Читать книгу The Rise of Wolf 8 - Rick McIntyre - Страница 13

3

My First Wolf Sighting

WHEN I FINISHED up in Big Bend in early May 1995 and began driving north toward Yellowstone, my goal for the coming summer was to see at least one of the newly released wolves. I knew the wolves brought down to the park had been captured in areas of intensive wolf hunting and trapping. Mortality there due to humans was often 40 percent annually. That meant they had good reason to be afraid of people and would want to avoid them. I hoped that if I did a lot of backcountry hiking I might get lucky and get a glimpse of a wolf. I would be living again at Tower Junction, a few miles from where the Crystal Creek wolves had been released. That would give me a better opportunity of seeing one of them.

I reached the park’s Northeast Entrance on the evening of May 12 and drove west toward Lamar Valley. When I got there, I saw Bob Landis, the wildlife documentary filmmaker I had known in Denali, parked on the side of the road. He told me he had been filming the six Crystal Creek wolves, but they had slipped into the trees just before I arrived. I had missed them by minutes. I looked for them anyway, then, feeling discouraged, I drove on to Tower and moved into my trailer, thinking I had missed my one chance of seeing wolves that year.

I got up early the next morning and drove the ten miles east to Lamar. When I arrived at around 6:00 a.m., all the Crystal wolves were in plain sight about a half mile south of the road. I saw the black alpha male, the whitish alpha female, and their four young sons, now about a year old. The smallest wolf in the pack, the gray yearling, stood out, his dull fur in stark contrast to the sleek coats of his three bigger black brothers. My goal had been to see one wolf that summer and, on my first full day back in the park, I was watching six wolves roaming Lamar Valley.

As I observed the pack, several people pulled over and asked what I was looking at. I had the same spotting scope I had used to view the East Fork pack in Denali, and I let those visitors look through it at the distant wolves. When they saw the wolves, their faces shone with joy and excitement. More people stopped, and I helped them all see the wolves. Most of them commented on the beauty of the alpha female, the majestic appearance of the huge alpha male, and the gorgeous coats of the three black yearlings. No one said anything about the little gray, wolf 8.

The alpha female, wolf 5, marked an old elk carcass site with a squat urination and scratched the ground with her hind legs. As she walked off, the alpha male, wolf 4, came along and did a raised-leg urination over her scent mark, then scratched the site with both hind legs. Wolves have scent glands between their toe pads, so the scratching enhances the marking of their territory. Any other wolves coming along would understand that an alpha pair had marked this site. The Crystal wolves were claiming Lamar Valley as their own.

The female continued in the lead and the other five followed. As I was soon to learn, it is the alpha female who makes most of the decisions for the pack, such as choosing the direction of travel, and the rest of the wolves, including the alpha male, follow. The pack approached a big bison herd. Several of the bison glanced at the approaching wolves but showed no concern. Mature bull bison can weigh up to 2,000 pounds, and cows get up to 1,000 pounds. Since the average weight of adult wolves is around 100 pounds, bison are ten to twenty times heavier. Most of the bison did not even bother to stop grazing. The alphas, for their part, showed no interest in the bison and moved on.

I later realized there were no bison where these wolves came from. In Alberta the Crystal wolves would have specialized in hunting elk and deer. When young pups start to accompany adults on hunts, they learn what prey animals to pursue by watching older pack members. In the alphas’ home country, dinner looked like deer and elk. Biologists call that the predator’s prey search image. As wolves travel, they search for animals that match what they think suitable prey looks like. For the Crystal alphas, the Yellowstone bison did not yet fit that image.

Unlike their parents, the four yearlings were curious about this new species, and they began following a big bull that was walking toward the herd. Soon the lead black yearling got to within fifteen yards of him. The huge bison stopped and looked back at the approaching wolves. All four yearlings paused, then three of them, including the little gray, continued forward. The lone bull moved on and soon joined the other bison. As the three yearlings trotted toward the herd, several bison looked up. The brothers stopped and milled around, hesitant to get any closer now that many of the bison were staring at them. The alpha pair were intently watching the yearlings and the herd. At that moment, the bison charged. Clearly intimidated, all four young wolves spun around and ran back toward their parents.

