Yesterday eight of the pups from NW Montana's Sawtooth Pack that have been held since last summer were released from the Nez Perce Pen on the west side of Yellowstone NP.
The released pups, now about ten months old and nearly full-grown, are numbers 63F, 64F, 65F, 67F, 68F, 69M, 71F, and 72M. It is expected that they will join adult wolf 29M who had been in the pen with them for many months, but who escaped last week. No. 29 has lingered nearby and has subsisted on winter kill and may have made an elk kill of his own. Thus, nine new wolves are on the loose inside Yellowstone, and the Park now has about 42 free-ranging wolves.
Remaining in the Nez Perce enclosure are no. 27F, the oldest wolf, and wolves 37F, 48M, 66M, and 70M. 37F is an adult daughter of 27, born in British Columbia in 1995, No. 48M was born to no. 27 last spring on the Beartooth Front. Nos. 66M and 70M are the two remaining pups from the Sawtooth Pack. These remaining wolves will be released in a month or so
It is probably too soon to know what name this new pack will have, or whether all the wolves will stay together. There has been talk about naming one Yellowstone pack after the late director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Molly Beatty.
© 1997 Ralph Maughan
Not to be reprinted, archived, redistributed, etc.,
without permission.