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Removing wolves would be problem, biologists say Population is booming and animals would be hard to track By MICHAEL MILSTEIN Gazette Wyoming Bureau GARDINER - Even if higher courts uphold a Wyoming judge's ruling that the federal wolf reintroduction program is illegal and the wolves released in Yellowstone and central Idaho must be removed, there may be no practical way to remove them, biologists said this week.
 Gazette file photo Yellowstone Park wolves eat an elk carcass in this 1997 Gazette file photo. "We couldn't catch them all," said Ed Bangs, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's wolf recovery program. "It would take a long time - years at least - to even try." More than 300 yearling and adult wolves now live in Yellowstone, central Idaho and northwestern Montana, the three recovery areas specified in the government's recovery plan, and as many as 100 pups born this spring will add to the booming population. Some but not all of the older animals wear radio collars and even those roam millions of square miles of often-rugged terrain, making them nearly impossible to track down and remove, Bangs said. Wolves are smart, too, and would soon learn to evade airplanes or helicopters carrying crews looking to capture them. "It doesn't take them long to realize that when they hear a helicopter, they should head into the trees," Bangs said. Bangs and other wolf authorities spoke at a meeting this week organized by the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife in advance of a court hearing scheduled for today in Denver on the appeal of a decision by federal judge William Downes of Wyoming that wolves were introduced illegally and should be removed. However, one of the three appeals court judges appointed to the case was ill and the hearing was postponed. No action has yet been taken on Downes' ruling because he immediately stayed the ruling pending the inevitable appeals. The court case pits the Wyoming Farm Bureau and its parent American Farm Bureau Federation, the Mountain States Legal Foundation and a Wyoming couple against the federal government. Many environmental groups have intervened on the side of the government to keep the existing wolf recovery program intact, and Defenders of Wildlife has pledged to continue the fight all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. A decision by the appeals court is likely to take at least six months and an appeal of that decision could continue the case for years, by which time wolf numbers will have grown even larger, officials said. Authorities now say they hope to begin the process of removing wolves from the federal Endangered Species List in 2002. Downes' decision hinged on an element of the reintroduction that designated wolves in Yellowstone and central Idaho as experimental populations, allowing ranchers to shoot wolves they saw attacking their livestock. Downes found that the special designation effectively downgraded protection for any wolves already in residence in the two areas that would have otherwise received the full protection of the Endangered Species Act, preventing ranchers from shooting them. Federal authorities had used the experimental population designation to make wolf reintroduction more palatable to ranchers worried that wolves would damage their herds. Defenders of Wildlife has also reimbursed ranchers more than $74,500 for livestock lost to wolves. Wolves reintroduced starting in 1995 have rapidly "filled the void" left by their extermination in Yellowstone earlier in this century, said park biologist Doug Smith. During capture operations to attach radio collars to some park wolves this spring, one male wolf weighed in at 140 pounds, far above the average of about 100 pounds. Yearling male wolves in Yellowstone have averaged about 95 pounds compared to the average elsewhere of about 65 pounds, Smith said. The wolf weights suggest the wolves are healthy and eating well and that Yellowstone "may be some of the best wolf habitat in the world." Elk make up about 90 percent of the diet of wolves in Yellowstone, but studies show that the park wolves are "very selective killers," and do not simply hunt elk at random, Smith said. About half of the elk wolves kill in the park are calves and another 35 percent are cow elk with an average age of 10. Because the prime reproductive age of cow elk ranges from two to nine years old, it's clear that wolves tend to kill older, infirm elk, not the strongest animals that can still contribute to the population, Smith said. By contrast, the average age of elk killed by hunters during the special late season hunt near Gardiner is about 5, he said. "What wolves are taking, I think it's safe to say, is different than what hunters are taking," Smith said. Bull elk make up the remaining 15 percent of elk killed by wolves and are usually killed during the late winter when snow is deep and the strength of the bull elk may be waning. Population models before wolf reintroduction predicted a 5 percent to 20 percent decline in elk numbers because of wolves, but Smith said it's too early to tell what the true decline will be. It will depend largely on whether Yellowstone elk compensate for wolf predation by increasing their reproduction. The current 68 percent rate of reproduction by elk on the park's northern range is lower than any herd in Montana, possibly because much elk habitat is full. Wolves have killed about 10 bison during the past winter, which have mainly been young, old or injured animals, Smith said. "They are killing the vulnerable bison," he said. He said carcasses of animals killed by wolves have provided food for many other species including grizzly bears that have commandeered wolf kills, ravens that reliably swoop onto the scene no more than five minutes after a wolf park makes a kill, coyotes and a multitude of smaller species from rodents to insects. "You're going to see an incredible increase in biodiversity" as a result of wolf reintroduction. A total of 12 wolf packs now live in Yellowstone and the surrounding national forests, and 11 have shown signs of breeding and producing pups this spring. He said the strength of Yellowstone's wolf populations represent a "success beyond anyone's belief" and probably ranks among the top five wildlife success stories of the century.
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