Return Of The Wolf

Are they big and bad--or the inspiring symbol of the wild? Either way, packs are coming back. Now, can they return to their ancestral home in Yellowstone?

Under the Wedgwood-blue skies of northwestern Montana and central Idaho, where glacier-fed streams trickle through the fragile tundra, residents are undergoing an ecological Rorschach test. Hikers glimpse tensed, silver-gray beasts in whose yellow eyes they see the unbridled spirit of the wilderness, the embodiment of all that is wild and free. Ranchers find heart-shaped paw prints, too big to belong to a coyote or dog, crossing their muddy pastures-spoor in which they see something violently different: a ruthless killer, THE SADDAM HUSSEIN OF THE ANIMAL WORLD, as signs proclaimed at public meetings this spring; a beast that should be shot on sight, as letters to local papers urged.

And you thought the spotted-owl controversy was bitter. More than 70 years after Congress passed a law to eradicate the northern gray wolf, Canis lupus is coming back. In Wisconsin, 30 or 40 wolves recently arrived from Minnesota, where the wolf never died out, are struggling against disease and poaching. Packs from Montana's Glacier National Park, recent immigrants from Canada, are migrating south along old logging trails. So far, they've reached western Montana, where 40 to 50 wolves now roam, and central Idaho, where there are 10 to 20. But the atavistic drive to reclaim their ancestral lands has swept wolves into one of the West's nastiest faceoffs. Conservationists desperately want to protect the animals wandering back and, even more, to reintroduce the species to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Ranchers see that proposal as a deadly threat to their livestock, their way of life and even their children. Says Doug Crow of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "In 20 years in this business this is the damnedest issue I've seen. It brings out people's passion in a way that is frightening."

But not unexpected. The wolf as devourer of Little Red's grandmother and harasser of Little Pigs was likely born in the Middle Ages, when ravenous wolves unable to find traditional prey stalked the countryside during the Black Plague and attacked hapless travelers. (There is no record of healthy wolves trying to kill humans in North America-unlike wolf-dog hybrids, which have a decidedly more dangerous pedigree: page 50.) Men came to see in the wolf "the Devil, red tongued, sulfur breathed and yellow eyed," as nature writer Barry Lopez put it; "the beast of waste and desolation," as that great naturalist Theodore Roosevelt described it. Wherever white men stepped in America, they felt a fanatical duty to kill the beast. Between 1870 and 1877, government-sanctioned hunters killed 55,000 wolves every year. In 1914 the Feds hired hundreds of hunters to kill predators on U.S. land, including all the remaining wolves, once and for all. Wolves were trapped, shot and lured to carcasses laced with strychnine. By 1926 rangers had killed at least 136 wolves in Yellowstone, including 80 pups.

The effort to return the wolf to America's first national park is tightly bound up with a symbolism every bit as powerful as that which inspired this slaughter. Reintroduction isn't about anything so straightforward as saving a species: there are 1,550 to 1,750 northern gray wolves roaming wild in Minnesota, between 6,000 and 7,000 in Alaska and as many as 50,000 in Canada. The northern gray, officially listed as an "endangered" species in the Lower 48 (except in Minnesota, where it is "threatened"), is not about to disappear. For conservationists, returning the wolves to Yellowstone would show that the nation had changed its mind about the wild as something to be subdued-if not destroyed. Says Hank Fischer of Defenders of Wildlife, "[The wolf and its future] is one of the severest tests of how willing humankind is to share this planet with other forms of life

Canis lupus and humans have lived together since about 2 million years ago, when the wolf evolved into its present form. Beginning 13,000 years ago, paleolithic hunter-gatherers bred domestic dogs, Canis familiaris, from wolves. Why wolves? Perhaps our ancestors admired the bewitching beast's power, intelligence and complex social structure. The pack, says biologist Pat Tucker of the National Wildlife Federation, is just a furrier version of "our basic social structure, the hunter-gatherer."

Studies of the hunt have, more than anything, challenged the Big Bad myth. And no researcher has slain more wolf myths than America's leading wolf biologist, L. David Mech of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (F&WS). An opera buff, author and rugged outdoorsman, he has lived as closely with wolves as any two-legged creature with a Ph.D. Mech (pronounced meech) began his research in Isle Royale National Park, an island in Lake Superior to which wolves crossed via an ice bridge in 1949. Their arrival created a natural laboratory, in which Mech discovered that, for all their reputation as killing machines, wolves are more likely to lose the dinnertime battle. Moose and wolves will stare at one another and, after a minute, either the moose stroll away, the wolves retreat-or charge. Of the 160 moose that Mech observed encountering wolves, six-typically old, sick or weak-were killed. Others were ignored, ran away or fought off their attackers.

