Gray wolf population declining in Yellowstone
By Janice Lloyd, USA TODAY YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo — A dozen tourists in parkas huddle around wolf researcher Colby Anton in the northern range of the park, an area famous for gray wolves, to catch a glimpse of the images on his digital camera. The wolf watchers have become a familiar scene since the animals were reintroduced into the park in 1995 after being gone for nearly 70 years. The wolves have fueled a $35 million-a-year industry as cars full of tourists spend hours from dawn to dusk looking for wolves and trading tales. Now the tales are changing. The image on Anton’s camera is of a dead wolf he discovered on an 18-mile hike in the high country of the park. “We found it partially buried under the snow, did a necropsy and concluded a wolf from another pack killed the wolf,” he says. The gray wolf population is declining, says Doug Smith, the coordinator of the reintroduction efforts and leader of the Yellowstone Wolf Project that studies and manages the wolves. Wolves are killing each other at a higher frequency to compete for elk, their primary food source, which is less abundant now, he says. “The good times are over,” Smith says. His annual census of the park’s wolf population is expected to be the lowest in 10 years, he said. Smith is still gathering data but says the number of gray wolves in the park will be 116, a 33% drop from 2003, when the population was at an all-time high of 174. …
