Pens Opened Up For Last Five Wolves Nine Previously Released Beginning To Roam In Park

As nine previously released wolves began to roam from their acclimation pens in Yellowstone National Park, biologists Monday opened the third pen holding another five wolves.

Park spokeswoman Cheryl Matthews said biologists cut a hole in the chain-link fence surrounding the Soda Butte site at about 4 p.m. The three males and two females in that pen had been there since Jan. 20.

Biologists had cut similar 10-footwide by 4-foot-high holes in the Crystal Bench and Rose Creek pens after determining the wolves were not using gates in the pens because of human activity in the area of the gates.

Since January, park rangers and biologists had been bringing game carcasses into the pens every five days to feed the wolves.

Matthews said it took biologists about 20 minutes to cut the hole in the Soda Butte pen and leave a small carcass to lure the wolves outside the enclosure. The wolves’ last scheduled feeding was March 20, she said.

While the other nine wolves appeared hesitant to leave their pens in the park’s Lamar Valley last week, only one remained in a pen on Monday, said park spokeswoman Elizabeth Kirkpatrick.

Kirkpatrick said biologists who have been monitoring the wolves since the gates to the two pens were opened saw one female Monday in a pen that had held two females and one male.

“They didn’t see the other female or the male,” she said. “It means they’re not in the pen.”

The wolves did not leave their pens until the weekend, after biologists cut a secondary opening in the structures.

Also Monday, biologists saw signs that the first nine predators had fed on the carcass of an elk that had died recently near the pen that held the three wolves.

Since the wolves were released last week, biologists have been hoping they would kill wildlife so they would become rooted to the area.

But Kirkpatrick said the biologists could not tell whether the elk had been killed by predators or had died because of winter weather conditions.

In all, 29 wolves were transported in January to central Idaho and Yellowstone as part of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service effort to build up a population of 200 wolves in America’s northern Rockies.

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