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Biologist keeps close tabs on Wyoming's wolves
High in the hills, Jimenez tracks a pack notorious for killing cattle.

By Rebecca Huntington

GREEN RIVER LAKES ­ On a trail in the Upper Green River Valley, wolf biologist Mike Jimenez sees the first clue that the alpha female of the Green River Pack has passed this way.

Lying on the trial are dark coils that look more like locks of hair than scat. Kneeling down, Jimenez smells the droppings to confirm their source.

"That's wolf," he says, explaining that wolves have anal scent glands, which give off a distinct odor.

Jimenez knows wolf scat. He analyzed some 3,000 samples as part of his graduate studies. Jimenez collects the scat to use later as a lure for trapping wolves. Others will come in and sniff the scat and leave their own scent mark on top of it, he says.

So begins a day for the Fish and Wildlife Service's project leader for wolf recovery in Wyoming. One day last week, Jimenez is hiking across the expansive mountain basin on the spine of the continent about two hours south of Jackson to check on the Green River Pack. Biologists have been monitoring it closely since the service ordered the alpha male shot in July for attacking livestock.

The Green River alpha male is one of 13 wolves killed so far this year for killing livestock in Wyoming. Late summer into early fall are the peak season for such conflicts because cattle are congregated on federal land in the high country while wild game is dispersed and harder to find.

The Green River Pack had killed two calves and possibly more. The pair was suspected of killing cattle on the same allotment the previous year, but it was difficult to sort out which wolf pack was responsible. The Green River, Teton and Washakie packs all frequent the Upper Green and Union Pass.

This year, however, the Green River wolves were spotted on two calf kills. Jimenez said he hoped killing the alpha male would disrupt pack dynamics and break that pattern of behavior.

"The thought was, as these cattle got bigger, this female would not be able to kill cattle by herself," Jimenez says. He hoped she would go back to wild game, he says.

A little further up the trail, Jimenez finds another sign that she has been by ­ a perfect wolf print in the powdery dust. Of the scat and print, he says, "This is pretty fresh."

Nonetheless, she could be far gone by now. "She's all over the place looking for food," he says.

Killing wolves, such as the Green River alpha male, is a last resort when nonlethal tactics are unlikely to work, Jimenez says. Nonlethal tactics include increasing the number of riders watching livestock and chasing off wolves. But those strategies are impractical and don't work on large grazing allotments such as the Upper Green, he says.

"We try to do some things to stop it, but if we can't stop it, we resort to taking wolves out," he says.

Trapping wolves can have unintended consequences. This summer, a grizzly bear suffocated after being caught in a neck snare set for wolves near a cattle pasture in Sunlight Basin outside Cody.

"It was a screw-up," Jimenez says.

Initially, the snare had been set near a hole in the pasture fence, which was too small for a grizzly to get through. But a trapper moved the snare to another location where a small grizzly was able to get through the fence and caught.

"This was one that wasn't a good decision on our part," he says. The trap was moved.

Also in August, Jimenez made the decision to trap wolves near Daniel. The service had confirmed two sheep kills and suspected as many as 15, he says. Two wolves were trapped but died of heat before trappers returned, he says.

"We don't like trapping in the heat," he says. But he decided to risk it since the wolves were slated for removal anyway.

However, he had hoped to radio collar and release one wolf to get a better idea of its movements. A handful of wolves have been spotted around Daniel, and their origin is unknown.

Despite such mishaps, the once-extirpated species has thrived since 66 wolves were transported from Canada and released in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in 1995 and 1996.

At last count, there were 664 wolves in 44 packs in northwestern Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Of those, an estimated 217 wolves were in Wyoming, which includes Yellowstone Park.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has declared wolves in the Rockies recovered and is moving ahead with plans to remove the species from federal protection and turn over management to states. But before that can happen, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming must all have approved wolf management plans in place. Montana and Wyoming just finished their wolf plans, which the service is now reviewing.

The Wyoming plan has been controversial because it classifies wolves as predators across the state except in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, the John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Memorial Parkway, the National Elk Refuge and adjacent wilderness areas.

