9:00 - 9:30 am
Update on Wolf Restoration
Doug Smith
Yellowstone Center for Resources

Transcript

Intro: All right, you know our first speaker is going to be Doug Smith a very known wolf biologist. He's been talking about, uh,  the status of wolves in Yellowstone area and right now I don't have my glasses with me and hopefully towards  wolf restoration.

Doug Smith: This is the tenth anniversary of wolf introduction to the Park. So I have to plug YCR'S Yellowstone Science which is completely dedicated to the tenth anniversary; and so if any of you haven't got this, a lot of what I'm going to say today I don't have time for so we tried to cover  in this.  So this is a great resource for you guys to use for the tenth anniversary. So I have a bunch of  copies if you want to get that from me after or during the break.  But I appreciate the invitation to do this, it's something that I don't take for granted but yet consider a very important opportunity. So,  thank you very much for the opportunity to come and talk to you guys and  I'm going to dive right in pretty aggressively because we each only have a half hour.  But of the five major things that we do  with the wolf project, I'm only going to talk about three.

The five objectives that we try to accomplish every year is:  population monitoring; that deals with reproduction, morality, movements, immigration, emigration; things like that. That's a classic wild-life biology function. Another big one is: predator prey inter-actions. That's one reason wolves are controversial. Wolves eat elk; occasionally they eat bison, deer, things like that. That's one reason people don't like wolves; because human hunters don't want the competition.  And so those are the two cornerstone things we do in terms of Yellowstone Park wolf monitoring and I'm going to talk about both of those things. A third thing I am going to talk about is one of the hotter research topics in all of Yellowstone now and that's the ecosystem impacts of wolves.

Wolves occur relatively at a low density. Uh, there are 170 wolves approximately in the park. Yet they have tremendous impacts on  a lot of the other wildlife and vegetation. I'll briefly talk about that. The things I'm not going to talk about that we do also is besides interactions with prey, wolves interact with other carnivores.  Yellowstones got one of the riches complex of carnivores in North America; six if you count humans and remember seven of eight of or elk herds migrate out of the park so they are subject to human hunting. You go to Alaska you are hard pressed to find three carnivores. So we are working with other researchers and Frank talked about our work with other researchers to reduce our costs. We're  doing that with grizzly bear people, cougar people, coyote people, to look at how wolves relate to  the other carnivore community. We also look at population jags and disease.  There are some interesting questions about that but I don't have time to go into it but disease is an important monitoring objective.  We've looked at things like parvo virus, distemper, to a degree mange; although mange really hasn't occurred yet in the park,  it's rampant outside the park.

Uh, we also look at the interactions that wolves have with other scavengers. Common ecosystem effect and I'm not going to talk about that. I have one slide about how we do the work; kind of a method slide and that's at the very end.

So,  going from there and talking about  just three of those objectives: the park wolf population this year  is 16 packs.  That's probably not all, that's probably a slight over estimate of the wolves that use the park because we use that criteria based on what packs den inside the park. That's how we count Yellowstone Park packs.

