Were wolves imported into Washington on the downlow?

[idahohuntr]

The timing of the boom in wolf numbers in WA state coincides perfectly with the reintroduction of wolves in neighboring states.  Exactly where wolves end up and where they establish in strong numbers is habitat and competition dependent so I don't see it as all that odd that they don't distribute uniformly across the landscape.  Lacking any credible evidence of agency wolf transplants in WA more than 2.5 decades post wolf reintroduction is a major red flag to anyone who wants to critically assess whether wolves in WA established via an illegal conspiracy committed by government bureaucrats.  Hunters perpetuating rumors, myths, and lies - lacking any credible evidence to support claims of governments conspiring and conducting illegal wolf transplants - diminishes the credibility of hunters in the public's eye...and in this state, our 3% can't afford to lose an ounce of credibility on wolf issues.     

[KFhunter]

You can have perfect habitat for wolves, but if there's no other wolves they won't stay. 

dispirsing wolves are driven by a desire to find a mate, not due to habitat or prey base.   If there's no humpin, they keep on truckin'


but....if you seed an area with wolves, the disperses will have a reason to stop

[jackelope]

You can have perfect habitat for wolves, but if there's no other wolves they won't stay. 

dispirsing wolves are driven by a desire to find a mate, not due to habitat or prey base.   If there's no humpin, they keep on truckin'


but....if you seed an area with wolves, the disperses will have a reason to stop

Are you implying here that wolves don't move on on their own into new territories and form new packs? A sub adult gets the boot or otherwise leaves and goes off on it's own?? Or do they all stay together in one big happy family because they're breeding and form packs of like 20-30-40-50 wolves?

[KFhunter]

Not like were all led to believe, no

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[jackelope]

Not like were all led to believe, no

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How then?

[idahohuntr]

You can have perfect habitat for wolves, but if there's no other wolves they won't stay. 

dispirsing wolves are driven by a desire to find a mate, not due to habitat or prey base.   If there's no humpin, they keep on truckin'


but....if you seed an area with wolves, the disperses will have a reason to stop

So your theory is the only places wolves will establish new territory is if someone has gone in advance and planted wolves?  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your use of "seeding"?  Otherwise, you seem to be implying outside a couple release locations in central Idaho and YNP wolf migration and establishment has only been accomplished via a massive government conspiracy (for which no evidence has ever surfaced)...and I don't think even you are suggesting such a massive illegal conspiracy has occurred...but maybe you are?

[no.cen.wa]

How wolves got here, only time will tell. What do we as hunters want to do about it? One thing all of us can do is vote for anyone that will try to stop the "reintroduction" crap we are seeing. Talked to a hunter in the Pasayten unit, asked him what we should do if we see a wolf, his answer was great, he said gut shoot it, it will run off and die, and then it's buddies will eat it, sounds like a plan!

[KFhunter]

You can have perfect habitat for wolves, but if there's no other wolves they won't stay. 
dispersing wolves are driven by a desire to find a mate, not due to habitat or prey base.   
If there's no humpin, they keep on truckin'
but....if you seed an area with wolves, the disperses will have a reason to stop.

Are you implying here that wolves don't move on on their own into new territories and form new packs? A sub adult gets the boot or otherwise leaves and goes off on it's own?? Or do they all stay together in one big happy family because they're breeding and form packs of like 20-30-40-50 wolves?

Not like were all led to believe, no

How then?

So your theory is the only places wolves will establish new territory is if someone has gone in advance and planted wolves?  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your use of "seeding"?  Otherwise, you seem to be implying outside a couple release locations in central Idaho and YNP wolf migration and establishment has only been accomplished via a massive government conspiracy (for which no evidence has ever surfaced)...and I don't think even you are suggesting such a massive illegal conspiracy has occurred...but maybe you are?

My theory is wolf expansion is like a forest fire, you have the breeding pair/pack and from there the little spot fires jump out from the main fire and start their own brush fires, those fires grow and merge back into one big fire with each packs territory touching the next one.  Then more little spot fires jump out with the next breeding season then merge, rinse repeat. 

but do I think that an ember will jump 300 miles and start a whole new wildfire? 

it could, if conditions were just right and there was something to land on, like another wolf seeking a mate too.  The closer you get to existing wolf pack the faster new packs would emerge,  further away you get the more difficult for those dispersing wolves to find their mate and settle.   So what you'd get is a wolf travelling 1000's of miles for years on end looking for a mate (OR-7) scenting up an area you want a dispenser to find would be important if you wanted to establish wolves.

If someone wanted to speed that process up and cover a whole state in less than 10 years then you seed the state with half tame wolves for those long dispersers to find, or you just capture a collared wolf from idaho and drop it in the methow with its mate in an enclosure until the den is made and pups whelped, then remove the fence. 

Now that the methow has its wolf pack (talking back in 2008) the population would/and did, expand rapidly from there, and contiguously, from that new "fire"

We've all been led to believe that wolves from BC and Idaho migrated naturally into WA and within 10 years populated an entire state jumping big distances in doing so, I find that difficult to believe.

They don't just take off and find a mate and relocate 100's of miles away without help, certainly not this fast. 

Or else other states would have been populated just as fast, or faster, with more abundant game, like Colorado.  Imagine the "brush fire" there 

So my conclusion is,  Colorado wasn't seeded, wolves weren't transplanted there.  And Washington's first wolf pack should have been in 113, or perhaps 142 even. 

[hughjorgan]

You can have perfect habitat for wolves, but if there's no other wolves they won't stay. 
dispersing wolves are driven by a desire to find a mate, not due to habitat or prey base.   
If there's no humpin, they keep on truckin'
but....if you seed an area with wolves, the disperses will have a reason to stop.

Are you implying here that wolves don't move on on their own into new territories and form new packs? A sub adult gets the boot or otherwise leaves and goes off on it's own?? Or do they all stay together in one big happy family because they're breeding and form packs of like 20-30-40-50 wolves?

Not like were all led to believe, no

How then?

So your theory is the only places wolves will establish new territory is if someone has gone in advance and planted wolves?  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your use of "seeding"?  Otherwise, you seem to be implying outside a couple release locations in central Idaho and YNP wolf migration and establishment has only been accomplished via a massive government conspiracy (for which no evidence has ever surfaced)...and I don't think even you are suggesting such a massive illegal conspiracy has occurred...but maybe you are?

My theory is wolf expansion is like a forest fire, you have the breeding pair/pack and from there the little spot fires jump out from the main fire and start their own brush fires, those fires grow and merge back into one big fire with each packs territory touching the next one.  Then more little spot fires jump out with the next breeding season then merge, rinse repeat. 

but do I think that an ember will jump 300 miles and start a whole new wildfire? 

it could, if conditions were just right and there was something to land on, like another wolf seeking a mate too.  The closer you get to existing wolf pack the faster new packs would emerge,  further away you get the more difficult for those dispersing wolves to find their mate and settle.   So what you'd get is a wolf travelling 1000's of miles for years on end looking for a mate (OR-7) scenting up an area you want a dispenser to find would be important if you wanted to establish wolves.

If someone wanted to speed that process up and cover a whole state in less than 10 years then you seed the state with half tame wolves for those long dispersers to find, or you just capture a collared wolf from idaho and drop it in the methow with its mate in an enclosure until the den is made and pups whelped, then remove the fence. 

Now that the methow has its wolf pack (talking back in 2008) the population would/and did, expand rapidly from there, and contiguously, from that new "fire"

We've all been led to believe that wolves from BC and Idaho migrated naturally into WA and within 10 years populated an entire state jumping big distances in doing so, I find that difficult to believe.

They don't just take off and find a mate and relocate 100's of miles away without help, certainly not this fast. 

Or else other states would have been populated just as fast, or faster, with more abundant game, like Colorado.  Imagine the "brush fire" there 

So my conclusion is,  Colorado wasn't seeded, wolves weren't transplanted there.  And Washington's first wolf pack should have been in 113, or perhaps 142 even.

Well said

[idahohuntr]

You can have perfect habitat for wolves, but if there's no other wolves they won't stay. 
dispersing wolves are driven by a desire to find a mate, not due to habitat or prey base.   
If there's no humpin, they keep on truckin'
but....if you seed an area with wolves, the disperses will have a reason to stop.

Are you implying here that wolves don't move on on their own into new territories and form new packs? A sub adult gets the boot or otherwise leaves and goes off on it's own?? Or do they all stay together in one big happy family because they're breeding and form packs of like 20-30-40-50 wolves?

Not like were all led to believe, no

How then?

So your theory is the only places wolves will establish new territory is if someone has gone in advance and planted wolves?  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your use of "seeding"?  Otherwise, you seem to be implying outside a couple release locations in central Idaho and YNP wolf migration and establishment has only been accomplished via a massive government conspiracy (for which no evidence has ever surfaced)...and I don't think even you are suggesting such a massive illegal conspiracy has occurred...but maybe you are?

My theory is wolf expansion is like a forest fire, you have the breeding pair/pack and from there the little spot fires jump out from the main fire and start their own brush fires, those fires grow and merge back into one big fire with each packs territory touching the next one.  Then more little spot fires jump out with the next breeding season then merge, rinse repeat. 

but do I think that an ember will jump 300 miles and start a whole new wildfire? 

it could, if conditions were just right and there was something to land on, like another wolf seeking a mate too.  The closer you get to existing wolf pack the faster new packs would emerge,  further away you get the more difficult for those dispersing wolves to find their mate and settle.   So what you'd get is a wolf travelling 1000's of miles for years on end looking for a mate (OR-7) scenting up an area you want a dispenser to find would be important if you wanted to establish wolves.

If someone wanted to speed that process up and cover a whole state in less than 10 years then you seed the state with half tame wolves for those long dispersers to find, or you just capture a collared wolf from idaho and drop it in the methow with its mate in an enclosure until the den is made and pups whelped, then remove the fence. 

Now that the methow has its wolf pack (talking back in 2008) the population would/and did, expand rapidly from there, and contiguously, from that new "fire"

We've all been led to believe that wolves from BC and Idaho migrated naturally into WA and within 10 years populated an entire state jumping big distances in doing so, I find that difficult to believe.

They don't just take off and find a mate and relocate 100's of miles away without help, certainly not this fast. 

Or else other states would have been populated just as fast, or faster, with more abundant game, like Colorado.  Imagine the "brush fire" there 

So my conclusion is,  Colorado wasn't seeded, wolves weren't transplanted there.  And Washington's first wolf pack should have been in 113, or perhaps 142 even. 

A few problems with all of your speculation...First, lets start with the "first" confirmed wolf pack in 2008 - where you and others are questioning how this isolated distant spot was the "first" confirmed pack in WA state.  You are familiar with the Methow and I presume you are familiar with 113/Selkirks.  Where do you think it would be easier to detect a pack of wolves via the state confirmation criteria of male/female/pups...the Methow or Selkirks? Given the criteria and the terrain/cover/accessibility do you think its possible the first "confirmed" wolf pack in WA might not have been the actual first established wolf pack in WA?  I'd bet a lot of money that 9-5 bureaucrats were able to confirm the first pack in the Methow, but there were probably already many wolves in the Selkirks but it was more difficult to detect/establish a confirmed wolf pack by state criteria. 

Second - you question the ability of wolf populations to grow exponentially and expand rapidly in a decade.  I disagree strongly with such a statement - and nearly all of my Idahoan family and my many Montana and Wyoming friends would kindly disagree with your assertion as well.  From reintroduction to 10 years later we all saw massive growth and expansion of wolves.  Again, unless you are now pushing an almost unimaginably complex and massive conspiracy releasing "seed" wolves all over the Rocky Mountain states (except of course in CO and UT for some unexplained reason) your denial of wolves rapidly expanding in WA just doesn't hold any water.

Third, and what I mentioned above, you describe all this expansion being done by seeding and state it obviously wasn't done in CO because they don't have a lot of wolves.  So why was it done (this "seeding") in ID, MT, WY, OR, WA but not UT or CO??  Why did this illegal ring decide not to do those states?  Or were their game departments just not on board with the whole conspiracy because they were unconvinced that 5 state agencies illegally engaging in mass translocation of wolves could remain the secret that it has?  Do you think those state agencies (UT and CO) now regret their decision now that its been 20+ years of multi-state wolf seeding and not one shred of credible evidence has ever surfaced to expose this massive, illegal operation?  I'll tell you what else I find odd specific to WA...it seems every game warden that retires these days writes a book about their career and many of them are pretty critical of their former agency (WDFW)...but not one disgruntled employee has come forward from WDFW (and there are many) to report this massively illegal scheme??

You have an intriguing imagination.  I'm gonna have to stick with the simple explanation - wolves expanded rapidly from their reintroduction sites to occupy suitable wolf habitat in non-uniform patterns.  Detection and confirmation by various state criteria doesn't always match on the ground reality and so a methow confirmation before an official selkirks confirmation is not surprising or all that meaningful.  Last, migration through relatively poor wolf habitat reduces the speed and numbers which establish in new areas (e.g., Colorado, other parts of Idaho etc.).   Logical, reasonable, fact-based...but I'll give you this, its a heck of lot more boring than your theory involving a massive multi state conspiracy that includes more felonies than a 100 years of mob family activity.   

[bigmacc]

You can have perfect habitat for wolves, but if there's no other wolves they won't stay. 
dispersing wolves are driven by a desire to find a mate, not due to habitat or prey base.   
If there's no humpin, they keep on truckin'
but....if you seed an area with wolves, the disperses will have a reason to stop.

Are you implying here that wolves don't move on on their own into new territories and form new packs? A sub adult gets the boot or otherwise leaves and goes off on it's own?? Or do they all stay together in one big happy family because they're breeding and form packs of like 20-30-40-50 wolves?

Not like were all led to believe, no

How then?

So your theory is the only places wolves will establish new territory is if someone has gone in advance and planted wolves?  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your use of "seeding"?  Otherwise, you seem to be implying outside a couple release locations in central Idaho and YNP wolf migration and establishment has only been accomplished via a massive government conspiracy (for which no evidence has ever surfaced)...and I don't think even you are suggesting such a massive illegal conspiracy has occurred...but maybe you are?

My theory is wolf expansion is like a forest fire, you have the breeding pair/pack and from there the little spot fires jump out from the main fire and start their own brush fires, those fires grow and merge back into one big fire with each packs territory touching the next one.  Then more little spot fires jump out with the next breeding season then merge, rinse repeat. 

but do I think that an ember will jump 300 miles and start a whole new wildfire? 

it could, if conditions were just right and there was something to land on, like another wolf seeking a mate too.  The closer you get to existing wolf pack the faster new packs would emerge,  further away you get the more difficult for those dispersing wolves to find their mate and settle.   So what you'd get is a wolf travelling 1000's of miles for years on end looking for a mate (OR-7) scenting up an area you want a dispenser to find would be important if you wanted to establish wolves.

If someone wanted to speed that process up and cover a whole state in less than 10 years then you seed the state with half tame wolves for those long dispersers to find, or you just capture a collared wolf from idaho and drop it in the methow with its mate in an enclosure until the den is made and pups whelped, then remove the fence. 

Now that the methow has its wolf pack (talking back in 2008) the population would/and did, expand rapidly from there, and contiguously, from that new "fire"

We've all been led to believe that wolves from BC and Idaho migrated naturally into WA and within 10 years populated an entire state jumping big distances in doing so, I find that difficult to believe.

They don't just take off and find a mate and relocate 100's of miles away without help, certainly not this fast. 

Or else other states would have been populated just as fast, or faster, with more abundant game, like Colorado.  Imagine the "brush fire" there 

So my conclusion is,  Colorado wasn't seeded, wolves weren't transplanted there.  And Washington's first wolf pack should have been in 113, or perhaps 142 even.

There you go to KFhunter......IMHO,  AND my Methow friends from years ago, in SOME instances, in SOME places and during SOME time frames, "THEY HAD TO HAVE NEEDED HELP"......It really is ok to think outside the box idahohntr, it doesn't mean there was a conspiracy or anyone is wearing funny hats. There are reasons people are not told the whole truth but just bits and pieces. Eventually everything comes out in the wash and I,m sure this will be one of those times. It may be next year or the next decade but either way, no moving, OR, yep, we moved some, it will come out. Folks that believe like you, folks that you think are "wearing the hats" and folks that think its a little of both (migrating naturally and being moved), IMO will ALL be right when the smoke clears...

[KFhunter]

Oh I know the methow isnt WA's first wolf pack, I was just using WDFW and CNW info.
We've had native wolves all along, wolves now made extinct or severely threatened by non-native wolves.

They assert that, not me.


Secondly, I do believe your family seen rapid expansion in Idaho and Montana, which just goes to prove my theory, Idaho and Montana were planted with wolves, that isnt in dispute.

Those packs where planted all across the state in desired wolf habitat areas, not in Boise ID. and not in east montana.  The wolves being spaced apart like that set the stage for a very rapid expansion.

WA did not have wolves planted according to you, therefore such rapid expansion would not be possible like it went down.




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[Buckhunter24]

Idahohunter, what is your opinion of CNW? What is your opinion of former wdfw employees working for them? Are you familiar with their approach regarding natural resources?

[RB]

So just a simple google search reveals this...

550 miles
How far can wolves travel? Wolves may travel 10 to 30 miles each day in search of food. Dispersing wolves, those leaving packs in search of their own mate, have been known to travel distances of 550 miles away form their home territory.

Wether or not this is gospel I do not know, but if it is half true say 250 miles, Seattle is 250 miles from Kamloops BC . With that being said is it too far fetched that they came to the NE corner on their own? I have not read all 13 pages of this thread so it may have been posted prior.

[Buckhunter24]

To be clear, I dont think there was a coordinated effort within the wdfw to release wolves in WA. I do think it is possible that some wdfw employees knew of or assisted with releasing wolves, likely spearheaded by a private organization