Wyoming wolves are well tracked in 2014

Posted: Saturday, March 1, 2014

By Mike Koshmrl

Jackson Hole Daily 

State game managers have had a good winter catching and radio-collaring wolves, and nearly every other lobo in the state now is being tracked.

Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials said 34 wolves from 16 packs have been collared this winter, bringing the state total to 87, not counting those in Yellowstone National Park. There were an estimated 186 wolves in Wyoming outside Yellowstone and the Wind River Indian Reservation at the beginning of 2013. “We had good success catching wolves in packs that didn’t have collars in the past,” said Ken Mills, Game and Fish wolf program biologist. “We might put out three or four more collars, but that’s more or less the peak of what we will have.” At the same time last year 50 wolves had tracking collars.

Because population estimates for 2014 are incomplete, it’s difficult to know the percentage of Wyoming wolves wearing collars. Using last year’s population of non-Yellowstone and nonreservation wolves, 187 animals, it would be 47 percent. “It’s not going to be a whole lot different from last year,” Mills said of the 2014 population. “We’re looking good.”

Researchers had good luck collaring animals from packs that had previously been untrackable.

Protected by the Endangered Species Act in Wyoming as recently as 2012, wolves must be monitored because their numbers are few.

After the first year of hunting, the state population — including Yellowstone — fell from a known minimum of 328 animals to 277 animals.

Sixty-three wolves were killed statewide in 2013, Wyoming’s second year of hunting. More than 60 percent of the harvest was in the state’s predator zone, where wolves can be killed at any time, without a license and by any method.

Wyoming’s delisting agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requires managers to maintain 150 wolves and 15 breeding pairs. If numbers fall below either mark for three consecutive years, it triggers a review.

Fifty wolves and five packs are supposed to be maintained in Yellowstone National Park and the reservation, and 100 wolves and 10 packs must be maintained in the “trophy game” area.

Collars are lost many ways: when a wolf dies naturally, is killed by a hunter or leaves its pack to find new territory.

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