American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West

It is May 2010. O-Six has denned to give birth to four pups from 755. She is holed up above a grassy bowl on a plateau above Lamar Canyon, which joins Little America to the full Lamar Valley. She must raise her litter to hold her new territory and help her pack feed itself, but it’s tedious work. One day, for example, she spends seven hours jousting with a passing grizzly bear and her two cubs, desperately trying to lead them away from her den. A signal paw swipe from the mother could kill O-Six, but she must distract the bears before they can excavate her pups from the hillside to feed on them. It is an exhausting fight for their survival.

By the end of May, the pups can leave the den to frolic in the bowl below. The three adult wolves develop new routines and dynamics to raise them. Father 755 helps O-Six keep passing bears away and also hunts with 754. Sometimes the pair drag elk meat back from miles away, a cumbersome and exhausting task. Often, instead, the adult wolves gorge on kills, then regurgitate semi-digested meat for the pups, in the way adult birds feed their chicks.

As the pups grow, O-Six moves their den to the plateau’s eastern side, hoping to alleviate the risk of bear attacks. Moving the playful pups—two male, two female—goes well, and the young wolves join their parents and uncle in a happy howl as they survey the territory before them. It will become their home, if they survive until adulthood.

Of course, wolf-spotters are surveying O-Six’s plateau from the opposite direction. Ever since the cubs made an appearance, the opposing hilltop has been packed with spotters watching them play and develop. Project officials have officially dubbed the family the Lamar Canyon Pack, though fans shorten the name to the Lamars. By the summer, O-Six is Yellowstone’s biggest star.

Rick, Laurie, and Doug are ever present at these jamborees, with Rick talking to the park’s visitors and helping them spy the wolves in action. Rick’s real dream, though, is to write a new book (he wrote one previously arguing for wolves’ reintroduction) that will chart their successful return to the West. He and his fellow spotters can’t help but be enthralled by the wolves they watch daily, learning their habits and their personalities. Rick knows he needs to capture such details to win over hearts and minds.

The scale of that challenge beyond the park’s borders is becoming ever clearer. A first hunting season in Montana has proved deadly for park wolves. Within three weeks, hunters killed four out of 10 wolves from the Cottonwood Creek Pack. The dead included both the pack’s alphas (male and female), meaning they would drift toward an uncertain fate. The only two wolves in the pack with research collars—visitor favorites 527 and 716—were shot, too, leaving project officials with no way to track the remaining wolves. Rick has heard 527’s carcass is on display behind a bar near Gardiner. The town is not far from the northern end of Buffalo Plateau—home to O-Six’s current den—and is a focal point of anti-wolf sentiment.

Rick’s best hope for O-Six is that she moves into the Lamar Valley proper, if the weakened Druids relinquish it. That way, she and her offspring are more likely to roam to the east instead, into Wyoming, where authorities have yet to declare a wolf-hunting season. But it is only a matter of time before they do. The sport is proving popular. In total, the first season in Idaho and Montana yielded 258 dead wolves, many of them less heralded or beloved than Yellowstone’s.

In late winter, O-Six eventually kills her Druid nemesis White Line, who is in poor health and unable to take out her rival. The wolf-spotters who witness the bloody battle even get a firsthand glance of O-Six later chasing a bull elk across the road through the Lamar Valley within 200 yards of the packed car park. She is increasingly assertive and becoming a draw to Yellowstone’s wolf fans.

One of the witnesses that day is retired school teacher Laurie Lyman. She moved to the area in 2006 and lives near Rick in Silver Gate. She’s even part of his informal group of wolf-spotters, known as “Rick Radio,” who stay in constant contact every day. Laurie writes wolf articles on a local website and is a popular part of Yellowstone’s growing wolf-watching community.

Another recent transplant is Doug McLaughlin from Washington State. He has a great knack for spotting the wolves, and Rick often leans on him when the rudimentary telemetry from the wolves’ collars fails. This trio become firm friends, and while the park biologists categorize the wolves in terms of their weights, diets, ranges, and so on, Rick, Laurie and Doug follow their lives, understand their behavior, and even nickname them. In fact, it is Laurie who christens O-Six.

It is also Laurie’s account of the battle between O-Six and White Line, and the ensuing bull elk chase, that burnishes O-Six’s reputation as one of the park’s stars. When Rick retrieves White Line’s body for the park biologists, he can’t help but feel that her demise is the nail in the Druids’ coffin. He is saddened, too, by a levelling off in the park’s wolf population, from a giddy high of 174 wolves to around 100 now. Project biologists predicted this would happen, predators and prey balanced out. But it is a blow for Rick and fellow watchers who were accustomed to the Lamar Valley’s lively life until now.

The wolves face a new threat outside the park too. After drawn-out court battles, the US Fish and Wildlife Service delisted wolves as endangered species in the Northern Rockies, putting management of their numbers in state control. Montana and Idaho instituted their first legal wolf-hunting seasons, with Wyoming hoping to follow suit. The wolves remain protected within Yellowstone’s boundaries, but beyond them, they are no longer the apex predator. Project officials have culled wolves that preyed on livestock to fulfil a promise to local farmers made at the initial reintroduction, but they hoped it would ensure the wolves’ acceptance in the Northern Rockies. This has not been the case.