She didn't hear its howl or see it loping along a distant ridge.
But after a few hours, she found what she was looking for in the snow along a forest trail.
Wolves were added to the federal endangered species list in 1974 after being hunted to near extinction in the Lower 48 states.
Now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is preparing to remove the species from federal protection in the Northern Rockies, marking a watershed moment for one of history's most studied and controversial predators.
Although the so-called delisting is expected to start in late March, the future of the northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf remains uncertain.
Conservation groups plan to file lawsuits against the delisting, while Montana, Idaho and Wyoming prepare to assume full management of wolves within their borders, including possible wolf hunts this fall.
Rather than settling the wolf debate, the delisting promises to renew it.
“Wolves and wolf management have nothing to do with reality,” said Ed Bangs, the wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “The whole thing is about symbolism and rhetoric and the BS flying around from all sides instead of focusing on the science.”
Since the mid-1980s, the wolf population has grown from virtually nothing to more than 1,500 in the West, where they are revered as iconic symbols of wilderness and reviled as an insatiable threat to livestock, people and game.
“Wolves are very vicious, very cruel,” said Rod Hudson, a Bitterroot Valley cattle rancher who has lost several calves to wolves. “I see these people wearing T-shirts with wolves on them and it infuriates me. They think they're such a cute animal. Well, they're killing machines.”
Others say wolves are a keystone species in the West's ecosystem, along with grizzly bears and mountain lions.
“The ideological wars have been going on a long time about whether we should have these native predators,” said Seth Wilson, wildlife committee coordinator for the nonprofit Blackfoot Challenge. “A lot of people are unhappy about it, but we've got them now and we should move forward. It's a very daunting task, but we have practical solutions and good science to co-exist with these critters.”
In folklore, religion and mythology, wolves have been both feared and revered for centuries - from Dante's Inferno and Little Red Riding Hood to American Indian cultures and Hollywood.
Wolves were common across much of North America as late as the 1800s.
In Montana, they preyed on buffalo in the eastern grasslands and on deer, elk and moose in the western mountains.
But the state's human population was growing rapidly, spreading into once-remote areas where wolves held domain.
A worried populace passed Montana's first bounty on wolves in 1884, drawing more than 5,400 wolf hides for payment that year.
A federal bounty was adopted in 1915, leading to the elimination within a decade of wolves from most of the West.
By the 1930s, wolves were considered extinct in Montana except for a few that moved back and forth across the border with Canada.
Then, in the early 1980s, wolves from Canada started recolonizing northwest Montana near Glacier National Park, where the first den was confirmed in 1986.
Federal officials reintroduced wolves in 1995 and 1996 into Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness of central Idaho.
The naturally recolonized wolves are listed as endangered, while the reintroduced animals are considered “experimental,” although both populations have intermingled and grown rapidly.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has monitored the state's wolves since the mid-1990s. In 2000, FWP hired a wolf program coordinator and appointed a wolf management advisory council to develop a management plan in anticipation of delisting under the Endangered Species Act. The advisory council includes ranchers, hunters, wildlife advocates and other citizens.
Wolf populations were officially recovered in the Northern Rockies by 2002, when they reached at least 100 wolves and 10 breeding pairs in each of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Federal authorities approved Montana's and Idaho's wolf conservation and management plans in 2004, but Wyoming's plan was not approved until late last year.
In 2004, Montana started receiving federal funding to hire wolf field biologists and start implementing most of its wolf management plan, including research, managing conflicts with livestock and public outreach.
Over the past two decades, the Northern Rockies' wolf population has steadily increased to more than 1,500. Montana's population grew from 316 in 2006, including 21 breeding pairs, to more than 400 in 2007, including 40 breeding pairs.
Gray wolves, which were removed from federal protection in the upper Midwest in 2007, are expected to be delisted in the Northern Rockies in late February. The rule will take effect 30 days later, although lawsuits could delay the process.
“We don't believe the states' plans are adequate to guarantee the long-term survival of wolves,” said Suzanne Stone, a wolf specialist at Defenders of Wildlife, a national conservation group.
Stone said Montana's plan is comprehensive and recognizes wolves' role in a healthy ecosystem, but uses lethal control too often. Idaho's and Wyoming's plans are vague, inconsistent and allow wolves to be killed indiscriminately, she said.
