As the prowler approaches, metallic shrieks
reverberate across the grassy benchland, and strobe lights pulsate
in the black night. The would-be assassin escapes into the forest –
on all fours.
The high-tech alarm system,
designed by a scientist at the National Wildlife Research Center in
Fort Collins, Colo., is the newest tool in wolf
management.
The lights and alarms, housed in PVC
pipe, were recently installed at a 4,000-acre ranch just south of
Florence, Mont., in the Bitterroot Valley. As elk descended to the
winter range here from the rugged Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness last
year, wolves followed. Last winter, cattle rancher Tom Ruffatto
accidentally caught a radio-collared wolf in a trap set for
coyotes. Now he’s agreed to take part in the experiment and live
among wolves “as long as they don’t chomp on our livelihood.”
Any radio-collared wolf that wanders within 500
yards of the alarm will set lights pulsating, horns blaring – and
wolves running.
“We’re looking for the startle
response,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Joe Fontaine
told the Missoulian. “Scare them and make them move away from the
area.”
Hank Fischer of Defenders of Wildlife, a
nonprofit group that helped finance the experimental system, says
the key to wolf reintroduction now is developing ways “to protect
livestock and to keep wolves alive.”
* Mark
Matthews
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Armed with alarms.
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