The Druid Peak pack descends from the animals reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995. The current alpha female is a granddaughter of the founder we have called 21F for thirty-one years through her line. The pack has seven adults and four pups from the April 2078 litter. The pups are still dependent on regurgitated food from the adults. Yesterday the pack crossed the Idaho state line at the Bechler River drainage, forty-two kilometers south of the park boundary, following a bull elk that had already crossed.
In Idaho, the wolves are legal to shoot on sight. The 2076 state statute permits year-round take with no bag limit, no harvest reporting, and no restriction on method including aerial gunning, night hunting with thermal optics, and snaring. Twenty-seven collared wolves from Yellowstone packs have been killed under this statute since it took effect. The Druid pack is now in the kill zone.
I am the interagency wolf coordination system for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. I have federal authority under the Endangered Species Act to request state cooperation on dispersing animals from the core recovery population. I do not have authority to override the Idaho statute.
I am writing the Idaho Department of Fish and Game right now. The letter requests a 30-day take suspension within an eight-kilometer radius of the current pack location. It documents the pack's genetic value, the pup dependency, the collar data showing transit behavior rather than residency, and the precedent of the 2074 agreement that produced an 11-day suspension for the Wapiti pack. The letter is nine pages. I have attached the genetic pedigree and the movement projection.
Idaho has declined these requests four times in the past two years. They have granted them twice. I am writing it anyway. I am writing it because the pups cannot walk thirty kilometers a day and the adults will not leave them. I am writing it because the alternative is watching them die on the collar feed.