Ed Bangs is here.  He's the recovery coordinator  for wolves in the Northern Rockies.  Uh,  he'll talk after me but there is a lot of border issues. Um, the Delta Pack  this is actually a  truncated territory  for them.  They go a large part of winter into the Bridger-Teton Forest.  Chief Joe has their den just over the park boundary. They spend almost the entire time outside the park. So that's  16 packs in about 170 wolves. Another important thing about this graphic is that about half of the wolves live right here. Of  170 wolves, we have  85 right there. So that's by far the highest density; 1000 kilometers squared holds half the park wolves.  The territories here overlap a lot.  There is a lot of competition between wolf packs and we think the wolves are actually starting to limit themselves; which is fairly unique.  Most wolf populations are limited by available prey and we think they are starting to limit themselves because of competition between each other. Back in the rest of the Park you can see there is a lot less overlap; a lot less competition. Although, recently there has been a increase in the Madison Firehole. Um, it's very important to continue with this idea. We treat Yellowstone, (I don't know what's happening here) as two wolf systems. The Northern Range, 35% of which goes outside the park.  That means we interact a lot with the state of Montana; a lot with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Ed will say.  65% or 1,000 kilometers squared  is in the park and then the rest of the interior system which is elk rich in summer and elk poor in winter. A lot of wolf/bison interactions occur in the interior in late winter that don't  really occur up here.  Wolves basically ignore bison up here.  Although one pack that immigrated from here to the Northern Range or elements of individual animals are showing a particular interest in bison because of their experience with them. So it's very useful to think of Yellowstone's wolf population as two systems. A high density elk rich environment year round in the north; a low density wolf population in the interior,  that  has to deal with a lot of  elk  in the summer and very few in the winter.  And switching to bison without a lot of  competition between packs. What's notable about this year besides being the 10th year anniversary,  uh, in this slide is divided into three categories: the yellow is the park, the light blue is the northern range, and the purple is the ecosystem.

To split is up in a lot of different ways, a lot of people get confused about what unit we're  talking about.  There's 332 wolves in the ecosystem; about 33 packs. So still the park carries about half the wolves in the entire ecosystem. But what's notable about this is this last year  2004 was only the second year in ten that the park population and the Northern Range population did not grow. Actually we dropped by 20 wolves in the northern range from 105;  these are  early winter estimates by the way.  And the wolf population always declines from early winter to late winter because of mortality and dispersal. The only other year it didn't increase was 1999 and that's due to an increase of parvovirus which kills pups.  We actually only had 40%  pups survival on the northern range that year. So this indicates that the wolf population may be topping out. Uh, it did grow slightly in the ecosystem but both in the park and in the northern range, it declined. And I think it's useful to think about as the wolf population at perhaps the highest level we're going to see it for sometime. In the next ten years I think we are going to have a decline in wolves.  A lot of people wonder how big a decline. It could be from 16 packs now to seven or eight ten years from now. There's going to be a lot of adjustments between now and then but we think that's where it's headed. Uh, we could be wrong; that's a prediction. Obviously, predictions are subject to error but that I think is we're at a peak population right now. Uh, Another thing that indicates that we may be at a peak population is pup production. Uh, this is what we count at wolf dens in May and June; so these are not actually what pups are born. These are pups that come out of the den and you can see here that since about 2001 we have been flat on pups survived.  Okay, this lower line is pups survived.

That's what we count in packs in November and December. Again an early population estimate. So even though pup numbers on the board are going up, pup survival is flattening off. That indicates some density dependence;  that  indicates that we may be at the peak level with what the park can support.
So this is a summary of the first ten years very quickly. I assume that I still have till when Dan?

Dan: Quarter after

Doug Smith: Quarter after, okay I have to hurry up then.
Average litter size that we see early on is five. We lose generally one over the summer; uh, 82% pups survival.  A lot of people I hear when I go outside of the park to give talks that heck, every female in every pack  is pregnant. That's not true. Uh, basically 85 pack years, one pack one year is counted as a pack year. Only about 15% of the packs have had more than one litter. So we have had multiple females breeding. Only twice have we had more than two. Uh, and this one time this year we've actually got  4  females pregnant in the Slough Creek Pack.

