Page 19 - Flathead Beacon // 7.9.14

FLATHEADBEACON.COM NEWS JULY 9, 2014 | 19
“WOLVES CAN BE LONG-DISTANCE DISPERSERS, SO THEY CAN LITERALLY GO HUNDREDS OF MILES WHEN THEY LEAVE THEIR PACK. THEY CAN GO VERY FAR, VERY QUICKLY.”
Kent Laudon, wolf management specialist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks
Montana in the 1930s and the adja- cent Canadian Rockies by the 1950s, but recolonized the areas in the 1980s. Between 1979 and 1997, researchers documented 31 of 58 collared wolves that dispersed, leaving their natal home range after separating from the pack.
“Wolves seem like they are pretty good at finding each other,” Laudon said. “When I took over there were about 12 packs in Northwest Montana in FWP Region One and Glacier Na- tional Park, and last year I documented 64 packs. And they all came from some- where.”
The Montana wolf population has steadily increased since 2005. Mini- mum wolf counts are conducted every year and approximately 627 were re- corded at the end of 2013.
The growth of the gray wolf popula- tion, from an extirpated animal, to en- dangered, to its delisting in 2011, has been a polarizing topic.
The 1995 reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park made national headlines, and was met with contention from hunters and farmers concerned for their livestock as well as biologists concerned about the intro- duction of wolves into areas already in- habited by other wolves.
According to Laudon, Canadian gray wolves began ranging into the United States in the late ’70s. In 1986, the first wolf den in the western United States in more than 50 years was documented in Glacier National Park. But none of the wolves in Northwest Montana were introduced and, as Laudon points out, “they had to come from somewhere.”
“Any time we find a missing wolf from somewhere else, we assume dis- persal data. It’s an important thing to understand that phenomena, and we certainly do understand it better now,” Laudon said.
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A wolf radio collar has been recovered in the North Fork Flathead River drainage near Glacier National Park 15 years after biologists collared a two-year old male wolf of the South Camas pack. COURTESY OF KENT LAUDON
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