Saturday, February 27, 2010
Is there a new pack of wolves near Lake Chelan?
File photo
Biologists are trying to confirm whether a new pack of gray wolves — like the one in this U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service photo — is roaming near Lake Chelan.
CHELAN — They’ve had no confirmed sightings, but U.S. Forest Service biologists in Chelan think gray wolves might be living in remote areas above Lake Chelan’s north shore.
The Chelan Ranger District set out three cameras this winter to try to confirm it.
Just over the Chelan Ridge, which separates the Methow and Lake Chelan valleys, the state’s first confirmed wolf pack is being monitored.
“There could be a separate pack,” said Mallory Lenz, Chelan’s district biologist. Lenz said they’ve been getting reports since the early 1990s from hunters and outfitters who thought they saw or heard wolves.
“The outfitters that go up there have said for several
years now they think there’s another pack,” she said. The areas include Miners Basin and the upper east fork of Prince Creek, she said. Both are more than halfway up the lake, across the lake and southeast of Lucerne.
The reports were basically discounted, she said. Everyone thought the animals were probably wolf-dog hybrids.
Then, after state officials confirmed in 2008 that the Lookout Pack members in the Methow Valley are pure wolf and genetically linked to wolves in British Columbia, biologists started to think those reported in the Chelan basin might also be purebred, Lenz said.
She said this winter was the first time her district has set up remote cameras for the purpose of finding wolves. A few years ago, she said, a remote camera did capture an image that could have been a wolf, but it was from the animal’s back side, and could also have been a very large dog.
Next week, Lenz will retrieve the three remote cameras and download the images to see if there’s any proof of another pack.
“I’m excited about the possibility, because it’s an indicator we have a healthy, working ecosystem out there,” she said. It’s also a unique opportunity to have wolves in an area where they’d have little impact, since there are no active livestock ranges in that area.
But this winter may not have been the best opportunity to capture proof, Lenz said. With so little snow, the deer have been ranging higher than usual, and the wolves —if there are any — would probably follow them to higher elevations where cameras are not set up.
John Rohrer, Forest Service biologist for the Methow Valley Ranger District, said the Lookout Pack has traveled over the Chelan Ridge crest, and up into the North Cascades National Park.
But it’s unlikely that the sightings in the Lake Chelan area are of the Lookout Pack. He’s been helping monitor the alpha male and female since 2008 and “They’ve never been down by Lake Chelan. They’re always up in the high country,” he said.
Residents in the Methow Valley have also been reporting what they believe is a second wolf pack, in the War Creek drainage of Twisp River. But Rohrer said feedback from radio collars shows the pack has been in that area a number of times, so it’s probable that those sightings are of the Lookout Pack.
Scott Fitkin, state Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist in Winthrop, agreed. “To what extent there are other individual wolves wandering on the landscape, or additional packs, that’s an unknown,” he said. “But War Creek is in the middle of the Lookout Pack’s range. A pack there more than likely will be the Lookout Pack,” he said.
At last count, the Lookout Pack included seven wolves — an alpha male, an alpha female, an adult pup born in 2008, and four pups born last spring
Fitkin said the pack continues to behave itself. “At least nobody’s reporting any problems,” he said.
The pack also appears to be healthy, and living longer than wolves that compete with other packs.
“The expected lifespan tends to be less than what we’re seeing on the Lookout,” Fitkin said. The adult male wolf was about 5 years old when they started monitoring the pack two years ago. “We’ve got pretty old adults. The fact that they’ve persisted this long makes it a pretty successful pack,” he said.
That may be because the habitat could support many more wolves, so there’s not as much competition for food, he said. The pack also doesn’t have to contend with “intra-species strife,” he said, and the fighting between males that can significantly reduce an individual wolf’s lifespan.
K.C. Mehaffey: 997-2512
mehaffey@wenatcheeworld.com