To catch dinner, wolves use tactics like a paleolithic hunting team's (anthropologists suspect that wolves taught early humans how to hunt large animals). They may appoint one pack member a decoy, to lunge and run around while the rest take the prey by stealth. Or a pack may stampede a meal into the waiting jaws of a hidden killer. Packs will also form two flanks to sweep an island and, in a pincer movement worthy of Norman Schwarzkopf, trap their prey on the tip.

Hooved animals can thank wolves for their ability to scamper up a mountain, close ranks or run fast. Evolutionary pressure by a predator hones the prey's survival skills and also keeps the dumb beasts from multiplying into mass starvation. On Isle Royale, the moose population had climbed to 2,500 in the mid-1930s before hundreds of the beasts died off due to overbrowsing. When wolves arrived, they kept moose numbers down, allowed vegetation to regenerate and herds to grow healthier. Both species reached a higher population density than recorded anywhere else, Such lupine natural selection could provide a much-needed brake in Yellowstone, where hundreds of elk regularly starve to death during severe winters. How many might wolves eat? In northern Minnesota, each wolf kills about 15 to 18 white-tailed deer annually. Yellowstone has some 30,000 elk, 3,000 mule deer and 2,700 bison.

Thanks to an ingenious new "capture collar" equipped with a radio transmitter and with tranquilizer darts embedded in its leather, wolf research is leaping beyond the question of which eats what to such puzzles as why wolves leave their natal pack. Using the dart collars-which can be triggered from 45 miles away-to down young males in a Minnesota pack, Mech collects blood samples and other data that might provide clues to why a wolf strikes out on its own, or "disperses." One hypothesis is that libido pushes the wolf; finding hormone levels associated with sexual maturity in the wandering wolf would support this idea. Or, the wolf might leave when pickings get slim; that would be confirmed if Mech finds the wolves have low weights or fat levels. Whatever triggers dispersal, Mech suspects the choice of where to wander has a genetic component.

The female was raising a litter in Montana two years ago when federal agents decided she threatened nearby cattle. They shot her with a tranquilizer dart and ferried her and the pups to Glacier. Maternal instinct paled beside the homing instinct. She abandoned the pups and headed back south. By January 1990 she had made her way to the Ninemile Valley-almost 100 miles south of Glacier.

The Ninemile female was lucky: a wandering wolf is an imperiled wolf, for if it enters another pack's territory "it runs the risk of being mauled or killed," says Mech. (Biologists suspect that some Minnesota wolves kill dogs because they see the dog as a lone wolf encroaching on their turf.) Wolves mark territory borders by spraying urine on telephone poles, rocks and tree stumps (a behavior whose evolution in dogs can be seen around fire hydrants). In Minnesota a few years ago, a pack badly wounded a deer, yet the prey managed to escape across a river into a bordering territory. The river might as well have been a wall: the territorial instinct was so powerful that the pursuing pack stopped dead. They left scent marks and headed home-hungry.

Scent can carry more detailed messages. Mech and his colleagues find that particular scents in urine can tell one pack member where the marking wolf has been, what it has eaten and when. Wolves also talk. Using oscilloscopes to measure vocalizations, biologists have linked whimpers to friendliness and odd chirps to flirtation. Piercing whines mean the conversation is over. Prolonged squeaks seem to serve as overtures to group howls, which might alert a rival pack that this territory is spoken for, or unite a pack separated during a hunt. Contrary to lore, wolves do not howl more during a full moon.

In April 1990, the Ninemile female gave birth to a litter of at least six, fathered by a lone wolf she met around Missoula. In July her badly damaged radio collar was discovered in a creek bed near the den; she had apparently been killed. Her mate cared for the pups but around Labor Day was killed by a hit-and-run driver. F&WS biologists Ed Bangs and Mike Jimenez began leaving the orphans road-killed deer in the woods so they would crave venison and not beef, and a month later biologists caught and radiocollared two of the pups.

The Ninemile saga shows that wolves will travel great distances to recolonize new territories. But without help getting around subdivisions and across highways, they probably cannot make it to Yellowstone. The park is one of three areas, with central Idaho and northwest Montana (map, page 46), that the 1982 Fish and Wildlife wolf-recovery plan identifies as sites where at least 10 breeding pairs should be returned. The animals could be introduced as an "experimental, nonessential population," like red wolves in North Carolina (below). That would give states more flexibility in managing wolves-killing them if they attacked livestock. "When wolves are returned to Yellowstone, wolf management outside the park will become a fact of life," says Mech. "The wolf is a controversial species and will require a different management approach than a trout:"

Some antiwolf Westerners also want wolves designated "experimental" before wolves make it to Yellowstone on their own. If the animals return by themselves, they will be accorded the full protection of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and states would have less leeway to kill or move them. "We have to have ways to take them if they leave the park," says Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming. "If a state relies on game to attract tourists, and the wolves eat ungulates, how else do we maintain the tourist industry?"