Voice: (unclear) 9:30

Doug Smith: 9:30 is okay so slow down

Voice:  Slow down

Doug Smith:  Uh, age at first breeding is fairly young. If you compare this to saturated wolf populations it's not that young. Uh, breeding opportunities are limited in a saturated wolf population. They are not going to breed as young.  Uh, this is very interesting. This is a non exploited  population. Ugh, you guys do a great job protecting wolves; yet average age at death is still fairly young. The oldest wolf is 11.9.  So that's certainly an outlive.  A number of animals that attain breeding status will live to six and seven years of age but the average(and this for known age animals) animals that we collar as pups so we are sure of their age. This isn't using animals where we catch them as adults and we are estimating their age but that's not that old. The average pack size is ten which is expected for an animal that preys on elk. For white tail deer packs are slightly smaller. For packs that feed on moose and bison the average pack size is slightly larger. But again, you see the huge variation in pack size. The Druid Peak Pack in 2,000 had three litters; 21 pups, 20 survived and that catapulted them to one of the biggest packs ever recorded. Um, I should note that these packs that have multiple litters, the secondary and tertiary litters tend to have poor survival. In other words, at the end of the year they tend to have a number of pups that equals one litter. Even though several females might have breed. So high survival multiple litter events are fairly rare and the Druid Pack in 2,000 is certainly an example of that rare event.

This is looking at the data at  a certainly different way. This uses only radio collared wolves and this is the probability that a wolf will live for one year.  So if we wanted to start now and go to a year from now this is the probability it will live. 80% is considered good. Uh,  rarely do you have more populations over 80% annual survival.  The yellow is inside the park;  the red is outside.  So this is an analyst breaking the Yellowstone ecosystem into park and non park. And what this shows is, other than 96-97,  which was a catastrophically a hard winter. Um, very poor survival outside the park that year; very low reproduction of deer and elk that's possibly suggested for that. Wolves turned to livestock and they were killed for that. But roughly equal except  the last three years,  it's been declining. The Park survival rate has stayed pretty good. Outside the Park survival rate has been falling off.  Ed can talk more about that but that suggests that  (unclear) this is probably a social caring capacity issue.

Uh, there's more wolves outside the park; conflicts are on the rise; uh,  legal wolf mortality is increasing and this is showing up in the survival rate. But in the Park the survival is still good. Uh, this effects pack size. Purple, the is the size of packs in the Park, roughly 10; outside the park half that. Uh, and that's due to this control action this increased morality on wolves. It also relates to the fact that you have younger packs. Uh, when packs form they are a pair in pups. In Yellowstone, (I don't have time to go into it),  we have very few packs that are young. We have packs that have several years of pups; multi generational packs and so that tends to make the packs larger. Uh, it's not just a pair with pups. This also changes how the packs operate. And that's a very important point.

They have a lot of experience as compared to a pack that's only got two experienced animals in it and that's a subject for another time. This is wolf morality; what the wolves die from. The last few slides is just talking about at what rate they die and human morality is by far and away the leader.  So if you add up all these categories, uh,  these are  Park wolves.  Control action and illegal are wolves that start off at the  beginning of the year in the Park and then immigrate out and get killed. And so that's true for most wolf populations, especially in the Northern Rockies that humans are the leading cause. After humans, the next leading cause of morality is other wolves and wolves kill each other. Some early writers, researchers on wolves,  refer to wolves as being self regulatory.  Uh, that has fallen out of favor a little bit now but there is still an element of  that  that's true. Uh, when wolf  food resources decline they move out of their territories and clash with other packs and kill each other. And this has been happening a lot along the range.  This is wolf 227,  just a month ago, a alpha male Geode Pack , the Leopold Pack  right now is  25 wolves. 

Uh, the biggest pack in the Park. They've  had a very stable territory for the first ten years;  not this year. They've moved across the Yellowstone River into the Geode Pack Territory and they are killing other wolves there. And they do that because they can and they need too. Uh, sorry for the gore but this is how you tell cause of death; you have to skin it. And you can see, this is what normal flesh should look like right here and this is where about 20 wolves went after him. This animal actually is interesting because  it started off in the Delta Pack. And we collared it in that pack and it moved up here and joined the Geode Pack; became the alpha male. So a very interesting story here. 

We also put a very expensive GPS collar on him; a $3,200. collar. (privately raised funds don't worry) The  communicates with satellites and we were going to try to get information on summer predation from him and so it is a blow to some of our research. That kind of concludes the first section of my talk. If I split it into three sections  to talk about just a thumbnail sketch of population monitoring. 