The pack regrouped and continued on its way. The alphas soon spotted a herd of about 150 elk, a perfect match for their prey search image. A cow elk might weigh up to 500 pounds and a big bull as much as 700 pounds. That is much bigger than a wolf, but a more reasonable size for a pack to target than a bison. When the elk ran off, the wolves did not give chase. Instead they advanced slowly. The elk stopped and looked back at the pack, then moved toward the wolves. Since wolves had been back in the park for only about six weeks, these elk were probably still trying to figure out how dangerous they were and how to react to them.

The herd got to within fifty yards of the pack. At that point the elk must have decided that the wolves were a threat, and they began to run again. That set off two of the black year-lings. They chased the herd, but only at a third of their top speed. The rest of the pack stayed where they were and watched. The herd split in two, and now just one yearling was left in the chase. When the elk stopped, he stopped. He stared at the subgroup he had decided to follow, and they stared back at him. I looked back at the alphas. They were still just watching. I got the impression they were evaluating the condition of the elk and had not seen any slow individuals or any that showed signs of weakness that might enable the pack to catch and kill one.

As I accumulated more sightings of wolves interacting with elk, I saw that an average healthy elk can easily outrun pursuing wolves. The top sprinting speed of an elk is around forty-five miles an hour while the maximum for a wolf is about thirty-five miles an hour. To put that in perspective, Olympic champion Usain Bolt runs a 100-meter race at an average of twenty-three miles an hour. In a sprint with a wolf and elk, he would come in last. An experienced older wolf does not waste energy chasing elk that are in good condition because the odds of killing one are too low. The alphas moved on and the yearlings rejoined the pack. I soon lost the wolves in a forest.

I learned a lesson that morning. Sunrise at that time of year was around 5:45 a.m., but there was enough light to see wolves by 5:15 a.m. I had arrived at the parking lot at 6:00 a.m. and had missed forty-five minutes of potential wolf sightings. From then on, I vowed to get up earlier, about 4:00 a.m., so I would have time to eat, get ready, then drive the fifteen minutes from Tower to Lamar to arrive by first light. I did not want to miss anything due to sleeping in.

I did not see wolves the next three mornings, but on the evening of May 16, I spotted a grizzly and a bald eagle as I was scanning for the pack. A herd of elk were staring at a spot in a meadow with concern. I swung my scope in that direction and watched that site. A black yearling, who had been hidden to me, eventually got up there. That sighting taught me to pay attention to prey animals when they are all looking in the same direction.

That evening I saw three species that were on the endangered species list at that time: grizzly bear, bald eagle, and wolf. Neither the bear nor the eagle paid any attention to the wolf, but I would later see both species greatly benefit by having wolves back in the park. Both are scavengers, and we eventually realized that the increase in Yellowstone grizzlies in the coming years was due partly to the free meat they got from wolf kills.

During those early weeks I frequently stopped in at the park headquarters in Mammoth Hot Springs, where Mike Phillips and Doug Smith had their offices. I got to know them and filled them in on the wolf sightings I was having in Lamar Valley. Back then the official name of the reintroduction was the Wolf Restoration Project, but soon everyone was shortening it to the simpler Wolf Project, and that name continues to be used today.

WHILE I WAS having those early sightings of the Crystal Creek wolves, there was a major ongoing story involving the Rose Creek pack. The Rose trio spent their first week of freedom exploring the region near their release point, about five miles east of the Crystal Creek pen. Then the female yearling, wolf 7, broke off from the adults. On her own, she learned to be a master hunter and killed elk by herself. The following year she would join up with wolf 2, one of the black Crystal Creek brothers, to form the Leopold pack. I was to spend many hours observing the new pair.

