The
Colockum has a lot of elk. The Entiat Valley, northwest of Wenatchee,
has plenty of deer and forest in which to hide. There’s more than 2,000
square miles of wild country and a plentiful prey base from Easton and
Cle Elum south through the Norse Peak and William O. Douglas Wilderness
areas, all the way to the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
Will one of those places be next?
Or will it be even closer to Yakima? The
professional tracker whose photos and video led to November’s
confirmation of the state’s 17th and newest pack, thinks that
possibility is no less likely than any other.
“I
have no idea where a pack will show up next,” said David Moskowitz, the
Okanogan-based photographer/tracker who captured the initial photos of
the Loup Loup Pack on a trail camera he set up near a deer carcass.
While
the bulk of the state wildlife department’s wolf focus is north of
Interstate 90 — where all four of the Cascades-based packs are located —
Moskowitz is working with Conservation Northwest to seek out possible
wolf movements south of I-90.
“We’ve got cameras all the way from just south of I-90 running down not quite to the Columbia,” Moskowitz said.
Their primary focus areas, though, are within the Naches and Cle Elum ranger districts and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
What about the Colockum, home to some 5,000 elk? In fact, with that kind of a prey base, why aren’t wolves there now?
“That’s
a good question,” said Trent Roussin, one of the Washington Department
of Fish and Wildlife’s two statewide wolf biologists.
“We
kind of expect them to show up anywhere there’s good habitat. If
there’s good habitat and no wolves there — but there are wolves nearby —
we expect them to show up there.”
The
caveat about an existing pack nearby may be the most telling part. Since
the Lookout Pack became the state’s first established pack in 2008,
others have typically set up near existing packs.
Each
of the 12 packs in the northeast quarter of the state is within 40
miles of one or more packs. The Teanaway Pack, discovered in 2011, was
followed two years later by the Wenatchee Pack just to the east. The
Tucannon Pack, straddling the Washington-Oregon border in the Blue
Mountains, abuts the range of another pack, the Walla Walla, which is
managed as an Oregon pack.
The Lookout,
Washington’s first pack, was believed to have the North Cascades to
themselves until this year. But, said Winthrop-based state wildlife
biologist Scott Fitkin, there have been reported sightings and wolf
tracks “going back maybe five years” in the Loup Loup area, which
stretches between the Okanogan and Methow valleys.
Moskowitz’s initial photos of a single
wolf and his later video footage clearly showing four wolves led to the
official pronouncement of the Loup Loup Pack — so named for the old
mining town that once existed there. The name is fitting: The mining
town was believed to have been so named by Hudson’s Bay trappers for the
multitude of wolf pelts they took from the area. (In French, loup means
wolf.)
So the Loup Loup Pack established its territory very near an existing pack. Will the next pack will do the same?
“It’s
anybody’s guess,” said Donny Martorello, the state wildlife
department’s wolf policy lead. “We tend to see a couple of different
scenarios.
“One is we tend to see new
packs form near existing packs and spread out from there, which makes
sense. Dispersers meet up with dispersers from other areas or packs in
close proximity to where there are other wolves.”
The
other scenario is dispersing animals meeting up far from any existing
wolves, as was the case with the Lookout Pack. “That’s why you never
know,” Martorello said.
Moskowitz doesn’t believe the Colockum is next — even with its prey base and its proximity to the Teanaway and Wenatchee packs.
Along
with its plentiful prey, he said, the Colockum “has a huge road density
as well. Open road systems with a human population that doesn’t like
wolves is a challenging situation for the wolves.
“I’d
really expect we do get wolves in there every so often. Whether or not
we could get a persistent pack in there is probably a factor of human
behavior rather than wolf behavior.”
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