Wolves In North Idaho

North Idaho has a wolf story, too. It’s the tale of B48, a good-sized male who didn’t just travel into the St. Joe River valley this year. He made a family there.

The wolf - gray, and marked like a German shepherd - turned up about 15 miles east of St. Maries last spring. By summer, researchers discovered that B48 and a female wolf had started a pack in the Marble Creek drainage.

B48 is the first radio-collared wolf to arrive this far north since federal wolf reintroduction began in Idaho in 1995.

Wolf sightings in the country around the St. Joe sent a shock wave through many in the ranches and farms around St. Maries. Anti-wolf crusader Ron Gillett, a Stanley outfitter, spoke to an angry crowd this fall. Ranchers here say they fear for their livestock. Idaho wolves are classified as experimental, nonessential populations: Ranchers can legally kill wolves caught attacking their livestock. But wildlife officials were unable to prove that wolves killed several animals this year.

Meanwhile, biologists with the Nez Perce Tribe who monitor recovery efforts are still trying to figure out how many pups the new pack has. A crew visited Marble Creek this fall, but thick brush slowed its progress and obscured views of the pack.

B48 probably wandered away from an established pack near the Bitterroot divide along the Montana border. His mother is a Canadian female transferred to the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in 1996. His father is a male originally radio-collared in Glacier National Park in 1990.