Outside Online: The News: Wolf Special Report

A Gift from Canada

January, 1995

In the quest to return wolves to the American West, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service looked to Canada's remote southern Rockies, an abundant source of gray wolf packs. "We decided to work in an area where wolves knew how to hunt elk and deer and weren't around a lot of livestock," explained wolf recovery coordinater Ed Bangs.

Canadian government biologists gave the Americans permission to take up to 30 wolves from remote areas east of Jasper and Banff National Parks, where wolves are regularly harvested for their pelts by local trappers.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enlisted the aid of the Canadian trappers, offering them $2,000 for each wolf they captured, unharmed, in modified net snares. The local trappers had to agree to check their snares daily and to cease hunting wolves while the effort was in progress.

Wolves captured by trappers were then immobilized, radio-collared and set free. When these 17 wolves returned to their packs, Bangs and his team were able to locate 14 wolf packs with a fixed-wing plane. Alaskan biologists, experts in wolf capture, aided the team in shooting tranquilizer darts at the wolves from a helicopter.

After veterinarians examined them at a nearby holding facility, the wolves were transported to Yellowstone, where they were placed with their original packs into one-acre pens. After two months, they were released into the park.

Another group went to central Idaho, where they were released directly into the wild.