Wolf Transplant To Start Again Next Week

Federal biologists expect to begin capturing about 30 wolves in British Columbia early next week for transplanting to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho, wolf recovery chief Ed Bangs said Monday.

If all goes smoothly, the first wolves in this year’s shipment to Yellowstone should arrive by the end of next week, said Bangs, a biologist heading the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s wolf recovery program.

“We’re going full speed ahead,” Bangs told The Billings Gazette.

The program began last year with an initial shipment of 14 wolves to Yellowstone.

Half of the 30 wolves biologists plan to catch this year will go into acclimation pens in Yellowstone, while the other half will be freed in the Idaho wilderness.

Although the lack of an approved federal budget makes the immediate source of funding for this year’s $200,000 transplant operation unclear, Bangs said there should be enough money to pull it off.

As much as $100,000 may be donated by environmental groups, which have already supplied $50,000 that went toward early tracking of wolf packs in northern British Columbia, Bangs said.

“It looks like they could pay the majority of the costs,” he said.

“Their support is the only reason we’re on schedule.”

If this year’s transplant of about 15 wolves is as successful as last year’s, no further shipments of the endangered species to Yellowstone may be necessary, Bangs said.

Biologists expected the first wolves moved to Yellowstone would not reproduce during their initial year there and had projected that some 30 percent of the wolves would either die or be killed.

Their estimates were low on both counts.

Two of the three wolf packs hauled to the park a year ago produced a total of nine pups after their release.

Only two of the wolves died: one adult male was killed illegally near Red Lodge and one pup was hit by a delivery truck.

With a total of 21 wolves left, the wolf recovery program has recorded a mortality rate of just under 10 percent.