Roughly a fifth of Yellowstone’s wolf population was gone, with one pack seemingly eliminated entirely. The National Park Service counted 25 Yellowstone wolves among the dead, with 19 killed in Montana, all in the hunting districts where the quotas had been lifted, as well as four in Wyoming and two in Idaho. When Montana’s hunting season ended in March, the state’s game agency reported 273 wolves killed. Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly assured a worried public that the park was working with Montana officials to reinstate the quotas. “Their first movements and they’re dead,” Smith told me. What’s more, the pups had never left the pack before. Being late summer, the wolves’ fur was still light and ratty - without the luxuriant winter coat, it had no economic value. Smith has been with the Yellowstone Wolf Project since the beginning, serving as senior biologist and head of the program for 24 of its 27 years. Living embodiments of one of the most celebrated conservation comeback stories of all time, their very existence helped make 2021 Yellowstone’s busiest year on record.ĭoug Smith was in his office in Mammoth, Wyoming, home base for Yellowstone staff, when the news came. They were members of the Junction Butte pack, the most famous wolves on Earth. The first killings were reported less than a week after the season opened: two 8-month-old pups and a yearling. Hunters gathered along the park’s border in anticipation. Last year, those restrictions were lifted. The wolf’s body was gone.įor years, Montana had imposed strict quotas limiting the number of wolves hunters could kill in the two districts north of Yellowstone. When park officials visited the scene, they found a pool of blood, crimson on the fallen snow, just outside the Yellowstone boundary line. As the sun began to dip over the horizon, the wolf known as 1233 crossed the invisible line separating Yellowstone’s protected lands from the national forest territory of Southwest Montana. It had been a long and bloody winter for wolves living on the park’s northern border, and it wasn’t over yet.
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