Snowmobiles Move Wolves Into Idaho Backcountry Blizzard Grounds Plans To Move Animals Into Wilderness Area By Helicopter

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials used snowmobiles on Thursday to move eight Canadian gray wolves into central Idaho’s Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness for release.

Snowmobiles were blazing a 23-mile trail through seven-foot-deep snow to Dagger Falls, just upstream from Boundary Creek on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. Boundary Creek, about 45 miles northwest of Stanley, is a popular launching site for rafters.

Dagger Falls is about 15 air miles from Indian Creek, the site to which Fish and Wildlife Service officials had hoped to transport the wolves from Missoula by helicopter.

Instead, biologist Megan Parker said, about 20 people - including Wolf Education and Research Center staffers from Ketchum - operated 10 snowmobiles in blizzard conditions until about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday. The group camped on the trail Wednesday night and set out again Thursday morning.

The bad weather on Wednesday mirrored the first release of gray wolves in Idaho last January when biologists hoped to fly 15 of the endangered predators into the Church Wilderness. The aircraft were grounded by snow for several days with the wolves remaining in their transport boxes before finally being driven to the main Salmon River.

Earlier Wednesday in Missoula, officials had to shoot one male wolf bound for Idaho after it bit a biologist on the thumb as he was trying to put ice in the wolf’s transport box so the animal could drink. One of the box’s two doors hung up and the man reached in to free it.

“He got ahold of the thumb and wouldn’t let go. We’re lucky he didn’t bite off a hand or arm. They have the power to do it in a very short period,” said Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Laird Robinson in Missoula.

The agency’s policy calls for any wolf that bites a person to be put to death, then tested for rabies.

“Even though it was tested for rabies in Canada, that doesn’t mean too much,” Robinson said. “It’s a human health and safety issue. There’s no wolf worth a human life.”

The wolves caged since Monday were captured in British Columbia, as were the 11 shipped to Yellowstone National Park and released into one-acre pens there on Tuesday. Fish and Wildlife Service officials plan to release another 10 wolves in Idaho and six more in Yellowstone this weekend.