DRVI r KIS API'KM>I\ 1 



Figure 1 . Wolf pack distribution in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming and the recovery area boundaries. 



Large symbols represent established packs. Small symbols indicate newly-formed packs or 

 packs whose status is unknown at the present time. (Source: USFWS et al. 2001 and 

 USFWS unpubl. data as of September 2001). 



Ongoing efforts by the USFWS and its cooperating partners to monitor wolves in the tri-state area have led to the 

 discovery of new wolf packs successfully raising at least two pups in 2000. Because yearling wolves were captured 

 in 2001, the pack must have successfully reared pups to December 31 in the year 2000. Therefore, the calendar 

 year 2000 is the first year of the three-year count down in which a total of .30 breeding pair were tabulated towards 

 the recovery goal. It appears that 2001 will be the second year since there are about 45 breeding pair that could 

 potentially raise pups to December 31, 2001. If 30 breeding pair are again documented in December 2002, the 

 USFWS could propose to delist wolves from ESA. The USFWS cannot delist wolves without the respective states 

 first adopting conservation and management plans. 



While the history of the gray wolf in Montana and its eventual return is a story in and of itself, the story is not 

 complete without also acknowledging the history of prey populations over a similar time span and the role of 

 Montana sportsmen and women. 



No one really knows how many deer and elk were present at the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition or even for 

 decades thereafter. But before the 19"" century was over, big game populations were depleted over most of the 

 landscape because of excessive commercial and subsistence hunting. In 1867, Granville Stuart, an early 

 conservationist and territorial legislator in Montana, acknowledged thai the tcrriiorial legislature "needed to enact 

 some laws or there will not be, in a tew years, so much as a minnow or deer left alive in all the territory" (Brownell 