All three states should allow wolf populations far above the federal minimum requirement because the region could easily support thousands of wolves without significant conflicts with people and livestock, Stone said. “There's a stranglehold on the species so it can't thrive here in the region.”
Montana, Idaho and Wyoming tentatively have adopted hunting seasons on wolves, which also can be shot for preying on livestock.
Montana's wolf management advisory council has recommended allowing up to 130 of the state's 400 wolves to be killed this year. The harvest should not reduce the state's total wolf population because of an expected increase from births and immigration, state officials say.
The FWP Commission set a tentative hunting season of Sept. 15 to Nov. 30 and bag limits that will vary each year depending on the wolf population, distribution and other factors in three management units in northern, western and southwestern Montana.
Wolf hunters can use rifles and bows, but trapping will not be allowed in the first hunting season. Licenses are $19 for residents and $325 for nonresidents. License holders can kill one wolf.
Federal regulations require each state to maintain a minimum of 100 wolves, including 10 breeding pairs. Montana's plan calls for a minimum population of 100 wolves, including 15 breeding pairs, which is defined as an adult male, adult female and two pups.
The plan, which reclassifies wolves from protected to a trophy game animal in need of management, is intended to balance a complex mix of biological, social, economic and political needs, state officials say.
Federal funding pays for the work of FWP's wolf management coordinator based in Helena, and four wolf specialists based in Missoula, Kalispell, Bozeman and Butte. A fifth specialist is to be hired soon.
Defenders of Wildlife compensates ranchers for livestock killed by wolves, although that compensation may end when wolves are delisted. FWP is considering a similar compensation program to take its place.
In Idaho and Wyoming, wolves live mostly within wilderness areas, but Montana is expected to have the biggest management challenge because many of its wolves live near ranches and a growing human population in the western part of the state.
In Montana, federal wildlife agents have shot dozens of wolves that killed livestock in recent years, far more than in Idaho and Wyoming.
As part of its management plan, Montana FWP last week sent agency employees and volunteers into the 1.5-million-acre Blackfoot River watershed to continue gathering data about wolves.
“It's a critical time, a big transition for wolf management,” said Liz Bradley, the FWP wolf biologist in west-central and southwest Montana, where about 30 packs have taken up residence.
On Monday, Bradley organized about 60 people who spread out on snowshoes, skis and snowmobiles across public and private lands where the grasslands of the Blackfoot and Clearwater valleys rise into the Garnet Range.
One of the search groups was led by Holder, an FWP wolf technician. She was joined by the owners and manager of the E Bar L Ranch, a fourth-generation guest and timber operation that covers 4,000 of its own acres and another 4,000 leased acres.
The group set out on snowmobiles, passing through meadows and evergreen stands as the snow-capped Swan and Mission mountains shined in the sun to the north.
Their eyes darted left and right, looking for pawprints crossing forest roads, which wolves often use as they hunt, mate and mark their territories, which average 200 square miles.
The group found many kinds of tracks - mouse, deer, elk, coyote, pine marten, rabbit, mountain lion, hunting dog and human hunter.
After a few hours, they noticed some big tracks in the snow. About five inches long and four inches wide, they had claw marks, symmetrical toes and a single lobe.
“That's definitely a wolf,” Holder said, measuring the prints and marking the location in a notebook and by global positioning system.
At nightfall, the Blackfoot Valley volunteers reported their findings - 14 sets of single and multiple wolf tracks. At least two packs are known residents of the Blackfoot watershed, while other packs and lone wolves pass through.
Bradley said the search helped biologists understand the wolf population and its movements around the Blackfoot, prime predator habitat where more wolves are expected to take up residence.
“It gives us a better idea of what's out there,” she said.
Bradley spends much of her time talking to landowners, ranchers and others about how to co-exist with wolves.
She discusses ways to deter wolves before a problem occurs, including cracker shells, fladry lines, electric fencing, range riders, filling in dens near pastures and removing livestock carcasses. Government agents kill wolves that harass livestock as a last resort, she said.
The resurgence of wolves in the Northern Rockies has prompted opposition from many ranchers, outfitters, hunters and politicians.
But records show wolves rarely attack people and account for less than 1 percent of all livestock losses. Overall elk and deer populations and harvest numbers also have remained strong in areas where wolves live.
