biologists had seen scattered signs of wolves, including tracks and scat, in the area since November, he said. Several single wolves have been spotted in northeast Oregon over the past decade, but until now, biologists had seen no evidence that the animals had paired up to reproduce.
The pups probably were born in early to mid-April and are now out of their den and traveling with the adults.
"We've been chasing around single wolves, but this is pretty important because it's the first breeding," said Morgan, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's wolf coordinator, based in La Grande.
The reproduction of wolves in Oregon reflects the resurgence of a species that once was the target of government-sponsored bounty, trapping and poisoning programs. An early priority in the settlement of the West was to eradicate major predators to make the land safe for livestock.
Biologists now recognize that predators have ecological value, although many people in rural communities oppose the return of wolves to the region.
The federal government reintroduced wolves to central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in 1995 as part of a regional plan to restore the species. The wolves multiplied quickly and have spread into neighboring states.
Last week, biologists in northern Washington's Okanogan County caught and placed a radio collar on a lactating female that had been nursing pups -- the first evidence of a reproducing wolf pack in Washington.
To reach Oregon, wolves would have to cross the Snake River.
The biologists heard the Oregon wolf pack on the edge of the 177,000-acre Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness, part of the Umatilla National Forest. It's rugged, remote and thickly forested, with plenty of potential prey for the wolves, Morgan said.
"Time is going to tell us whether they can make a living there," he said. "Right now, there is no reason to think they can't."
Wolves in Oregon are protected by state and federal endangered species laws.
In February, the federal government dropped its protection for wolves in eastern Oregon in conjunction with its decision to remove wolves in the Northern Rockies from the threatened and endangered list. But last week, a judge in Montana overturned that decision and reinstated the protections.
Biologists probably will try to fit one or more of the Oregon wolves with radio collars to help track their movements and help biologists understand where they are frequenting. Although the area is remote, state officials will alert local livestock ranchers.
-- Michael Milstein
***
I personally adore the idea of biologists howling at the moon, hoping for an answer.
But the Oregon pack is not the only new pack! Here we have an article from the Methow Valley News in Washington state.
DNA samples confirm gray wolves are back in Methow Valley
Six pups are part of first confirmed wolf pack in valley in more than 70 years
by Joyce Campbell
Updated 7/24/08
A pair of wolves and six pups living in a remote area of the Methow Valley has been positively identified as wild gray wolves, according to state wildlife officials. DNA testing on the two adults has confirmed the first documented resident wolf pack in Washington state since the 1930’s.
"They are definitely wolves," said Scott Fitkin, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist who helped radio-collar the pair of wolves. Test results of DNA evidence was announced by the WDFW on Wednesday, July 23, according to Fitkin.
The male and female wolves were captured and radio-collared on July 18 by wolf experts from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and Nez Perce tribe, assisted by biologists with WDFW and the U.S. Forest Service.
"They found the pups, found the rendezvous site and trapped two animals, possibly the alpha male and alpha female," said Tom Buckley, spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is monitoring the situation. "They took hair samples and ear plugs and sent them to a lab to identify more concretely that they are 100 percent wolves, not somebody’s hybrid."
Biologists on the interagency team investigating wolf reports have had mounting evidence of the existence of a pack of wolves in the Methow. Photographs, reports by trained biologists and a howling survey have all pointed to the existence of a wild wolf pack, but the issue of wolf-dog hybrids left some doubts. The recent availability of new genetic testing methods has made DNA testing the new standard of positive identification.
At daybreak Friday (July 18), a Washington state wildlife biologist and two expert wolf specialists from Idaho checked their trap line and found both a male and female canine in the padded leghold traps.
They tranquilized the animals, weighed them, tagged the ears, fitted them with radio collars and took DNA samples. Hair and the patch of skin from the ear tag punch would soon be on their way to a lab in California to confirm if these were wild wolves.
The lactating female weighed 70 pounds, according to Fitkin. "Wolves are always lean," he said.
It was the third night of trapping in an area where 10 days earlier, Fitkin led a howling survey that confirmed the presence of wolf-like adults with pups. "They won’t stay much longer where they are," said Fitkin. He said a wolf pack would typically have a 200-square-mile territory.
To protect the animals, biologists are not specifying the location where the wolves were trapped.
The same day that Fitkin and the trappers radio-collared the wolves, a remote motion-sensor camera captured what biologists believe to be some other members of the pack - six pups.
"This is the most exciting result. It’s unexpected, but exactly what we wanted," said Jasmine Minbashian, who leads the citizen wildlife-monitoring program for Conservation Northwest. "We’ve exceeded our wildest dreams to be helping photograph the first wolf pups in this area for a long time."
The non-profit conservation group has four cameras and two teams of volunteers in the Methow Valley investigating recent wolf sightings and older unconfirmed wolf sightings. The group is working and coordinating with WDFW and Forest Service biologists on camera placements in various locations from the Twisp River to the Chelan-Sawtooth Wilderness area.
Following the release of the radio-collared adults, biologists used radio telemetry to track both the male and female to the area where the howling of adults and pups confirmed that the pack had successfully reunited.
