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landscape with people for about 10 years without a human-wolf incident. As wolves disperse from 

 established packs occupy more habitat in Montana, they will be seen more and more frequently. Some of 

 those observations will be clo.se to human development, particularly if wild prey species are in the area. 



Because wolves live in social groups, people may see them more frequently than other large carnivores, 

 although wolves are not necessarily any more dangerous. Mountain lions and bears are solitary, except 

 for mothers with dependent young or during the breeding season. Wolves are much less secretive than 

 mountain lions. Wolves may feed and rest in open areas with good visibility, whereas lions tend to hide 

 their kills and feed or rest in dense vegetative cover. Wolves will also readily travel across openings in 

 forest cover or natural meadows in ways that mountain lions or bears do not. In addition, wolves use 

 linear corridors such as roads, utility lines or railroad rights-of-way for traveling and scent marking. 

 Becau.se of the differences between the secretive stalking behavior of mountain lions and the broad, open 

 searching behavior of wolves, people probably have a greater, yet still remote, chance of an unexpected 

 close encounter with a mountain lion than with a wolf. 



The natural order of existence for wolves in the wild is to belong to a pack. With pack membership come 

 "duties", such as establishment and maintenance of social hierarchies, patrolling and marking territory 

 boundaries, hunting, feeding and tending pups, resting, and interacting with other wolves or wildlife 

 species. Wolves aftlliated with a pack are usually actively engaged in a "purpose" and do not spend 

 extended periods of time loitering in any one location, particularly near humans. One exception is 

 extended presence and activity at den or rendezvous sites. When pack-affiliated wolves are seen alone, it 

 is usually sporadic travel for a particular reason. Even dispersing wolves generally do not loiter and move 

 through areas near people. In contrast, a single wolf seen repeatedly loitering in an area near people and 

 does not appear to be affiliated with a pack can become habituated, food conditioned, depredate livestock 

 or domestic pets, or otherwise interact with people at decreasingly safe distances. If this pattern is 

 allowed to continue, the wolf may become a safety concern. This will become especially evident if the 

 animal does not respond to hazing or harassment and repeatedly returns to an area. 



Wolf Monitoring 



Presently, USFWS and its cooperative partners conduct all wolf monitoring. University students and 

 faculty, individual citizens, private organizations, or other state and federal agency personnel collect 

 additional information about wolves. While the focus of the current USFWS monitoring program is the 

 documentation of breeding pairs that meet the recovery definition criteria, additional knowledge is gained 

 in the process. Generally, most prey population monitoring is conducted by FWP, although cooperative 

 efforts involve universities and other agencies. 



Using telemetry as the primary monitoring tool, USFWS documents overall wolf population status and 

 trend by recording reproduction and known mortalities. USFWS also generates information about wolf 

 pack size and distribution, individual territory boundaries, how packs move through and use their 

 territories, locations of wolf dens and rendezvous sites, and interactions between packs. USFWS 

 documents known wolf dispersal events between and among the three federal recovery areas and Canada. 

 USFWS has also been investigating non-telemetry based monitoring protocols, such as track surveys, to 

 assess the validity of less stringent definitions of "breeding pair" than the recovery definition. Special 

 management needs, opportunities, and constraints have also been identified. 



USFWS collects information through observational reports of wolves and wolf sign (tracks, scat) 

 submitted by citizens and resource management agency personnel. Repeated observations of animals 

 and/or sign in an area often leads to the discovery of new packs and confirms pack persistence through 

 time. USFWvS also collects information through track counts, howling surveys to confirm 



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