Bangs, the federal wolf coordinator who's based in Montana, said he understands why many stockmen don't like wolves.
“A lot of older ranchers, their great-granddaddy killed off the last wolf, so their family history and culture and business interests are just against wolves,” he said. “A lot of ranchers have told me wolves are a beautiful part of nature, but they just don't want to be feeding them their cows.”
Bangs said federal officials will monitor wolf populations, distribution, biology and threats after delisting and will warn the states if they allow their numbers to drop too near the federal minimum.
“The federal and public trust of the states would be gone for good if they had to be relisted,” he said. “The states don't want us in their business, so I don't think it will be a problem, especially in Montana. They're doing a much better job than we did.”
Bangs said he's looking forward to getting out of the daily wolf business.
“When I came down here from Alaska 20 years ago, my goal was to recover and delist wolves,” he said. “The program's not a success until wolves are considered just another animal. It's the right thing at the right time.”
Many hunters say wolves devastate elk herds, but biologists say habitat conditions, harsh weather, predation and other factors all play a role in ungulate populations.
Mike Terzo, a hunter from the Missoula area, said most hunters hate wolves without good reason.
“These guys think they have a right to ‘their' elk, that wolves are eating ‘their' elk,” he said. “I used to hate wolves, too, but that's basically pure ignorance.”
Terzo said a growing number of conservation-minded hunters understand that wolves help maintain healthy elk herds and habitat, and that elk harvest numbers increase when wolves are around.
“Whenever somebody tells about the ‘damn wolves,' that's where I'm going to hunt because wolves go where elk are,” he said.
Hudson, the Bitterroot cattle rancher, said the Northern Rockies can tolerate wolves but only in small numbers in wilderness areas.
“I'm not opposed to totally eradicating them,” he said. “Our ancestors knew they were a serious problem and got rid of them 100 years ago and now we're bringing them back. Well, somebody's kid will eventually be eaten in their backyard. Then people will get all excited, but it'll be too late.”
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation says wolves are here to stay in the West.
The foundation favors removing wolves from federal protection and allowing states to manage them like other game species, so prey, predators and hunters can all flourish on the landscape.
Wolves are a “very heated subject,” said Mike Mueller, lands manager for the foundation. “Hunters have to keep educating themselves, and I think opinions will change as more good science-based information gets out to the public. That will influence some of the myths and questions and misunderstandings of it all.”
On the E Bar L Ranch in the Blackfoot Valley, owners Mary and Louis Vero say native predators are a welcome part of the landscape.
Grizzly bears started returning to the valley and surrounding mountains about a decade ago and wolves a few years ago, while mountain lions never went away. Species-protection laws have allowed all three populations to multiply.
The Blackfoot Challenge, a partnership of public agencies, ranchers and nonprofit groups, has taken steps in recent years to reduce conflicts between livestock and predators: installing electric fencing, removing cattle carcasses and hiring range riders to protect herds.
“We have to find a way to live with these predators,” said Mary Vero, who has lost two of her ranch's 70 horses to lions but none so far to wolves or grizzlies.
Vero, the granddaughter of one of the valley's first homesteaders in the early 1900s, wasn't going to participate in last week's wolf track search. But she changed her mind after deciding ranchers should never be too busy to keep learning about changing conditions.
It's possible to “communicate” with big predators to understand their habits and what they want in the West, where many forests and grasslands are rapidly giving way to residential development, she said.
At day's end, she stood on a mountainside, looking over the snow-covered valley as it turned pink in the sunset.
She worries about the growing number of electric lights she sees each night in the valley, a symbol of human encroachment on a countryside where light from the stars and moon used to be the only way to navigate the darkness.
“Where are the wolves and bears and lions going to go?” she said. “There's got to be some kind of balance in nature.”
Time to comment
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has extended the public comment period on its proposal to establish a wolf hunting season. Details on the tentative wolf-season proposal, and opportunities to comment, are available on the FWP Web site at fwp.mt.gov. Click “Montana Wolf Season.” Send comments by mail to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Wildlife Division, Attn: Public Comment, PO Box 200701, Helena MT 59620-0701.
What about wolves?
More information is available at: http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/species/ mammals/wolf/
or http://fwp.mt.gov/wildthings/tande/wolf.html
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Britteny wrote on Feb 11, 2009 9:11 AM: