Posted Sep 06, 2004 - 11:53 AM
By JIM MANN
The Daily Inter Lake
LIBBY — Jay Mallonee knows where the wolves will be. His pickup, with ‘‘WLFINDR'' license plates, bumps and bounces along winding forest roads east of Libby. Then the radio receiver at his side picks up the steady beeps of a wolf's radio collar. He's getting close. Eventually, Mallonee is standing on an indistinct stretch of road lined with thick timber. Moving a hand-held antenna back and forth, he dials in on the signal and takes compass bearings to narrow the location of the signals.
‘‘All three of them are here,'' he said of the three members of the Fishtrap Pack that are fitted with government radio collars. The wolves are about a mile away, in a densely forested valley where they often rendezvous.
After studying them for three years, the wolves have become ‘‘predictable to a point'' for Mallonee, who is conducting what he says is the only independent wolf research project in Montana.
‘‘The bottom line is we don't know that much about wolves, and the wolves of northwest Montana are pretty much unknown,'' said Mallonee, whose work has been self-financed, primarily through work as a science teacher at the community college in Libby and his job at a local video store.
While there has been extensive research on wolves around the world, Mallonee said that the collective body of knowledge is not specific to wolves in northwest Montana. He contends that his research will be unique in that it is a long-term project, focusing on wolves in an area where there has been little research.
‘‘If people tell me that they think they know a wolf pack works out here, I'd be amazed,'' Mallonee said. ‘‘They simply don't know.''
Mallonee has identified the pack's 240-square-mile territory and how the wolves use it at different times of year. He has located the wolves' den site, has counted their numbers from year to year, and has figured out many of their travel routes and rendezvous sites.
He has recorded their howls to study their vocalization patterns.
Mallonee said he has gone out nearly every day for the past three years, spending at least a couple of hours searching for the wolves or traces they've left behind.
After all that work, he has managed to actually see the wolves only a handful of times, largely because of the dense forest cover in which they live in and because Mallonee intentionally distances himself from them.
‘‘They are very elusive,'' he said. ‘‘And they are horribly difficult to study.''
Before coming to Libby, Mallonee, 47, had previously done research on marine mammals in the Bering Sea, studied a wolf in captivity for three years, and done wolf field studies with students from the University of California, Santa Barbara, for 13 years.
His work with the Fishtrap Pack is not officially sanctioned by government wildlife agencies, but he has developed an informal working relationship with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Joe Fontaine, the agency's wolf recovery coordinator for Montana, said Mallonee is a credible and ethical researcher whose work was considered an asset by Tom Meyer, a federal wolf biologist who was based in Kalispell until he took another job earlier this year.
Fontaine anticipates, however, that Mallonee will need to develop a relationship with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks as the federal government prepares to hand over management of wolves to the state.
And state officials may insist that Mallonee have a more formal arrangement, possibly through some form of research permit.
Mallonee said he wants to work with the state. But he is concerned that state wardens and other officials in the field may know little about wolves, and that they may have little time to work on wolf management.
He said he thinks state officials would be wise to make use of the information he has gathered on the pack.
Eventually, Mallonee expects a clear picture of the pack to emerge that will be quite different from studies done on other wolves.
Yellowstone National Park's Druid Peak Pack has been extensively studied, but to Mallonee, that research is irrelevant to wolves in northwestern Montana.
‘‘That's Yellowstone. This isn't Yellowstone,'' he said. ‘‘It's way different here.''
Although they do leave the national park, Yellowstone wolves mostly roam within a protected area with a different prey base.
‘‘This is a huge interface between humans and wolves,'' Mallonee said. ‘‘It is a totally different context.''
And for Mallonee, working with local residents is as important as studying the Fishtrap Pack.
‘‘If I'm going to do this kind of research, I'm going to have to work with people who hate wolves,'' he said.
While there are plenty of people in the area who don't like wolves, Mallonee said there are plenty of people who are willing to work with him.
Mallonee's research got under way soon after the Fishtrap Pack made itself known in 2001 by killing two llamas in the McGinnis Meadows area.
Mallonee said he has become good friends with the rancher whose llamas were killed. Mallonee lets the rancher know when the wolves are near so other precautions can be taken.
There have been no documented kills of domestic animals by the pack since 2001.
‘‘The remarkable thing is how many times a year these predators meet these range cattle and nothing happens,'' he said.
People often contend that the area's wolf numbers will mushroom. But Mallonee said that's not likely to happen because the pack's size fluctuates, and the pack will aggressively defend its territory from outside wolves.
Last year, the pack had six adults and seven pups. This year it had six adults, and Mallonee believes there are only three pups.
Mallonee said some locals don't necessarily resent wolves as much as they do the government and wolf management policies that come from Helena and Washington, D.C.
‘‘I get told lots of things because I don't work for the government,'' he said.
Mallonee said he thinks government officials need to be far more engaged with the public in areas where there are wolves.
‘‘Killing one-third of your wolves every year is not management, but that's what's happening,'' said Mallonee, who is convinced that wolf managers can do more to head off conflicts between wolves and humans.
