Wandering Wolves Get New Home On North Fork

Nez Perce tribal wolf biologists hope the wild country along the North Fork of the Clearwater River will hold a pair of wolves with a case of wanderlust.

The wolves were released Saturday after being penned at a remote ranch along the Selway River since tribal and federal wildlife agents recaptured them in southwestern Montana’s Big Hole country.

Ranchers there said the wolves were killing cattle.

Timm Kaminski, the tribe’s Idaho Wolf Project leader, said Monday that the pair have barely moved from the release site north of Headquarters.

The adult wolves were moved to Idaho to see if they would adopt pups from a Montana pair that have been implicated in livestock losses. Two of three pups placed in the one-acre pen were killed by the adults, apparently as they tried to feed on a deer carcass, Kaminski said.

The pups were taken from the Montana pack so they would not learn from their parents to kill livestock.

One 3-month old pup, a 30-pound female, remains in the pen and federal biologists hope to catch two other pups still with their parents. The pups will be released this winter when they are able to fend for themselves, Kaminski said.

He had hoped the Big Hole wolves would adopt the pups because that would help discourage the adults from traveling a long distance, perhaps returning to Montana. But when the attempt at creating an instant family failed, biologists decided to release them.

Kaminski said the fact that tributaries to the North Fork tend to run east and west, rather than north and south, might help keep the pair from repeating past journeys back to the Big Hole.

“We’re hoping the differences in the orientation of the terrain might help acclimate them to the area or at least delay them,” he said.

The female found her way back to the Big Hole last summer after she was captured and released at Fish Lake between the Selway and Lochsa rivers in Idaho. The male found his way home last winter after escaping from a pen at the Hornocker Wildlife Institute’s back-country research station at Running Creek Ranch. He was recaptured in April.

Since their release along the North Fork, tribal biologists checked in on the wolves by air.

“They’re within three miles of where we released them,” Kaminski said.