Officials Hope Breaking Up Wolf Pack Will Save Cattle Dominant Male, Female To Be Shipped To Glacier National Park

Federal wildlife managers will split a wolf pack in the mountains south of Helena in hopes of ending its attacks on cattle.

Five of the six wolves have been captured, including the dominant male, which is the chief suspect as the cattle killer. The alpha female remains free.

Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Wednesday the dominant male and another adult female will be relocated to Glacier National Park.

The alpha female’s three pups will be returned to the mountains between Boulder and Deer Lodge after cattle leave the federal grazing allotment there in October, Bangs said. Hunting season begins about the same time, which could provide unretrieved or wounded game for the young wolves to eat.

Bangs, attending a predator conference here, said he is hoping that, with no cattle around, the mother will teach the pups to hunt game this winter and they will stay away from cows when cattle return to the allotment next summer.

The pack moved into the Boulder-Deer Lodge area on its own in the past year, becoming the southernmost of nine natural wolf packs in Montana. At least three calves have been killed in the area.

Gov. Marc Racicot has strongly objected to releasing the pups in the area where they were captured, although he noted that is provided by federal wolf recovery rules.

“The wolf pups have fed off livestock calf carcasses, and the potential for future depredation is dangerously high,” Racicot wrote on Sept. 13 in a letter to Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt.

Racicot wants federal wolf managers to build a pen in Glacier and keep the wolves there for several weeks to acclimate them. Similar releases took place in Yellowstone National Park last winter, and three packs apparently are at home there now.

Such a plan would be “in the best interests of the pups, for wolf recovery, and for public tolerance of wolf management in Montana,” Racicot wrote.

However, such operations are costly, Bangs noted, and a budget bill passed by Congress cuts the wolf recovery budget in Montana by one third. President Clinton has said he may veto the bill.