The predator classification means wolves may be killed at any time, by any means. Thus, eight wolf packs in Wyoming that roam outside those protected areas would be subject to unregulated killing across portions of their home ranges. Many of those packs' den and rendezvous sites, where the packs raise their pups, fall outside the protected zone. However, that protected zone would be expanded if Wyoming wolf packs outside the national parks fall below seven.

As the process of delisting wolves and turning over management to states grinds forward, management of the species in the meantime falls to Jimenez and his assistant, John Stephenson.

Later, Jimenez breaks out of thick timber into a broad valley of grass and marsh. This is the rendezvous site where the Green River mom leaves her pups while she goes off to hunt.

He hasn't checked on the pups for two weeks and isn't sure they're still here. Typically, the 5 to 6-month-old pups would still be at a rendezvous site. But Jimenez suspects the single mom might move them early, bringing them to kills since she is working alone.

After surveying the open meadow for a while and seeing no signs of wolves, he tries howling. He sounds like a siren, starting in a low tone, then increasing pitch and volume. Wolves have been known to respond to fire engines, he says.

On this day, he gets no answer. He then combs the meadow, looking for leg bones, wolf scat and matted grass, where the pups may have been rolling and playing.

"It doesn't look like anybody's been here," he says.

The pups' disappearance is a disappointment because the rendezvous site is remote with few human visitors, so it's secure, and cattle are no longer nearby.

"It's like having wayward teenagers," Jimenez says of the pups. The question is where have they gone.

Jimenez suspects they might be on Union Pass where days earlier he spotted their mom running with 2-year-old wolves dispersed from the Teton Pack.

The Green River Pack symbolizes just how well wolves are doing. In previous years, when alpha females lost their mates in spring or summer and were left to raise pups alone, biologists gave them a helping hand.

In 1999, for example, the Teton Pack's alpha male was struck and killed by an automobile, leaving a single mother to raise five pups. Jimenez and others hauled road kill to the rendezvous site where she was rearing her pups to ensure all would not starve.

In contrast, when the Green River mom lost her mate this July, she had to fend for herself. Biologists did keep an eye on her though.

"The recovery part of it is really done now," Jimenez says. "It's gone into management."

As part of the bargain to bring back wolves, the federal government promised to deal with livestock conflicts, Jimenez says.

"That was the trust that was made with the public," he says, "when wolves kill livestock that we would do something to stop it."

President of the Upper Green River Cattlemen's Association Albert Sommers says that it was not only a promise, but a legally binding agreement.

The association represents 13 different ranches, which are permitted to collectively run up to 7,598 cattle in the Upper Green River drainage and on Union Pass. Drought has kept those numbers down. The association has held the permit since 1916. Sommers' family was running cattle on the land even before it became the Bridger-Teton National Forest, he says.

The allotment has been hit not only by wolves but also by grizzly bears. Wyoming Game and Fish manages the grizzly conflicts and has trapped and relocated several bears this summer.

Relocating or removing grizzlies and wolves has helped, he says.

"When they removed the male wolf of the Green River Pack we were having several kills there and that seemed to end," Sommers says.

This is the first year the service has removed wolves from the allotment although ranchers have sustained confirmed losses due to wolves in previous years. "This hasn't been an automatic process," he says. "It's a chronic problem."

Citing personal losses, Sommers said he averaged 1.8 percent calf losses prior to 1995 when grizzlies started to become a problem.

Since then with increasing bear activity and the arrival of wolves, calf losses have increased steadily, reaching 7 percent last year, he says.

Ranchers won't know how bad this summer's losses are until they bring the cattle off the mountain, he says. And even then, tracking losses and the cause is tricky since scavengers often consume the evidence.

After failing to find the wolf pups at their rendezvous site, Jimenez heads to Union Pass the following day to check for the mother's radio signal.

Sure enough, she is on the pass and appears to have picked up a mate, wolf No. 267, a radio-collared 2-year-old from the Teton Pack. The alpha female is 3 to 4 years old.

Although finding a new mate might bode well for the Green River Pack's survival, Union Pass is brimming with temptation ­ the Upper Green River Cattlemen's stock.

But for the moment, "They seem to be doing OK," Jimenez says.

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