Yellowstone Wolves Making Tracks Away From Holding Pens Biologists Find Wolves Feeding On Elk Carcass On Recent Outing

Five wolves released from a pen in the Soda Butte Creek drainage of Yellowstone National Park this week have left the area and have traveled east, park officials said on Wednesday.

Spokeswoman Cheryl Matthews said she did not have specific tracking data for the three males and two females, and biologists were trying to pin down more information through radio collars on the wolves.

The Soda Butte wolves are one of three packs released in Yellowstone in the past nine days. All have been confined to 1-acre pens since January in an attempt to acclimate them as part of the program to reintroduce the predator to the park.

They also are the first of the three packs to move any distance from their pens. Matthews said the other two packs - at Rose Creek and Crystal Bench - continue to remain near their confinement area.

Biologists checked the Crystal Bench pen Tuesday and found four of five wolves still in the pen, although meat left nearby was gone and tracks were “all over the place” outside the pen, Matthews said.

“They definitely had been out and they have been exploring,” she said.

One of the black males living there was outside the pen and began howling after the men arrived.

The biologists had taken 60 pounds of meat with them “mainly to prompt the animals to continue to explore” the territory, Matthews said.

However, the biologists also discovered an elk carcass about onethird of a mile from the pen and the wolves had been feeding on it. It was impossible to tell if the wolves killed the elk or if it was a winter kill. Matthews said there will be no more feeding the wolves and the biologists wouldn’t have packed in the meat if they had known the wolves had been feeding on dead elk.

“Once the (biologists) realized the wolves are coming and going, they looked around, tied the meat outside the pen, and got out of there.”

At the Rose Creek pen, radio signals indicate the three wolves there remain close to the pen. Those wolves also appear to have been eating a dead elk, although nobody knows if the wolves killed it.