After the young female left them, the Rose Creek pair moved east, then northeast, ending up out of the park near the town of Red Lodge, Montana, fifty-five miles from the Rose Creek pen. The alpha female, wolf 9, was nearing the end of her pregnancy and began to restrict her movements in that area. On April 24, 1995, Mike Phillips did a tracking flight and saw the pair together, just inside Custer National Forest. The alpha male left the den site later that day and went out on a hunt.

Doug Smith did a flight two days later and got the female’s signal from the same area. The male’s signal was not there, so Doug circled the surrounding area. When he finally picked it up, it was on mortality mode, indicating 10 was likely dead. Wolf radio collars have a motion sensor. If no movement is detected over a period of four hours, the beeps per minute double. His body was later found, and Chad McKittrick of Red Lodge was eventually convicted of killing an animal protected under the Endangered Species Act and spent time in jail. McKittrick shot wolf 10 on April 24.

On the day of her mate’s death, 9 gave birth to a litter of pups on private land, five miles from where the alpha male had died. Joe Fontaine of the US Fish and Wildlife Service discovered the den site ten days later and confirmed the presence of pups. He got a count of seven. The site was just a shallow depression under a tree. Carcasses were put out in the area to help the new mother survive. Newborn wolf pups cannot regulate their own temperature and must snuggle up to their mother to keep warm. If she became desperate for food and went out on a hunt, her pups might die from hypothermia before she got back to the den.

Since the den site was just four miles from downtown Red Lodge, Mike and Doug decided to recapture the mother and pups and put them back in the Rose Creek pen. On May 18, Carter Niemeyer of the US Fish and Wildlife Service caught 9 near the den in a padded leghold trap placed near some scat from her mate that he had collected from the Rose Creek pen. The crew then went to get the pups.

From his tracking flights, Doug knew that 9 had moved her litter to a new site. Joe walked uphill to that new location, then made low calls, hoping the pups might think their mother was approaching. He heard whimpering in response. He looked in the direction of the sound and spotted a group of pups. They all ran off, except for one that stood its ground and stared at him before following the others into a chamber embedded in a jumble of talus rocks.

Doug, with his thin frame and long arms, reached in and pulled out the three-week-old pups, one by one. There were seven. Seven was the original pup count, but on a hunch that there might be one more, Doug grabbed a stick, poked around, and made contact with something that felt soft. He pulled out the stick and saw a piece of fur caught on the tip, indicating one last pup might be at the back of the den. It was too far to grab by hand, so he got a pair of Leatherman pliers and reached in as far as he could. The pliers closed around something. Whatever it was, the animal struggled against Doug as he pulled it out. It was an eighth pup, a black male.

Mark Johnson, the project’s veterinarian, had examined the first seven pups (four females and three males) and determined they were all healthy. That eighth pup, the one that had struggled against Doug, was also in good shape. Mark, due to his years in veterinary practice and working with wild wolves, is very experienced when it comes to recognizing dogs and wolves as they get older. He later told me he believed that the eighth pup grew up to be wolf 21, the most famous male wolf in Yellowstone’s history. As an adult, 21 would weigh up to an estimated 130 pounds, but on that day, at an age of twenty-four days, he was just 5 pounds.

The mother and her eight pups were loaded into a helicopter and flown back to the Rose Creek pen. During the flight the pups were free to roam around the interior of the helicopter, but 9 was in a cage. I was out that day and saw the helicopter flying to the site. The wolves were scheduled to stay in the pen for six months, through mid-October, to allow the pups to grow larger and have a better chance of survival on release. Carcasses would be dropped off in the pen twice a week.

The birth of nine pups (eight to the Rose Creek pack and one to the Soda Butte wolves) that first spring was unexpected. No one with the project had thought the wolves would breed while in captivity. But the death of the Rose Creek alpha male so soon after release canceled out much of the excitement over the birth of the pups. However, wolf 10 had made a major contribution to the Yellowstone gene pool before losing his life, and he would live on through the pups he fathered and through the many wolves descended from them. He was the founding father of a dynasty that continues in Yellowstone today.