The Ninemile orphans soon taught themselves to hunt deer, thanks to the F&WS-catered venison. But they never touched cattle. A video made by one rancher shows the pups chasing grasshoppers and gophers but ignoring cows a few feet away. Once, they came within five feet of a sick cow unable to stand, and never touched her. Last April four pups (the other two had disappeared) crossed mountains into unfamiliar territory. They killed two 450- pound yearling steers but barely ate either. F&WS policy requires relocating any wolf preying on livestock. Biologists snapped a radio collar on a third pup and took all three to Glacier.

Do wolves regard ranch herds as fast food on the hoof? In Minnesota, wolves annually kill about one cow in every 2,000 within their range and one sheep per 1,000. A $100,000 compensation fund established in 1987 by Defenders of Wildlife has paid about $11,000 to nine livestock owners in Montana, who showed that wolves killed about 30 of their animals. But the program is no panacea: ranchers complain that it is difficult to meet Defenders' standard of proof that a wolf, and not something else, killed a steer or sheep. Ranchers may have to erect expensive fences and bring their animals into the barn more often. When the Ninemile pack took up residence near Bob Demin's 80 head of cows and their calves the father wolf strolled through his pasture while one cow was giving birth-the rancher moved calving mothers closer to the barn and stopped leaving dead calves on hills for vultures to finish off. "But we can't truck animals into the barnyard every night," says Kim Enkerud of the Montana Stockgrowers Association. "We're afraid livestock will have to be moved from federal lands" where ranchers graze herds at subsidized rates and have those lands swept clean of predators. (Last year the U.S. Department of Agriculture killed 95 wolves, mostly in Minnesota, that pestered livestock.)

In late May a Ninemile rancher saw a collared wolf Within days ranchers were reporting stock killed for miles around; none, it turned out, was killed by wolves. But then a collared female killed two lambs; it was "darted" and placed in captivity. On June 15 a rancher reported a 250 pound calf lost to a wolf; it turned out that the animal had died of an ulcerated rumen. Within three days the second male was found dead at the bottom of a lake; a rancher had shot and killed the collared female as she attacked his cattle, he claimed. F&WS agents are investigating. Score: two wolves killed illegally; one in captivity; three, fates unknown.

Many Western members of Congress side with their antiwolf constituents. Montana Rep. Ron Marlenee has compared wolves to cockroaches. Idaho Sen. Steve Symms told children that wolves "pose a real danger to humans." When Montana Rep. Pat Williams learned that the Park Service was mailing out information packets on wolves, he challenged "the appropriateness of providing the public with information about wolf reintroduction." Although the ESA mandates that federal agencies undertake "all methods and procedures necessary" to restore endangered species, the Park Service stopped. Montana Sen. Conrad Burns has predicted that once wolves are back in Yellowstone, "there'll be a dead child within a year."

Is that possible? Wolves do attack humans, but rarely. In Canada and Minnesota, in 1915 and 1970, wolves attacked dogs first and the people who protected them second. In 1982 a hunter was kicked and clawed, but not bitten, by a wolf near Duluth; he was wearing deer-scented clothes, and Mech suspects the wolf confused him with its prey. In 1987 a young girl was bitten by a wolf in Ontario after she shined a light in its eyes. Mech notes that none of the people was seriously injured. "If a wolf were really to attack a person like they attack prey," he says, "the result would be instant and deadly." He suspects the "attacks" are threats, or defensive actions. That is small comfort to mothers around Yellowstone. Several say they will not picnic in the park with their children if wolves are returned.

That is becoming a minority view. In a 1989 Park Service poll, Yellowstone visitors favored bringing the wolf back by a 6-1 margin; so did two out of three people in Montana. This spring the Wyoming Game and Fish Department found, to its surprise, that 44 percent of those residents questioned supported the wolf's return to the park; 34 percent opposed it. F&WS Director John Turner has tried to find a compromise to please both camps. "But some of my neighbors are swinging me from the yardarm," says the Wyoming resident. Congress may soon pass its most pro-wolf bill ever. In June the House voted to direct the Interior Department to implement the 1982 F&WS wolf-recovery plan, relocating 10 breeding pairs to each of the three designated areas. The Senate is expected to take up the issue soon. If the bill becomes law, wolves could howl in Yellowstone by 1994.

