Yellowstone considers 'hazing' wolves to help them avoid hunters.
When she first saw the scope the hunter aiming her way, Spitfire likely wasn't concerned. The alpha female gray wolf, beloved throughout Yellowstone National Park, was used to throngs of tourists with telephoto lenses, binoculars and cameras monitoring her movements. Humans, proving little more than harmless window dressing against the park's wild scenery, had habituated the wolf to simply ignore them.
According to Yellowstone wildlife officials, this habituation likely led Spitfire to curiously explore new territory outside the park's invisible boundaries without fear. On Nov. 24, near Yellowstone's northeast entrance, she was shot and killed by a hunter as she approached a group of cabins.
"It was a legal harvest, and everything was legitimate about the way the wolf was taken," Abby Nelson, a wolf management specialist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, told the Jackson Hole Daily. "The circumstances are obviously a little bit harder for people to stomach, because that pack had showed signs of habituation."
The carefree rapport that some Yellowstone wolves have built with humans is reportedly attractive to trophy hunters looking for an easy kill.
"Wolf hunters talk about seeing a pack of park wolves outside the boundary and being able to pick the one they want," Doug Smith, a wolf biologist for Yellowstone, told The New York Times. "They just stand there and have no fear."
In the wake of yet another famous Yellowstone wolf meeting a violent end on the fringes of the park, officials are actively rethinking how to manage wildlife habituation.
"Having a wolf not wary of a person, that's a product derived from the park," Smith told the Jackson Hole News & Guide. "Those were wolves that lived 99 percent of the time in the park. That's on us, so what do we do? To be honest I don't know, but now everything is on the table."
Smith says one idea currently being considered is a kind of "hazing" policy for wolves. Whereas today wolves are mostly left alone when it comes to their proximity to people, park officials instead might impose greater weariness by using cracker shells, paintball or beanbag guns and other non-injurious deterrents.
https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/blogs/yellowstone-hazing-wolves-help-them-avoid-hunters?fbclid=IwAR2dnSsGPqfsdNRGsxetjuDBT-WVieqmlYgtziNm6qSRb3AEdAIg-JIGZvQ