In 2006 the young, 80-pound female pictured above was collared and became known as Idaho wolf B-300. She dispersed from her family, the Timberline pack, in 2007. Driven by biology to find a mate, she headed west and soon came to the brink of Hells Canyon, the deepest river gorge in North America, and the border between Idaho and Oregon.
Though no one recorded this moment in her journey, I can imagine her standing at the snow-dusted brink of Hell's Canyon at more than 7,000 feet elevation. A cold wind ruffles her fur as she looks to the sky and howls. Hearing no reply, she starts down a steep, rugged slope, past granite outcroppings and dangerous drop-offs. Sometimes she knocks rocks loose and they bounce away, down, down, down. Sometimes she slips on the dry, barren slope and struggles to keep from following the plummeting rocks.
When she reaches the Snake River she has dropped about 6,000 feet in elevation. There’s no snow in the canyon bottom, and the air is not as cold. But when she drinks from the river, she feels the water’s chill. She looks upriver, downriver, and across. She howls and listens. Hearing only the river and the wind, she wades in and wolf paddles across to the other side. She steps out of the river, spreads her front legs wide, and shakes. Drops of the Snake River fly into the air, glisten in the sun, and freckle the ground around her.
She starts the long, steep climb out of the canyon. Without gravity pushing her downhill, the climb may be safer than the descent, but it’s not easy. As she ascends, her head droops and her tongue hangs out. When she finally reaches the top of the canyon and steps onto flat ground, she’s in Oregon, though that line on a map means nothing to her. The “where” of her journey is not important. But the “why” of her journey is: She seeks the sight, sound, or scent of a possible mate.
B-300's story began when sixty-six gray wolves were captured in 1995 and 1996 by biologists in the Canadian Rockies. Thirty-one were released into Yellowstone National Park where hunting is not allowed. Thirty-five were released into central Idaho wilderness where hunting would come and go with a vengeance.
The benefits of the Yellowstone reintroduction are well publicized. Less attention has been paid to the benefits of the Idaho reintroduction and the importance of state and federal protection for wolves. But those protected Idaho wolves—like B-300—fostered the return of wolves to Washington, Oregon, and California. Those wolves helped increase the size and genetic health of the Lower 48’s wolf population.
The strategies for the release of wolves into Idaho and Yellowstone differed. Many of the wolves sent to Yellowstone were related, captured in small groups from different packs. The biologists hoped that these related wolves would stay together within the park. The wolves sent to Idaho were mostly unrelated. The biologists hoped that they would disperse, survive, find mates, and start packs throughout the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the largest forested wilderness in the Lower 48.
Not only were the release strategies different, so were the welcomes. Carter Niemeyer, who collared B-300 and was intimately involved with the reintroduction, writes in his memoir Wolfer that wolves were welcomed into protected Yellowstone. But in Idaho, “The state’s official position on wolves from the beginning was simple: The animals weren’t welcome.”
Welcomed or not, wolves spread throughout Idaho. Protected by the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA), they safely found mates and created packs. By the end of 2003, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) counted thirty-seven Idaho wolf packs. One of the packs discovered that year was B-300’s Timberline pack, named after Timberline High School in Boise with the wolf as the school’s mascot.
The FWS reported not knowing the origin of the wolves that created the Timberline pack. But those wolves, or their ancestors, almost surely came from Canada, perhaps on their own, dispersing into Idaho or Montana. Or they were shipped in from Canada as part of the capture and reintroduction.
When B-300 climbed out of Hell’s Canyon, she became the fifth disperser to reach Oregon. Yet she was alone. Of the first four arrivals, one had been unceremoniously carted back to Idaho, one was hit and killed by a car, and two were shot--even though they were ESA protected. Given this dismal record, her future was uncertain even with federal protection.
In January of 2008, B-300 was videoed by Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) about 150 miles from where Niemeyer had collared her in Idaho. Since the FWS figures an average dispersal in the Northern Rockies covers 60 to 70 miles, her journey was exceptional.