A parallel battle is raging in the Southwest over the Mexican wolf, or lobo. Virtually extinct in the wild, conservationists see its recovery as the most pressing wolf-restoration problem in the world. For a time, F&WS seemed to agree. Curtis Carley, the agency's Southwest wolf specialist, had four wild Mexican wolves captured for a breeding program about 10 years ago. He planned to use the Army's White Sands Missile Range as the reintroduction site, since it was the only nongrazing land large enough to support wolves and was already home to a herd of gemsbok, about 100 of which had been brought to the base in 1969. Then in 1987 the commanding general at White Sands wrote to F&WS saying that the base could no longer be considered as a release site. The stated reason: fear for the wolves' safety in a test-fire zone. Yet the gemsbok thrive.

The real reason, charge some biologists, may be that F&WS didn't want to fight nearby ranchers who despise lobo. "They're killing machines," says J. Victor Culberson of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association. "That's their mission in life." F&WS regional director Mike Spear proclaimed the Mexican wolf program all but dead and transferred Carley to wetlands management-in the and Southwest.

Last year environmental groups sued F&WS and the Defense Department. Both backed down, and the program revved up. New Mexico Gov. Bruce King came out in favor of releasing Mexican wolves in White Sands, and Arizona agreed to let F&WS consider areas in its southeast. Once the captive population of lobos reaches 75 to 100, a group of eight could be released at the chosen site, perhaps by 1994.

What man has destroyed, man may redeem. That carries costs: livestock will be attacked, and ranchers will need compensation. But more is at stake than money. "In wilderness," Thoreau wrote, "is the preservation of the world." If the gray wolf returns to Yellowstone, the park would become the only place in the Lower 48 states to contain all the species present when Europeans first reached America.

Last month ranchers in Ninemile sighted a young wolf-possibly one of the lost orphans. The world may not have been preserved, but it is one small step closer to being made whole again.

Gray wolves once roamed across nearly all of North America. But a bloody extermination program earlier this century left most of the survivors living in Canada and Alaska.

            Packs, which typically number from five to


          10, are hierarchies.  An animal's place determines 


                    when it can dig into a kill.

              Through physical force and social pressure, 


                the alpha pair usually prevent lesser


             wolves from breeding.  The top female may


              engage in chemical warfare, emitting a


             pheromone that stops ovulation in others.

              A new pack forms when a wolf leaves its


            family to establish its own territory: one


              Minnesota wolf walked 550 miles before


                          settling down.

They're cinnamon colored, a bit scrawny and painfully shy. And this fall, if all goes well, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will release a family of these red wolves into North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They will become the first endangered predators ever returned to a national park-but howls of protest, like those greeting the prospects of wolves in Yellowstone, are nowhere to be heard. It helps that red wolves fancy raccoons and rabbits, not sheep and cattle. But the real dealmaker, says F&WS biologist Warren Parker, was the round of meetings federal agents held with local officials, members of Congress and residents to reassure them that "the wolves don't wait at school-bus stops, don't dig up graves, don't lurk waiting to attack." What wolves do, it turns out, is bring in business. The eerie howls of wolves released in 1987 into North Carolina's Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge--one step removed from the limelight of a national park-has become a major tourist attraction. Manteo, N.C., has even adopted the animal as its symbol.

The rescue of the reds was a close call. In the 1970s, they numbered fewer than 100, down from the hundreds of thousands that once roamed from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. Federal biologists captured every one they could find in Texas and Louisiana and, through meticulous breeding, produced 17 lupine Adams and Eves with "95 percent of the genetic material that was originally red wolf," says Parker.

The 15 red wolves released into Alligator River have produced four litters, proving that animals born and raised in captivity can make it in the wild. Breeding pairs have also been released onto four islands off the Southeastern Seaboard. Each autumn they are recaptured, with their pups, to breed again; since 1987, 57 have been returned to the wild. Two more pairs have been in pens at Great Smoky since January. When one couple and its five scruffy pups (born in April) go free, they will wear radio transmitters so officials can retrieve any that trespass on private land.

The only cloud over the program is new research showing that the red wolf (Canis rufus), first described in 1851, may not be a true species at all. According to Robert Wayne of the Zoological Society of London and Susan Jenks of the University of California, Berkeley, the red may be a hybrid of the gray wolf (C. lupus) and coyote (C. latrans). In a paper recently published in the British journal Nature, they reported that DNA from red-wolf pelts collected between 1905 and 1930 all match either coyote or gray-wolf genes. Why, then, bother to ,'save" the red, when its genes are quite nicely preserved, thank you, in gray wolves and coyote? Partly because the absence of red wolves where grays and coyotes now live suggests that interbreeding has stopped, so the unique mix of genes in the red wolf is indeed endangered. There's a practical reason, too. Great Smoky is plagued by wild boars-a species introduced to the park in this century, They have no natural predators yet, but rangers hope the wolves will develop a taste for bacon.