Wolf recovery in Washington took a crucial step forward last year thanks to the first documented pack in the southern Cascades.
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife wolf specialist Ben Maletzke said the agency initially spotted a collared wolf breaking away from the Naneum pack and establishing a territory in Klickitat County 16 months ago, in December 2021. When another wolf joined in spring 2022, it officially became the Big Muddy Pack, one of 37 packs statewide, according to the WDFW annual report released earlier this month.
"The amount of movement dispersal in the north Cascades gives me hope that we'll have more wolves moving down through the south Cascades," Maletzke said. "As a pack forms, then they become more consistent in their movements and they're easier to find."
He said the two wolves inhabit a large territory in Klickitat County as the first pack in the Southern Cascades/Northwest Coast region, which represents the area west of Highway 17 and south of I-90 and Highway 395. Some of the pack's territory falls on the Yakama Reservation, where the Yakama Nation Wildlife Resource Management Program assists WDFW's monitoring and plays a key role in recovery.
Although the agency hasn't yet confirmed the presence of wolves in Yakima County, it's expected to be only a matter of time. Maletzke said they have several ways to monitor movement of the animals, including cameras set up by Seattle-based nonprofit Conservation Northwest to monitor the reintroduction of fishers that began in 2015.
Wolves began reappearing in Washington 15 years ago, when WDFW wildlife managers documented a resident pack in Okanogan County. Since then the predators' estimated population has increased every year, raising concerns about how they'll interact with humans and livestock on the landscape.
Most of those wolves live in the eastern third of the state, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially ended Endangered Species Act protections for them in 2011. Their federal listing elsewhere in Washington briefly disappeared from January 2021 to February 2022 and the an evaluation of the gray wolf's status in the western United States is ongoing.
Maletzke said those changes don't have a lot of influence on the state's management activities as it works towards its recovery goals. The agency data shows the state's population of at least 216 wolves killed at least 15 cattle in 2022, the highest number recorded, but deaths have been below 10 in seven of the past 10 years.
"Anything new and novel on the landscape probably gives folks a little bit of a pause," Maletzke said. "But you hope over time it just becomes another critter on the landscape."
A study by Lisanne Petracca and other University of Washington researchers presented to the Washington State Fish and Wildlife Commission last February indicated wolves would likely reach recovery goals in the south Cascades and Olympic Peninsula by 2030. The authors also predicted wolves in that region would outnumber those in Eastern Washington within 20 years, although Petracca cautioned they're not sure how quickly the population will grow.