B-300 would not remain alone much longer. Another Idaho wolf—the male pictured above—also negotiated the Snake River Canyon in early 2008.
Protected by the ESA, the two travelers would find one another and become the first breeding pair in Oregon since 1947. They would become the mother and father of Oregon’s wolf recovery. Both would be collared by ODFW. B-300 would now be OR-2 (the second wolf collared in the state) and her mate would be OR-4.
OR-4 would prove to be as exceptional as OR-2. ODFW reported that he would gather food for their pups from as far as 25-30 miles away. Russ Morgan, ODFW wolf biologist, would eventually tell a reporter about OR-4, “A lot of what we know about wolves in Oregon came from this wolf.”
The family of these two dispersers would be called the Imnaha pack. Some of their pups are pictured above.
The successful dispersal and mating of OR-2 and OR-4 would benefit the survival of their species in a number of ways. According to a 2021 study, dispersal allows for genes to flow between populations and helps the animals survive disease and environmental disruptions such as those caused by climate change. Dispersal can keep small local populations from disappearing. Dispersal enables the colonization of new habitats.
But successful dispersal requires protection, and in March of 2008 wolves in the Northern Rockies region lost their federal ESA protection. The Northern Rockies includes Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, a corner of Utah, the eastern portion of Washington, and the eastern portion of Oregon where the Imnaha pack resided. A number of conservation groups challenged the delisting and by July of 2008 ESA protection was restored. But the endless fight over whether to protect or kill wolves had just begun.
In April 2009, OR-4 and OR-2 had a litter of pups. One of the litter—a male—would prove to be even more exceptional than his parents. This pup, pictured below, would eventually be collared and known as OR-7.
But OR-7 arrived into an increasingly dangerous world. The same month he was born, wolves in the Northern Rockies (except in Wyoming) were again delisted from the ESA. Though conservation groups challenged that delisting, by September a federal judge declined to stop wolf hunts in Idaho and Montana.
Just how unwelcome wolves were in Idaho became painfully obvious when more than 29,000 wolf tags were sold in the state. From that hunt and other human causes, 249 unprotected Idaho wolves would perish in 2009, according to Idaho Fish and Game (IDFG) records.
Fortunately OR-7 and the Imnaha pack were still protected from hunting by Oregon law. But that state protection was never intended to last forever.
In August of 2010 a federal judge restored ESA protection for wolves in Montana and Idaho. While conservation groups had won that battle, the war against wolves rumbled on to the next battlefield: Washington, D.C.
In April of 2011, Montana Senator Jon Tester and Idaho Representative Mike Simpson inserted a rider on a must-pass appropriations bill so that wolves in the Northern Rockies again lost ESA protection. This was the first time that Congress had legislatively delisted an endangered species. And the rider said that the delisting could not be challenged in court. (This decade-old immunity from judicial review is the reason that conservation groups can’t fight for Northern Rockies wolves in court but instead have had to petition the FWS and Department of Interior to emergency relist them.)
In August of 2011 a federal judge upheld the congressional delisting and paved the way for fall wolf hunts in Idaho and Montana.
Just one month later in September, OR-7 left his birth pack. He was a little over two years old—typical disperser age—and following his biological drive to find a mate, just as his parents had. Obviously, he knew nothing of the battle over whether to protect or kill him and his kind. Had he headed east through Hells Canyon and into Idaho, he could have died along with the 281 unprotected wolves IDFG reported killed in Idaho that year.
Instead, for reasons of his own, he headed southwest and then south. In a future post, we’ll pick up the journey of this descendant of protected Idaho wolves and his impact on the size and health of the wolf population in the Lower 48.
Earth Justice produced an excellent timeline of attempts to list and delist wolves from protection.
Award-winning Indie author Rick Lamplugh writes and photographs to protect wildlife and wild lands.
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Photo Credits:
OR-2 2009 photo from ODFW
OR-4 undated photo from ODFW
Imnaha pups 2010 photo from ODFW
OR-7 2014 photo from ODFW
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