Home
News
ENLARGE
It was one year ago when wolf 341F embarked on her epic journey across some of the West's wildest country. That journey turned tragic, and we still don't know why.
Authorities still aren't saying what killed the two-year-old wolf while federal law enforcement officers in the Division of Wildlife investigate. That makes it sound like foul play may have been involved. That shouldn't be a surprise. When wandering wolves die, humans, their guns and their cars usually the culprits.
Crossing 1,000 miles in a meandering trek from southern Montana to Colorado, wolf 341F traversed Yellowstone National Park and trekked across western Wyoming, following the spine of the Rockies through the Bridger-Teton National Forest. She roamed across Wyoming's natural gas fields into the corner where southeastern Idaho meets northeastern Utah, then on into western Colorado, crossing from high desert to the mountains until she reached the wild country north of Vail's tamed ski slopes.
At the end of March, as spring began to crawl in to the high country, the radio transmissions from the collar fitted on the female wolf stopped moving. The stagnant signal emitted from a spot in western Colorado, and when state and federal wildlife investigators descended, they found her dead body.
What was so captivating about wolf 341F wasn't the distance, though. It was the destination. Her journey had come to an end in a state where native wolf populations had been decimated some 70 years before.
Wolf populations were wiped out of Colorado in the late 1930s, part of the destruction of the wildness of the West to make it safe for cattle and sheep. The last record of a native wolf killed in Colorado was in 1943. For wolf advocates, who long to see wolves return to their native territory, the journey gave them cause to dream.
Wolf 341F was born in the spring of 2007 to the Mill Creek pack, formed seven years earlier between the towns of Gardiner and Livingston, Mont., amid the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, just north of the park boundary. Montana wildlife officials fitted her with a GPS collar, part of a research program with the University of Montana to improve wolf monitoring techniques. Her steps were tracked by satellites that followed her every step and recorded them on a tiny computer inside her collar.
A photo taken that day shows her lying in a patch of grass and wildflowers, knocked out by anesthesia, the bulky collar looking oddly mechanical on her 68-pound canine body. Like a James Bond gadget, it was fitted with an electrical charge designed to blow the collar off her body after two years, if she didn't die first, allowing biologists to track it down and download the data.
While biologists tracked her movements, the political landscape around her was changing. In the waning days of the Bush administration, Western gray wolves like her were taken off the endangered species list. In President Obama's first day in office, his administration suspended that move, only to reinstate it later, except in Wyoming, where state and federal officials have been at odds over measures to protect an animal Wyoming ranchers still see as the enemy.
Despite environmentalists' insistence that the wolf populations were still too small and threatened to be inbred, the Interior Department declared wolves aren't endangered in the West anymore.
Wolf 341F was indifferent to the political battles. Endangered or not, she set out in hopes of expanding the population somewhere beyond the confines of the Mill Creek pack. It gave wolf advocate hopes that, in the absence of a wolf reintroduction plan in Colorado, wolves may find a way to come back on their own, just as they started to do in Montana 25 years earlier.
While she lived, wolf 341F gave hope that a bit of the wild that's been taken out of wilderness could rebound on its own.
Her journey carried her 450 miles in a straight line from home before she turned around, roamed back into Wyoming, then doubled back into Colorado, where her travels ended.
Wolf 341F's untimely death was no surprise. Long-wandering wolves usually don't last long. While we still don't know what killed her, we know the usual culprits walk on two legs.
Follow David Frey on Facebook or Twitter at www.davidfrey.me.
Authorities still aren't saying what killed the two-year-old wolf while federal law enforcement officers in the Division of Wildlife investigate. That makes it sound like foul play may have been involved. That shouldn't be a surprise. When wandering wolves die, humans, their guns and their cars usually the culprits.
Crossing 1,000 miles in a meandering trek from southern Montana to Colorado, wolf 341F traversed Yellowstone National Park and trekked across western Wyoming, following the spine of the Rockies through the Bridger-Teton National Forest. She roamed across Wyoming's natural gas fields into the corner where southeastern Idaho meets northeastern Utah, then on into western Colorado, crossing from high desert to the mountains until she reached the wild country north of Vail's tamed ski slopes.
At the end of March, as spring began to crawl in to the high country, the radio transmissions from the collar fitted on the female wolf stopped moving. The stagnant signal emitted from a spot in western Colorado, and when state and federal wildlife investigators descended, they found her dead body.
What was so captivating about wolf 341F wasn't the distance, though. It was the destination. Her journey had come to an end in a state where native wolf populations had been decimated some 70 years before.
Wolf populations were wiped out of Colorado in the late 1930s, part of the destruction of the wildness of the West to make it safe for cattle and sheep. The last record of a native wolf killed in Colorado was in 1943. For wolf advocates, who long to see wolves return to their native territory, the journey gave them cause to dream.
Wolf 341F was born in the spring of 2007 to the Mill Creek pack, formed seven years earlier between the towns of Gardiner and Livingston, Mont., amid the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, just north of the park boundary. Montana wildlife officials fitted her with a GPS collar, part of a research program with the University of Montana to improve wolf monitoring techniques. Her steps were tracked by satellites that followed her every step and recorded them on a tiny computer inside her collar.
A photo taken that day shows her lying in a patch of grass and wildflowers, knocked out by anesthesia, the bulky collar looking oddly mechanical on her 68-pound canine body. Like a James Bond gadget, it was fitted with an electrical charge designed to blow the collar off her body after two years, if she didn't die first, allowing biologists to track it down and download the data.
While biologists tracked her movements, the political landscape around her was changing. In the waning days of the Bush administration, Western gray wolves like her were taken off the endangered species list. In President Obama's first day in office, his administration suspended that move, only to reinstate it later, except in Wyoming, where state and federal officials have been at odds over measures to protect an animal Wyoming ranchers still see as the enemy.
Despite environmentalists' insistence that the wolf populations were still too small and threatened to be inbred, the Interior Department declared wolves aren't endangered in the West anymore.
Wolf 341F was indifferent to the political battles. Endangered or not, she set out in hopes of expanding the population somewhere beyond the confines of the Mill Creek pack. It gave wolf advocate hopes that, in the absence of a wolf reintroduction plan in Colorado, wolves may find a way to come back on their own, just as they started to do in Montana 25 years earlier.
While she lived, wolf 341F gave hope that a bit of the wild that's been taken out of wilderness could rebound on its own.
Her journey carried her 450 miles in a straight line from home before she turned around, roamed back into Wyoming, then doubled back into Colorado, where her travels ended.
Wolf 341F's untimely death was no surprise. Long-wandering wolves usually don't last long. While we still don't know what killed her, we know the usual culprits walk on two legs.
Follow David Frey on Facebook or Twitter at www.davidfrey.me.
