The gray wolf at the right, marking his territory, was one captured by Idaho Fish and Game biologists in May 2006 (seen on page 1), photographed here by Liz Bradley of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, northwest of Missoula on March 26, 2009. Photo courtesy Liz Bradley, MFWP

Local Wolf Makes Good in Montana

In late May, 2006, Idaho Fish and Game wolf biologist Michael Lucid set out traps in the mountains north of Boise to catch one of the wolves of the Timberline pack.

He wanted to trap and radio-collar one or more of the wolves in the pack that had been without a radio-collared member since the previous fall.

"We try and keep two collars on every pack in the state," Lucid said. "And this pack had been off the air for about six or seven months now."

On Wednesday, May 24, he and fellow Fish and Game staff biologist Steve Nadeau trapped two healthy males one to two years old, gray and weighing about 80 pounds each. Both were caught in roadside traps baited with dog food and wolf scat. Both tranquilized wolves were examined, ear-tagged and fitted with new radio collars.

One of them was labeled B279M. After administering an antidote, Lucid and Nadeau watched as the animal woke up to make sure he was not injured. The wolf staggered drunkenly before getting his legs under him and disappearing into the timber on the hillside above the road.

The newly radio-collared wolf and others like it help Fish and Game biologists track wolf packs and monitor Montanatheir activities. And the collared wolf may lead Lucid to the pack's den or a rendezvous site.

"I do an aerial flight every month, so I'll get a location from the air," Lucid said. "And hopefully these radio collars will lead me to their pups, and let me count how many pups that they have and determine if this pack has reproduced this year."

Idaho biologists lost track of B279M in September of 2006. They just recently learned what had happened to it.

On March 27, 2009, Nadeau and Lucid got an e-mail from Montana wolf biologist Liz Bradley, with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. During a monitoring flight on March 26, biologists found the collared wolf from Idaho mingling with Montana wolves.

"It looks like B279M originated with the Timberline pack northeast of Boise and has been missing from that pack since September of 2006," Bradley wrote in her e-mail.

B279M had grown up to become the alpha male of the Mineral Mountain pack near St. Regis, Montana, northwest of Missoula and about 250 air miles from his birthplace in the Boise Mountains.

The trip would have taken him through some of the wildest, most rugged country in Idaho.