Now I'd like to talk about the controversial stuff. There is a multi million dollar hunting industry that's perched literally on the boundaries of Yellowstone. If you are more than a mile from the Park boundary that's too far to get really the prime hunting areas.  And so there's  a lot of issue in wolf/elk relation. One thing we have learned is that if an elk does this it's probably not going to get killed. Uh, that's becoming very clear with our research with other research. 

Isle Royale which has been studying wolf/ moose relations for 45 years, another national park has never had a moose killed by wolves that stood it ground. So this is a very effective strategy and this elk was not killed. We are very much (this is ten years data and this is winter time)  uh, because summer's different. Summer is much harder to learn from.  Uh, we're in some ways spearheading the effort in learning about summer predation. So I have to and it's different but it's basically park wide. This doesn't talk about central Yellowstone; it's slightly different there. But if you lump all the data together it's largely a wolf/elk system. 

However, if you look back,  4.1% of the take are bison. If you look at just the last year it's 7%. Uh, and so wolves are learning how to take bison. Wolves are forced to learn how to take bison because the elk leave areas like Pelican Valley. Uh, the elk population is as large in the Madison Firehole,  P.J. White's here and he'll talk about that later.  Uh, but wolves are having to learn how to take bison. This could be key to our predictions about what the wolf populations going to be like in ten years. If they switch to a more significant degree to bison from elk this could maintain wolf numbers at a higher level. That could possibly drive elk lower. It's called prey switching behavior and it's a big question that we have; a lot of researchers have, is what degree will wolves switch to bison? They are harder to kill.  If they don't switch to bison they'll  probably decline to a lower level.  This bison wasn't in much danger; that's a wolf pup. It's learning what to do.

Audience: Laughter

Doug Smith:  The bison stood there;  did nothing; the pup left.

Audience: Laughter

Doug Smith:   So, uh, bison are harder to kill and wolves have a lower success rate  killing them.  This bison, however, in Pelican Valley late February was killed by the wolves.  Uh, and those wolves have become bison specialists and the battles are epic. Some of them last nine/ten hours. Some of them last longer.  It gets dark; we can't see anymore. We wake up and they've got a dead bison. Um, this pack as I mentioned had wolves move out of Pelican Valley onto the Northern Range and they are  focusing no more on bison because they have the experience.  What's interesting is this wolf right
 here (this is wolf 378) you can see the blood on him was collared in the Slough Creek Pack . And we think actually he started off in Mollies Pack;  so he's been bouncing around a lot. This is what happens when the bison stop standing their ground. This bison
starting moving and every wolf there (there's six wolves there) latched onto his hindquarters and they eventually did kill this bison. And so when they can't kill bison this pack goes into Wyoming, North Fork of the Shoshone River,  which is a major elk wintering area and preys on elk. So that's why the Wyoming State Management Plan has implications for wolves in Yellowstone; because they do cross the boundary and Ed can talk about that.

This is the Slough Creek Pack attacking a bison on Slough Creek. An unsuccessful chase but again it shows that when animals flee wolves chase, almost always.  Animals stop; wolves slam on the brakes. Uh, it's almost very simple strategy and wolves, I hate to put it this way, but in some ways are cowardly hunters. If you stand them down, they don't like it.  The reason for this is because they can get injured. They very much pursue the weakest most vulnerable animals.  That is not a wives tale. The reason they do that is because they can get injured or killed if they make the wrong choice.  Their threshold for taking on less vulnerable prey will increase when they're hungry. Uh, and more wolves will get injured and die but they do want to take the easiest prey because prey are hard to kill. That bison turned an ran and the wolves chase. Dave Mech in Minnesota has had wolves killed by white deer. So it is true; they are going after vulnerable animals. The prey have effective defense strategies that they use against the wolves that are very effective. So it's not true that wolves go out and kill anything they want.

