Watching Yellowstone's Wolves

Despite the perils of wolf-life, they have proved robust, growing in number by an average of 24 percent a year. Last winter, Bangs says, there were 1,513 wolves in the northern Rockies. But the population has dropped this year, and there will probably be about 1,450 come winter.

"We're losing a lot of pups this year. I can't tell you why," says Doug Smith, who leads Yellowstone's gray wolf restoration project. Canine diseases may be partly to blame. Diseases such as distemper and parvovirus can spread between dogs and wolves.

Smith also suspects that there's an element of self-regulation of population. Yellowstone is now dense with wolves -- 171 of them spread among 11 packs. (The larger Yellowstone ecosystem has about 350 wolves.)

"At some point wolves control their own numbers through killing one another," Smith says.

They've now spread far from the national park. Ranchers don't want them around. Hunters see them as competition for moose and elk.

"We was doing fine without 'em," says Gerry Endecott, a ranch manager south of Jackson, Wyo. "In this day and age, it just can't go back to where it was a hundred years ago. If you go back a hundred years, you have to get rid of Jackson and all the people."

Bruce Malcolm, a rancher in the Paradise Valley, just north of Yellowstone, says: "They're not a warm, fuzzy animal. They're a predator." He is dismayed that the wolf hasn't been delisted. "What happens when you start putting these animals up on a pedestal, whether it's a wolf or a bison, is that you lose the ability to manage them, because the managing becomes emotional."

A Connection to the Wild

There is definitely emotion in the Lamar Valley -- a connection between humans and wolves that no amount of harsh weather can disrupt. Even when it was 37 below, retiree Laurie Lyman went to see her wolves, driving in predawn darkness to her viewing spot on a hill above the road. She had buried herself in clothing, six layers on top, four below, with battery-powered warmers in her boots.

Lyman was a schoolteacher in San Diego before moving to a small town just outside the park.

"I never thought I'd see a wolf in the wild," Lyman says. Now she comes here every day. "I don't want to miss anything. It's compelling. Every day is a new day, every day is different."

Enthusiasts cluster along the road through the Lamar Valley, gazing through spotting scopes, recording data and communicating by walkie-talkie with watchers elsewhere in the park. According to McIntyre, the park employee, the last day when no one saw any wolves in Yellowstone was Feb. 8, 2001.

They know the wolves individually. They know which packs are robust, which are weak, which have lots of pups and which have none.