Biologists and technicians will track the animals to see where they are going and see if they have an established territory, said Buckley. He said they wouldn’t go beyond where the food is that they need.
"They can be observed if they go to an area where they might be in trouble, like hanging out next to a grazing area," said Buckley. "Trackers can observe, monitor and find them again to put more collars on or take proactive means of avoiding conflict."
Buckley said the Defenders of Wildlife organization has extended its compensation program for losses due to wolf predation to include Washington state.
Though Washington state has not been home to a wolf pack since the 1930s, state wildlife officials have been expecting them to cross the border from Canada and disperse into the state from recovered populations in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.
A state wolf conservation and management plan has been drafted, and a collaborative effort of the WDFW, the Forest Service, the USFWS and Conservation Northwest was initiated in June to investigate an increased number of unconfirmed reports of wolf observations and activities.
A pure gray wolf was killed in a traffic incident 40 miles northeast of Spokane in June, according to a WDFW press release July 17. DNA tests confirmed the animal was 100 percent wolf, and that its DNA was similar to that from wolves in northwest Montana and southern British Columbia. A second animal was similarly killed in the area two weeks later, but testing proved it was a wolf-dog hybrid.
The WDFW is leading the investigative fieldwork on the now confirmed wild gray wolf pack in the Methow. The agency decided to trap and take DNA samples of the canines heard howling in the Methow Valley and sent the DNA samples to the University of California-Los Angeles Conservation Genetics Resource Center.
DNA tests showed that the wolves originated from a population in the northern British Columbia and Alberta provinces of Canada.
"This is a natural colonization," said Fitkin. "The wolves are naturally immigrating."
Fitkin and his team will continue to monitor the movements of the collared wolves and wolf pups as they move around the summer rendezvous area.
"I’ve been waiting for this for 18 years," said Fitkin, who said he was very excited by the findings of the investigation. Fitkin has been involved in wolf research in the North Cascades since 1991.
Anyone with concerns about wolves may contact Fitkin at 996-4373.
***
And there's a video clip with sound of the pups howling. Squeeing may now commence.
There will be the usual pissing and moaning, of course, from local ignoramuses, but this is a very positive sign. When I was a kid, we didn't have wolves in the lower 48. This is something I dreamed of, something I have wanted more than half my life.
When I was small, this is what the wolf's range looked like.
Now we have something closer to this, though this is obviously a year or two out of date:
By comparison, the wolf's range used to look like this.
I don't expect the wolf will ever return to its full range. There's too much in the way. Too many roads, too many fences, too many cities. That's okay. I don't hate people, or people places. I do think that we have too much, and that owe the wild things as much as we can give them, as much as they can reclaim, though. I think we especially owe wolves that because what we did, we did without cause and for false reasons.
I have witnessed, even in my short life, a shift in attitude toward the wolf. I was about fourteen when the wolf reintroduction fracas was going down in Yellowstone. I saved newspaper clippings and magazine articles. I read them over and over, hoping that the release would happen. I remember the furor it provoked, the hate and frothing bile, the unreasoning fear.
I remember hearing of the death of the Rose Creek pack's alpha male, 10M, killed one winter by a man named Chad McKittrick who claimed he had mistaken the wolf for a dog. 10's heavily pregnant mate escaped, but 10 died almost instantly, right under the eyes of the scientists following their radio signals from an airplane above.
Before the scientists could summon authorities, McKittrick and a friend took 10's body to his truck, drove some distance away, skinned and decapitated the wolf, and removed the radio collar and the ear tags. His mate, 9, found 10 before the scientists. She dug a shallow, makeshift den near his body, which had been thrown into the brush near a cottonwood grove. Only at the last moment, about to give birth, did she leave him for the dubious shelter of a pine tree. She gave birth to eight pups there, which were later rescued, raised, and released to become a core part of the Yellowstone breeding stock.
I cried at the news of 10's death. McKittrick was arrested after a friend turned him in, and later he was convicted and appeals thrown out.
There have been shootings, too, during the latest furor over the delisting. Human stupidity, human hostility, will always lead some to destroy what they do not understand.
The improvement in attitude is nevertheless profound. Support for the wolf is greater, ten times stronger. Defenders of Wildlife, who founded the effort to reintroduce the wolf, is much more powerful. We have come a long way in just a decade and a half. I think the reappearance of wolves in two states in a month's time is a very positive sign.
Wolves are very much like us in some ways, perhaps more like us than any animal besides apes and some monkeys, and I think that is why humanity has loved them and hated them in turn. We project onto them our best and our worst traits depending on the climate of the times. We also see in them nature writ small -- how we feel about the wolf is how we feel about our wild places, our wild creatures. Some see in wolves, as they see in nature, nothing but something to use or destroy.
The wolf, meanwhile, has not changed, and remains what it was at the dawn of our species.
There are threats, still. Always, there is the threat of human ignorance and fear. The outcome is not foregone, though, for 10's descendants and those like them. 10's death itself showed that. I listen to the pups learning to sing and I smile, because in that awkward, broken howling I hear hope.