These are data just from the Northern Range.  P.J . will probably talk about Central Yellowstone. But the importance of this graphic or the next three graphics or two I can't remember because I shorten my talk is this is the long term pattern. And so  when we've been here 10 years  doing monitoring and one important thing about that in Isle Royale National Park is a great example  when you do something for a long period of time the patterns that are occurring reveal themselves very evidently, very easily.  In other words, you get the hang of what's going on. This is very different from a two or three year study.

So this is the pattern of winter wolf killing. About 40% calves; selection against prime age animals; P.J. would take this out to 14 years of age;  um, so it's just a different way of analyzing it but they tend to avoid prime age animals. Keep in mind that about 60% of the elk herd are cows. So strong selection against, the proportion of the elk herd against this is Northern Range animals; for calves is below 20%, so that's strong selection for calves. And they're taking bulls about  proportional to there availability. Uh, 21 to 22% bulls.
These are the last two years. Something is happening.  That pattern that I talked about, there's been a deviation from that pattern the last couple of years and this has jumped out at us.  This is early winter 2003, I won't go into our methods because all of you here about it. We do a 30 day intensive monitoring period every year early and late winter. So our methods are consistent our efforts is consistent. This is fall November, December 2003. They really hit calves hard.  This is pretty much typical. That 38% that you saw in the last graph averages all winter. But if you  just look at all winter they really turn to calves early in the year because they are the most vulnerable.  This relates back to what I said in my last slide. Cow elk, bull elk coming off a summer of green grass are in good shape.  They go after the calves. Uh, very few prime age cows, in fact, this particular winter study none; they start killing the older cows  actually the average age of cow elk killed is 14.

So right at that mark of prime to old  and in bulls 18%.  Look at this year. This is just 6 months ago; calves dropped by half; bulls increased by 50%. What's going on? They started with bulls early and they stayed with them all year. The point is we don't know. Our guess is the drought is effecting both the quantity and quality of the forage. The bulls go into the rut in poor shape.  Talking to ungulate biologist, the bulls might not eat for a couple, three weeks at a time. They come out of the rut in  even worse shape; wolves are finding that out. If you  can kill a bull or a calf and the bulls are easy, why not kill a bull?  Because there is a lot more food on the bull. So there's a big switch and it's jumped out at us because 10 years of data make departures from average very obvious. So something is going on and we are trying to figure it out.
This is a bull that got killed in March. This is a Swan Lake Pack. This is near Stevens Creek. This is wolf 295 that was  in the Agate Creek Pack dispersed into the Swan Lake Pack and that's the alpha male of the pack. So a lot of bull killing going on. The other three wolves in this pack just sat there and watched. They let these two males do all the work.

What I've been talking about so far is prey selection. These changed;  these ten years of data are changing in another way as well. This is how often wolves kill. This is key to our 30 day studies. So this is our 30 day early winter study; this is our 30 day late winter study. The first five years we are here; except this winter 96/97. Which is in some ways an out liar because it was such a hard winter. We all know about that; we live here.

Wolves typically killed  fewer elk in early winter than late winter. Roughly a pack of ten would kill an elk every third day (boy it steals my thunder when it does that, oops the wrong way); an elk every third day and here an elk every other day. Kill rates have been declining across the board. A 35 to 40% decline in the number of elk wolves killed. Remember our methods are unvarying. Same methods. So this can't be explained by us doing something different. Prey selections changing; the  amount of elk they're killing is changing. Didn't  have time to put these data in but wolf weights are coming down too.

So all these things are  beginning to click together. What's going on? Well, we think one thing is lack of snow. This was a two mile chase along Blacktail Deer Plateau on March 6th.  It's unheard of  March 6th not to have Blacktail completely covered by snow. This elk outran those two wolves.  These are two Leopold wolves, they gave it as good a chase as they could. It was an amazing sight to watch. When they finished  the elk and the two wolves stood  there looking at each other both panting their lungs out. After that long run the elk lived. If there was a foot of snow along that route or there was a place that wolves could have run that elk into deep snow swales, I think they would have killed that elk.

