For the first time since Yellowstone National Park's gray wolf recovery program began more than a decade ago, rangers have had to kill a wolf that had become too accustomed to turning to people for food.
The wolf was shot by rangers Tuesday morning along Fountain Flat Drive after it was agreed that the predator had become habituated to people and exhibited behaviors consistent with being conditioned to human food.
The yearling male wolf from the Gibbon Meadow Pack was first sighted in the vicinity of Midway Geyser Basin in March 2009. In recent weeks, the wolf had been frequently observed in Biscuit Basin and the Old Faithful developed areas in close proximity to park visitors. There have been several incidents of unnatural behavior, including chasing bicyclists on at least three occasions, and one report involving a motorcyclist.
The park has also received reports of the wolf approaching people, as well as cars, which wildlife biologists say can best be described as panhandling--behavior consistent with a food conditioned animal. The wolf’s repeat offenses clearly demonstrate a habituation to humans and human food, escalating the concern for human safety, the park said in a release.
Yellowstone staff made attempts at hazing the wolf from the area, only to have the wolf return and repeat this behavior. Hazing techniques are meant to negatively condition an animal and may include cracker shells, bean bag rounds or rubber bullets; all non-injurious deterrents.
The decision to remove the wolf from Yellowstone was made in consultation with the United States Fish & Wildlife Service. This is the first time such a management action has occurred since wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone in 1995-1996. Rangers removed this wolf from the population in accordance with the park’s habituated wolf management plan.
According to park officials, wolves are intelligent animals that learn quickly, and changing the behavior of a habituated wolf is difficult.
Yellowstone is committed to maintaining a wild population of wolves and must also manage them to prevent negative human-wolf interactions. The conditioning of wildlife, in particular bears and wolves, to groceries, garbage or intentional feeding, usually results in habituation, making them a potential danger to people and consequently may result in their destruction.
Additionally, people who approach within 100 yards of bears and wolves, and 25 yards of other wildlife, put themselves at risk of injury and increase the potential for habituation of these animals.
“This wolf was clearly not behaving naturally, reducing our management options. Human safety is important so the difficult decision to remove the animal was made," said Doug Smith, you leads the park's wolf project. "Approaching wildlife, such as wolves, too closely can have detrimental results. We encourage visitors to keep their distance from wildlife and to not feed them."
Visitors are reminded to keep food, garbage, barbecue grills, and other attractants stored inside or otherwise unavailable to wildlife.
Yellowstone biologists say the removal of this wolf is not considered to have a detrimental impact to the overall health and population of wild, free roaming wolves in Yellowstone. The wolf population in Yellowstone is currently estimated at 124 animals in 12 packs. Pups that were born this year have not been counted and are not part of this estimate.
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Comments
Y2Y
I really hope that they let the people know they had to do this to the wolf, so hopefully people will quit feeding wild animals. I hate that this happened, it more than breaks my heart, I love all wild animals, and feel, we are in their territory, and we should always respect. I'm the first to get my camera out for a pic, its why I love our national parks, to see the wild life. PLEASE people, don't feed them, their lives depend on you not to feed them for a closer picture or look. You aren't doing them any favors. They aren't your backyard birds.
Amen Sue. I love our national parks and wildlife within. I have been to Yellowstone numerous times and it drives me crazy to see a bunch of stupid people getting as close as they can to a buffalo or elk. I mean seriously these are wild animals. And have they no tact? SHEESH.
I am not surprised . People will feed animals, that is how the domesticated dog started. A wolf got habituated and a deal was made. The wolf gets fed and the man gets a hunting and defensive companion. The man became the pack to be protected.
The feeding may not have been intentional,but just a smart wolf that figured people have food and easier to steal food from campsites or picknickers. Since the vistors did not kill the wolf he became more confident and since no serious injury resulting by the negative condtioning he figured it was safe. It was not safe. Humans will kill wolves.
This is inevitable as numbers of wolves increase and so do vistors.
Herd predation was also inevitable and has been happening outside parks. It is easier to kill a sheep or calf than a wild animal. Sheep and cattle are also conditioned to allow dogs nearby and the wolf is a canine.
People are very sucessful at creating food sources. It is not surprising that fellow predators want those food sources. That is why predator control was a big deal and the cougars, bears and wolves were killed almost to extinction.
The only way is to have these in areas where people do not exist and more people are born and live every year.
The contest for land is severw and that has happened in Afica and a good portion of wildlife is looses its territory. When it becomes aa contest between man eating or an animal eating the animal will lose.
It was a monumental mistake to re-release those wolves. Now they spreading to ranchlands. People have so romanticized these vicious predators its just sad. Can't believe that when agriculture is America's economic strength we re-introduce one of the most voracious predators known. Great, now you have to think about wolves in a national park! Not to mention they are travelling uncontrolled throughout the West. I'd gladly but the bullet through the last wolf and not blink an eye. We don't need them. Let people control the elk and deer populations through hunting, just up the limits. What a travesty!--the same people who wring their hands over the wolves and pass laws to make it a crime to kill one, don't blink an eye when a human baby is torn limb from limb and left in a hospital bucket to die, and make laws to make it not only legal but government supported. Wake up America!
Wolves are not vicious creatures by nature. They are predatory, yes - but only when in search for food. The only other times they attack is when they feel challenged (in a social setting - usually within the pack but can also bd body language they read in you due to what they look for amongst their own kind), when they feel threatened or need to defend their pack or if they are rabid. Otherwise wolves are content to leave mankind alone, they have a natural fear for man - albeit a slight curiosity so sometimes will watch from afar. Wolves are feircely loyal amongst their pack - something perhaps mankind could take a lesson about. They are very intelligent creatures but they use their intelligence toward things like survival and growing the family rather than on how to hurt the next person or con their next victim.
You say wolves have been romanticized. You are right - but they have been romanticized as being blood thirsty killers that roam the forests at night stalking their victims and tracking them by day - or even the hybrid of human and wolf commonly referred to as werewolf that is amongst both the most seductive yet violent creatures ever - if you are going to go down the road of romanticism that is. For now, let's just stick to facts, shall we?
I used to think it was kind of weird that wild canines always seem to start to beg from people rather than treat them as prey. National parks used to have scads of begging coyotes, until one bit a child carrying groceries; and the one time a starving wild wolf on Isle Royale National Park approached campers it was fed by children then ran away.
Then I realized, for many, many thousands of years, every time a starving, injured, "elderly" (they wear out teeth while they can still breed), or generally desperate wolf has had providence plunk a human child in front of it as a possible meal -- its last chance for life and a full belly it had not had in who knows how long -- the best choice is to run away or maybe even beg resources from the human child or relatives, by simply exhibiting the begging it would do as a pup or for food from other wolves.
And the worst choice harming a hair on that child's head and having themselves, their pups and related wolves, and maybe every other wolf the human tribe runs into wiped out. Humans back then could not have been so different, that parents seeing this big predator begging rather than dining on their kids would not have sometimes fed the canine, that just brought their precious child back to them before they knew it was lost, brought it back to life before they knew their inattention had killed it.
Habituated? They were created habituated. I don't think they'll stop occasionally approaching people, hiding in doghouses when it is bitter cold and under people's porches waiting for dark, and coming up to vehicles after some idiot fed them from a car. Et cetra. Hopefully people will learn to be mild with them, as they usually are of us.
And that we don't accidentally teach them the opposite lesson than before, to react to humans with aggression or predation instead of in milder ways.