Wolf Packs Return To Wilderness After Venturing Near Private Land

Wolves released in Yellowstone National Park early this year all left the park and headed out, but stopped short of cattle ranches and chose to return to the wilderness.

Park biologist Doug Smith said their decision so far is one of the great successes of the federal wolf recovery program.

“It’s really gone better than we had hoped in that respect,” Smith said at a scientific symposium on predators under way this week in Yellowstone. “All three packs hit the ecosystem edge, and came back.”

The Soda Butte pack started down the Stillwater River and produced at least one pup near where the Gallatin National Forest gives way to private rangeland.

Park biologists prepared for problems. They met with local ranchers, warning that the wolves could go after cattle. They got ready for criticism.

But instead, the pack reversed course. They have since taken up a territory that straddles the northern boundary of the park, including a portion of Yellowstone and part of designated wilderness areas in the Gallatin National Forest.

“They chose to not only come back a little ways, but retreat all the way back to the core of the ecosystem,” Smith said.

Although the landscape changes from mountains to open range at the edge of the federal lands that make up much of the Yellowstone region, Smith suspects the wolves recognized something else: people.

Since all the wolves came from Canada, where they are legally hunted and trapped, they had learned to avoid people and populated spots. When they reached the edge of the wilderness, they probably associated roads and other human activity with people.

And when the wolves sought refuge, they did not flee toward Canada, as some critics had predicted, but they went back to Yellowstone.

Another pack repeated the process. After release from a holding pen in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley, the Crystal Creek wolf pack also set out on an exploratory foray. But they also returned to Yellowstone.