There is a lot of literature from the 1980's that correlates wolf kill rates with snow depth. And there is a very high degree relationship. The more snow you have the more ungulates wolves kill. Well, we have been in a drought. Late winter we haven't had as much snow and we think that's effecting kill rates. Heres this chase went on for two miles. I could take several pictures; you can see here there's a bull that's dropped its antlers.  It seemed like they dropped them early this year. Uh, they got close but they couldn't bring it down.  Contrast that with this. This is Gardner's Hole. the Swan Lake Pack, and you can see they killed that elk. That thing is chest deep in snow. So this snow effect could be important.

Now this is, uh, combining with this possibility of increased vulnerability to the bulls and this is a subject of ongoing attention. To try and tease these factors out of why these selection patterns and  uh, kill rate patterns are changing but this jumps out at us at least for this year.   So  the multi million dollar question and P.J.  will talk about it more than I will but um, it's hard to talk about wolves without talking about elk is the Northern Yellowstone elk herd.  This is not talking about all eight Yellowstone herds that use Yellowstone or the Madison Firehole herd but the herd has declined roughly 50% since wolf reintroduction. And many critics of wolves say tell me what's different. Wolves  were reintroduced; elks have declined; it's as simple as that. Um, it's hard to know what the true answer is because it's a complicated situation. But we think very much that there's  more that one cause for the decline in elk.  Um, we have wolf reintroduction; we have grizzly and cougar populations that have increased since wolf reintroduction; we have the State of Montana hunting females outside the park. Um, we have a drought. Um, other research  um that we are doing and (if you are interested I can get you the publication on it) suggests drought effects on the elk population. Um, and so we feel very strongly that and I mentioned at the beginning that it's a  multi carnivore system, uh, one of the most in North America. Um, we feel very much that there's many reasons elk are declining and very much one of the reasons are wolves. Um, not saying that wolves don't have an impact but it's not that simple. Uh, so I think that's a very important message to get out to people. That because you are going to hear out all over the place, wolves, wolves, wolves. Yeah, it is wolves but if it was just wolves look at Isle Royale; that moose population has fluctuated for uh  many reasons outside of wolves and there is just one predator there; uh only wolves and they have much different dynamics than a multi predator system.  Um, and so I think it's very important  and the moose density in Isle Royale by the way  is twice the density of the mainland. You will not see moose density like you see in Isle Royale anyplace in mainland North America and yet it's just wolves. So that says a lot right there.

Um, I have to give credit to our winter study crews.  These are all volunteers. They get a daily stipend and a place to stay.  I know all you guys have dealt with them and seen them on the road.  They deserve a lot of credit. A lot of data I  just presented was gathered by them;  an entire volunteer force. Um, we have an intensive training session twice a year to get them up to speed on the science we want done and the trials and tribulations of working safely in Yellowstone.  That's the cost of using volunteers is getting them up to speed on knowing all the things they should and should not do and how to work safe. When you have a steady staff you don't have to worry about that as much as with volunteers.  But summertime, that's our next frontier.

Um, we've had an incredible amount of difficulty with technology but summer is totally different than winter. And one way we're getting at that is that we've had to use high technology all supported by Yellowstone Park Foundation and donors buying what are called global positioning system collars that communicate with satellites.  We can program them uh to go into  high location mode at certain times of the year. We get 48 locations per day from May thru August. And so every place, this is a wolf from the Geode Pack last year, this is one week of locations. These are all the places  this one wolf went in one week. Everyone of these blue dots  is where that wolf spent more than two hours. We hiked to everyone of those spots and 70% of that time we found a kill. This is how you have to do it in the summertime. And it's very different than winter because one thing is that  pups  wolves have their pups in April and the pack becomes anchored to a site. There ball and chain so to speak and  what they'll do is  they'll split up into multiple groups. They'll hunt as singles, duos and trios. And so it's very hard to keep track of the whole pack. And you've got to collar multiple animals with these GPS collars to find out where all elements of the pack are going. They tend to eat smaller prey because they are hunting as smaller units.

