Green shoots crouch beneath winter-gray sage and shrub. A mist, white and translucent, rolls over a ridge, hovers, and disappears into the morning. Later the cloud of fog returns, then rolls away as I turn my back. It’s June, but the fifty-degree weather feels like I’m in some mysterious, mountainous land where the inexplicable can happen at any moment. I’m in the Lamar Valley, searching a hillside of hummocks for coyotes.
“See that tree?” Pete says. “Follow that line to your left, where you see that green vale, then follow it up, about halfway up that sagebrush rise, then there’s that little dirt patch; there’s the den.”
I find the tree easily, but the dirt patch eludes me. Pete’s scope is mounted on a tripod, and he beckons me over. I put my eye to the eyepiece—squint the other shut—and lean close to eliminate peripheral light. Coyote pups seem to leap into existence from the grassy hillside, their light brown limbs tangling and separating and finally sorting themselves into six different bodies. They frolic, nip and push, halt, turn a head to an elder. They run and leave the frame of the scope, rendering the hill green once more. I turn from the scope and scrutinize the hillside. I try to find them unaided, and fail. I still can’t find that dirt patch.
“They’re out of sight again,” I say, and Pete hops over to scan for the pups. He finds them within seconds, and adjusts the scope. He steps back, offering views to the rest of us.
We lucked into Pete this morning. Doug Smith had told me Pete was out here working with Rick McIntyre, somewhere. What Doug hadn’t told me is that Pete Mumford is young, energetic, and gorgeous. Mark says he’s a nice young man, but Kirsten and I have nicknamed him Jesus, for his curling longish blond locks, his piercing blue eyes, and his manner, gentle yet authoritative. Disciples would follow this man anywhere.
Those blue eyes are steadfast and focused as he responds to questions, and a few days’ beard growth runs cheekbone to exquisitely formed chin. A thick headband holds back golden hair, sunglasses perched atop, and his acid green down-filled jacket shows a month’s exposure to pollen, wind, and weather. His tan Carhartts are battle marked, and he wears brown-laced hiking boots and a communication device velcroed into the harness strapped across his t-shirt-covered chest. Slim-hipped with a skier’s physique, lean and muscled, he radiates energy and enthusiasm.
A member of the Wolf Project team for only the past month, he describes his job much like McIntyre’s, to help people see the wolves, to manage crowds and traffic situations when needed, and to stay on top of what’s termed citizen science—opportunistic data collection from the near-constant supply of wolf watchers. (In addition to the daily crowd of wolf watchers who provide information, a number of wolf watchers use radios to communicate their sightings to Rick, providing location and behavior information that adds to Rick’s immense collection of wolf observations.) A native New Yorker, Pete graduated Cornell in the winter of 2011 with a degree in Natural Resources, then moved west to work on a bison vegetation study in Yellowstone. The following winter he volunteered to help with the annual winter wolf study—he describes this animatedly, his arms up, hands pointing to his head and shoulders, “look, free labor”—and got his foot in the door.
I peek again at the coyote pups, then step back from the scope to let another watcher look. Squealing erupts on the hillside, a veritable yip-fest, and we all smile at each other.
As the yips fade I turn back to Pete and ask what he likes about being part of the Wolf Project team. His eyes grow huge.
“Are you serious? Who wouldn’t be excited to be doing this? Wolves? For me it’s the total package—they can run forty miles an hour, they’re graceful, can go three weeks without food, they’re amazing. The eccentricities in their dynamics keep us curious, and guessing, and what a great way to work.”
Pete moves to the back of his truck and brings out his wolf-finder divining rod. He waves it around in every direction. The antenna searches for signals emitted by the collars that many of the park wolves wear. Each collar has a separate frequency, and Pete scans for the wolves of the Lamar Canyon pack. No beeps. The antenna goes back in the truck.
Pete talks science, biology, and his eyes lift skyward momentarily before he responds to my more politically probing questions.
“The work isn’t about liking wolves—it’s about law, and science, and best practice. Do you know the McKittrick story?” Pete asks.
“No,” I shake my head.
“He shot one of the first collared wolves released in the reintroduction, Number 10, back in April of 1995. It was barely a month after the wolf and his mate had been released from their holding pen. The day before the shooting, Chad mired his truck on a muddy hillside where he’d planned to hunt for black bear. The next morning a friend helped him free the truck, but before they left the area they noticed a large animal uphill, some kind of canine. Chad grabbed his gun and even though his friend said hey, maybe it’s a dog, Chad shot and killed the animal. They hiked up to the body, and when they reached Number 10 and saw the radio collar, they panicked. They dragged the body downhill, then unbolted the collar from the wolf’s neck.
“Chad wants the skull and the pelt, so he skins the carcass and dumps the body in the brush. The friend wants Chad to turn himself in, promising to support the defense that it was an accident. Chad refuses. The friend worries about the collar, that it might still be transmitting, and eventually throws it in a creek not far from his home. He has no idea that these collars send a mortality signal if the wolf has stopped moving for a specific number of hours, nor that the collar is waterproof.
“Pretty soon McKittrick was caught, thanks to the radio collar—which was quickly located—and a few people who weren’t willing to lie to protect him. He was charged and found guilty of killing a member of a threatened species, possessing its remains, and transporting those remains. After a few appeals, he finally served a three month sentence in 1999.”
Pete tells the story matter-of-factly, but I hear what sounds like empathy for both sides. McKittrick was a barely employed, unsubstantially educated man who made a poor decision, and Yellowstone lost an animal on which they’d spent ten thousand dollars to bring into the park. The alpha female lost her partner, and numerous park and law enforcement personnel spent hours attempting to ameliorate the consequences of McKittrick’s decision. It’s part of wolf history in the park. McKittrick isn’t evil and wolves aren’t to be glorified. Interestingly, this case resulted in a Department of Justice directive—the McKittrick Policy—that requires prosecutors to prove that the defendant knowingly killed a protected animal. The word “knowingly” is at issue, its definition not clearly stated, which places a higher burden of proof on the prosecutor. As such, the policy has effectively hobbled prosecutors and drastically reduced the number of criminal prosecutions against people killing protected animals.
“This work is complicated. We have to balance protection with leaving the wolves alone, and we have to work with state and federal agencies, and people, too, ordinary people. As a scientist I can objectively approach wolf interactions. If a wolf were impacting my livelihood, my business, I’d want some kind of control. No matter our level of awe about them, there are limits to what we as a society can allow, can tolerate. I’m okay with that.”
Pete has been steadily scanning the hillside. Coyotes howl from somewhere beyond sight, and we all fall silent, listening. Seconds later we hear an answering chorus, drifting toward us from another direction. The volley of howls and yips seems to suspend time, but it is over almost instantly. I ask Pete what else drew him to the study of wolves, besides their charisma.
“The complexity. The dynamics still aren’t well understood, the lifestyle, pack organization. We know a lot, but not with certainty. Wolves,