Eight is
enough
After losing their
father to an illegal shooting outside of Red Lodge, Mont., eight
wolf pups and their mother are in a holding pen in Yellowstone
National Park. After some agonizing over the decision, federal
biologists decided to move the single-parent family to the one-acre
enclosure. For now, the mother receives fresh elk, deer and moose
meat twice a week, says Joe Fontaine, leader of the federal
wolf-recovery project. The menu consists of “carcasses, roadkill,
anything that falls over,” which biologists drop into the pen for
the mother to retrieve. The mother, who is lactating heavily,
continues to nurse the pups. On June 5, when they were six weeks
old, the pups already weighed as much as seven pounds. Life for
them has been simple so far, says Fontaine, who has observed them
“playing with bones, chewing on hides, doing what pups normally
do.”
Adding to the family, but on the outside,
is the mother wolf’s yearling daughter who has been hanging around
the pen. Fontaine hopes she’ll “join mama and help raise the little
pups. They’ll need it.” Life after the release as early as July
will likely be mobile; Fontaine anticipates the mother moving the
family “from kill site to kill site, going to where the food is.”
* Shea
Andersen
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Eight is enough.
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