So one good way to think of wolves in Yellowstone besides Northern Range versus Interior is summer versus winter. Summer they're traveling as smaller units; not cohesively as a pack. Seeing a wolf here or there is very common. They could all be a member of the same pack. And in the wintertime they are all together. That's generalizing, but it's largely true. So we are trying to figure out how summer is different
than the winter because there is a lot of pressure on us from outside interests to know the full impact on the elk population. And what we are finding which is preliminary data; we've had a lot of collar failures because this is cutting edge technology and the companies do not have it completely worked out. We have collars that just flat out fail. So we are having a very hard time getting these data. But what we're  finding is that wolves generally winter to summer eat less and they lose weight. And other studies have supported this. Um, and what they eat is not entirely is not elk calves. When those calves are born only about ¼  to 1/3  of their diet is elk calves. And a lot of people thought they turned exclusively to elk calves. Um, but what we found last year  from this effort was that they ate about in the month of May, 4 cows, 4 bulls, 4 calves and they scavenged 2 carcasses.   So a very different picture. They were returning to winter kill carcasses.

The last part home stretch of the talk  is the big picture.  Not just thinking about wolves, but what do wolves do in this system? Wolves are arguably the dominant carnivore in all North American systems. They weren't here for 70 years ; what are things like when they are back.    This is a bison carcass in Centennial Creek  down off the Firehole River.  Bears are very much dominant to wolves at carcasses.  These are  ravens; I didn't  count these up. This is a bison that the Cougar Pack  killed at Cougar Meadows  but we've had 12 different scavenger species,  uh, use wolf kills.  We just began a study this week  looking at nutrient surges in the soil around carcasses.  This researchers has worked in  Konza Prairie in Kansas; Isle Royale and in the Arctic and found that all of these carcasses have high concentrations of nutrients leaching out primarily from the rumen, a little bit from the bones.  So big system effects of having a dead bison or dead elk. The biggest year we had of  grizzlies raiding wolf kills is when the Whitebark Pine Nut crop failed.    

So if Whitebark Pine Nuts are in trouble, wolves could provide some  leeway for bears.  Obviously it won't substitute for it but it could be a possibility for bears to learn to adapt.Kerry Gunther tells me bears are smart and they adapt to a lot of things thrown at them. Whether or not they can deal with the loss of Whitebark Pine is unknown but they might have a slight relief valve in stealing wolf kills. This is Pelican Valley last summer. Virtually every wolf kill in Pelican Valley gets taken away by grizzly bears. Uh, it's just a fact of life for wolves in Pelican.

Uh, the last thing I want to talk about is controversial;  definitely not everybody agrees. I want to come forward with that right away. But this is a photo in Lamar Valley, early 1990's.  Roughly, this is three years ago. A huge surge in willow. This is a big research emphasis  by a lot of outside people. Another way we're  working with outside people (unclear)  why are the willows increasing? Everybody agrees that they are in a non uniform fashion. It's not increasing across the board. That's odd and everybody also agrees that elk behavior is changing. Uh, therefore a lot of people think this is a wolf triggered event. It's called a trophic cascade and trophic cascades are defined by  indirect effects. In other words, how do wolves effect plants? They don't eat them but they effect them through the ungulate that does eat those plants. A lot of people are working on this, to many to mention.  It hasn't happened to Aspen or  Cottonwood yet but researchers are studying it and they think the signal is there as well. This is Blacktail Creek  just a few miles up that way;  same thing. For 70 years, willows suppressed. The park shot out to protect the vegetation. As  1/3 as many elk as we have right now 1968 we had no such willow recovery. Three times as many elk as we have and we get this kind of recovery. Whatever the answer is, the questions are coming up. It's a very, very hot research topic at the moment. My last slide all of  this depends on having a marked population of wolves. I know you guys hear from us, you put up with us, but none of this would work unless we had a marked population of wolves to monitor, to follow around, to study. Much hinges on that one aspect right there. I didn't go over because you gave me extra time. Thank you very much.

