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Wolves making comeback after century of bounties, poisoning

Larry Pynn
Vancouver Sun

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Dan Gerak noticed the first signs in late November in the upper Pitt River Valley -- several big paw prints in the snow and the carcass of a black-tailed deer.

Then about two weeks ago, he awoke during a storm and drove in darkness seven kilometres to the north end of Pitt Lake to check up on his boat.

"I turned the corner and there were four wolves right in front of me," the owner of Pitt River Lodge recalled in an interview. "I had a really good look. They were all black on their backs, with a little bit of grey on their sides."

What Gerak witnessed may be part of a local resurgence of the grey wolf, a species persecuted in B.C. for close to a century through bounties, poisoning campaigns, hunting and trapping.

"It's really exciting news," he said. "They're incredibly beautiful animals."

The wilderness icon is being increasingly observed in the Lower Mainland region.

And not just the upper Pitt River Valley, but the Skagit and Squamish drainages, Pemberton, and the Sunshine Coast.

Darryl Reynolds, senior wildlife biologist for the Sunshine Coast, suspects wolves are on the rise based on his own observations of wolf tracks and deer kills and on anecdotal information from the public.

"It seems that way," Reynolds said. "We're only working on a hunch. We've been getting a lot of reports from the public that they've seen wolves all across the region."

To get a better handle on populations, the ministry now requires hunters to report any wolves shot in the Lower Mainland region, an area extending east to Hope and north to Pemberton and up the coast to beyond Bute Inlet.

The ministry estimates eight wolves were shot in the region in 2005 based on hunter surveys, all west of Highway 99, the Sea to Sky Highway. Province-wide, the ministry estimates there are 8,000 wolves.

Jack Lay is a veteran trapper and retired animal control officer for the ministry, mainly in the Fraser Valley. He, too, believes wolf numbers are increasing in southwestern B.C., a trend he attributes to fewer people taking the time to trap them and the government no longer setting poison baits.

"The population is exploding," he said from his Princeton home.

Joe Foy of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee said the sighting of a wolf pack in the Pitt River Valley is cause for celebration.

Referring to the successful relocation of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s, he said: "Our city sits on the edge of a wilderness that, like Yellowstone, could one day return to its former glory."

The wolf pack in the upper Pitt Valley, 25 km north of Pitt Meadows, is especially interesting because the province relocated 23 Roosevelt elk -- three bulls and 20 cows and calves -- there from the Sunshine Coast in January 2005. Almost two years later, the herd had increased to 40.

Gerak said environment officials had predicted wolves and grizzlies would follow once the elk had become established in the valley. He hasn't seen the wolf pack kill an elk yet, but figures it's just a matter of time. Tracks in the snow show the elk heading into the forest with wolf prints following.

Last spring, Gerak also spotted the print of a grizzly near Blue Creek in the valley, with long tell-tale claws in front of the paw prints, but he is still waiting to see the actual animal.

lpynn@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2008