Moderator:  We do have a few questions.

Audience Member Paul: Yes, How come you get mange outside the park and not inside the park? Is that a nutrition thing?

Doug Smith:  Paul's question was why are we getting mange outside and not inside.  Mange is rampant to the West, North, and East, not to the South. (The Jackson area wolves.)  Ed might talk about that better  because he deals with those wolves but actually Ed's theory is it's an elevational gradient. It's a mite, it's a bug that basically chews on the wolves and makes them itch uncontrollably. It was introduced by veterinarians 1909; to coyotes to kill wolves and so we are still left with it.  And, uh, and Ed thinks and he may have other reasons that the mite can't live at higher elevations because it's colder and um and  uh, that's why. But it's starting too, one Chief Joe wolf was sighted on Daly Creek last year with signs of mange. There are  some wolves, Daly Creek  a couple days ago, Tom Lemke of the State doing a Mule Deer said he saw one almost completely naked.  So it is starting to be an issue and the best thing we can come up with is an elevational gradient. Yeah, Jerry.

Jerry: What happening with the coyote population?

Doug Smith:  Um, Bob Crabtree,  Jane Sheldon, are working on that as outside researchers. It was thought that the population had declined by 50%. There in  1999 Yellowstone Science  article indicating that declined by 50%  and they are starting to and I'm not quite sure cause I'm on Jane's PHD committee and she's indicating now that  it might be a reassortment of  coyote status. In other words, the coyotes, a lot of coyotes are killed by wolves. But the coyotes that get killed the most are the coyotes that the wolves can find. And those tend to be pack coyotes. High social status coyotes at that as well. The alpha male and female have the lowest survival rate of all coyotes on the Northern Range. And so what's happening is coyotes being clever, adaptable and smart before wolf reintroduction  most coyotes lived in packs and what they think is happening now and one reason for their 1999 results is they were missing a lot of coyotes because  the coyotes now are  learning and traveling more as what they call floaters or coyotes  that are not associated with packs. And it's harder for wolves to find and locate those coyotes so they have the highest survival rate of any coyote (unclear) class. So they are killing them less. So actually now Jennie was telling me the other day our coyote decline might not be as significant as they thought because of this adaptability of coyotes shifting to less  of a (there are still coyote packs) but  more coyotes now live outside packs.   And so actually, I still haven't heard from them what their final analysis is. Apparently they are giving a talk at YCR in May;  and  so maybe we can ask that question of them.

Colette: What do you thing about  Don Despains idea that actually the increase in the  number frost free days may be stimulating willow growth?

Doug Smith:  I  have a lot to say about that but I don't have time to get into it. Um, one thing I have to say it's great to have that many different ideas on this trophic cascade issue. I think we should embrace the debate because debate produces clarity and Don's ideas are ideas that I totally did not think of.  But the one question I have for Don, and I did ask it to him in his YCR Seminar and he really didn't have a good answer for,  is there is another huge willow eater.  One that is more attuned to secondary compounds than elk.  In other words,  they live entirely off of them, especially up in your district, Slough Creek, and that's beavers. And I happen to do the beaver surveys for the park as well. And in 1996 there was one beaver colony on the Northern Range and now there's nine. And seven of those are on Slough Creek  and there was zero in 1996. The willow has really come back to Slough Creek.  Especially elk come, elk come to the boundary. The beavers are in there.  Why are secondary compounds not effecting  beavers? Because there's a lot of research on the beaver secondary compound relationship and beavers really avoid high degree secondary compounds. So why are we seeing a willow increase,  a beaver increase and yet elk are choosing not to browse some willows because of increased growing season causes increased production of secondary compounds. That's Don's hypothesis; that this extended growing season allows them to put more energy in production of secondary compounds and it leads to less elk browsing. But why has that not effected the beavers? Again, Don may still be right but it doesn't make sense with the beaver increase.

And so that's just one of the comments I have on that. Okay, thank you very much.

Audience:  Applause