Dying at Change’s Door
One morning in April, a wolf was born in Yellowstone. By Kyle Dudgeon
One morning in April, a wolf was born in Yellowstone.
Along with her, several others, each roughly the size of a softball, reliant on their mother’s careful nurturing to survive those early days from deep within their natal den. It would be another few weeks before the pups mustered up the strength, and the confidence, to wander out onto the den porch and glimpse Northern Yellowstone’s seemingly limitless landscape with their own young eyes. About the same time, hundreds of anxious onlookers waited, some first-time visitors to Yellowstone Park, others veteran wolf watchers, each hoping to see their first wolf pups of the year.
If I had to guess, 1228F—though, she was not known by this research identifier just yet—was the pioneer of her litter. The very first wolf to peer out past the dirt mound that formed the entrance of the den, to glimpse the bison herd below, and the rolling hills of sage that framed them. It became evident why one might be able to believe such folly in the years following that initial spring.
I remember the first time that our paths crossed. It was July of 2020, only my second year as full-time resident of the west, but what already felt like my 2000th visit to Yellowstone. I was obsessed with the place.
Growing up in lower New York meant lots of time spent outside. In my early years, it was on fields playing sports, or casting to largemouth bass from canoes, but as new interests in birds and wildlife sprouted throughout high school, I used binoculars, a camera, and hiking boots to devour them. By my first year of college, there wasn’t a doubt that I’d be leading a life inspired by nature.
When I landed in Montana as a field technician for the Intermountain Bird Observatory that first summer, I knew I had a problem—I was in love with a place, and it was far from home. A year later, I was driving west with a bachelor’s degree and a packed car, ready for whatever it took to stay.
To say that Yellowstone didn’t have a role in my moving west wouldn’t be entirely true. During those first two summers, I would find myself working long stretches in the field, combining my rest days into week-long camping trips in the park to look for wildlife. When I eventually landed in Bozeman as a sales associate at an outdoor store, I could say the same about my weekends. Before long, I grew close to someone who had far more knowledge of Yellowstone, and of wolves, than I, and like the sponge that I was, I left every trip from Lamar Valley dripping wet, completely and utterly oversaturated with new information, in the best way possible.
1228 was a significant character in this particular chapter, as she was the first wolf to leave an impression on me. Excuse my close-flying to anthropomorphism here, but early encounters with that wolf felt personal, as if she approached with an underlying goal. While “memorable” encounters in nature shouldn’t be classified by specific parameters, but rather left to the interpretation of the person experiencing them, when it comes to an animal as significant to the human story as a wolf, canis lupus, I believe that a close encounter, a chance to look one in the eyes, is as essential a piece of the puzzle as any.
In the heat of a July morning, 1228 gave me that chance.
That following summer, I took a position on a whim as a naturalist guide in Yellowstone Park, working for a company based out of Gardiner, Montana—a dream I wasn’t even aware I’d had. Some of my earliest memories from the driver’s seat of a tour vehicle that inaugural year involved 1228, then a near two year-old wolf. By some miracle, I was even able to recreate my first encounter with her, with guests, a family who had never seen a wild wolf before. This didn’t just happen once, either.
One memory of her brings the most joy—it happened on a morning in June that same year. I received the radio call that a grey wolf had been spotted in Lamar Valley, and off we went. The grey turned out to be 1228, traveling west along the river, presumably on her way back to the den at Slough Creek—the same den in which she was born. She stopped on a dime for something in the tall grass, and moments later emerged with a bright white bison femur, a relic of the past. Carrying the bone just as one might imagine a dog would, she continued on her way. We managed to make it to the west end of Lamar to watch her cross the road, bone in mouth, and then continued to Slough Creek to see her there.
By the time the group and I had scrambled our way up the rocky trail for a better vantage point, 1228 was just arriving to the den area. There, an outpouring, too many to count, of exuberant young pups greeted her and took hold of the gift she had carried roughly eight miles for them. The partially digested meat she coughed up from her stomach had come from further, perhaps even double that distance, before she bed down away from the family chaos. I will never forget the smiles we all shared that morning, eyes glued to our spotting scopes, looking on from afar.
I’ve been a naturalist guide in Yellowstone for five years now, and while the marvels I’ve witnessed in this park are beginning to feel innumerable, I miss those early days of observing 1228 most. As my knowledge of the ecosystem, and especially of guiding, evolved heavily in the first few seasons, so did the life of 1228, during which she always seemed to be in the spotlight.
Most yearling wolves are best described as teenagers—they have a purpose, sorta, and sometimes, but not all the time, they’re just completely lost out there. Put simply, it’s obvious in a line of traveling wolves which the young ones are. 1228, somehow, never seemed to be that young, teenaged wolf. While I joke that her eyes peered out of the den before her siblings’, knowing well it can’t be proven, I say with certainty that it was no surprise to anyone when she dispersed from her natal pack to establish her own.
In early 2022, 1228 dispersed from her natal pack. She went northeast, beyond Soda Butte, to the old growth forests and mountains that comprise Yellowstone’s northeast corner. Soon she found a mate, and together they produced her first litter that spring—two pups, one black and one grey. These four wolves would come to be known as the Shrimp Lake Pack.
Yellowstone’s northeast corner, Shrimp Lake’s territory, is notoriously a wolf sink—a place where wolves go to die. This small territory (relative to other wolf pack territories within Yellowstone) essentially leaves the wolves sandwiched between Lamar Valley, and the abrupt human landscape that occupies areas outside of the park. For a while, everything seems to work, and the wolves make hay there. The eventual problems lie within food availability—the lack of elk in northeast Yellowstone forces a tough hand. When food becomes scarce, especially in winter, movement is essential. When movement becomes essential, problems arise: east and you leave the security of Yellowstone’s border, west and much larger wolf packs loom.
Following their reintroduction to Yellowstone in 1995, grey wolves successfully met population recovery goals, altering their protected status in the Northern Rockies with removal from the Federal Endangered Species Act in 2002 (Wyoming wolf recovery came later, in 2011). Species removal from the ESA is done so with the intention of state agencies—in this case the Wyoming Game & Fish Department—resuming management, rather than the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. In theory, state managers, with their nuanced understanding of regional wildlife populations can then make informed decisions on a case-by-case basis. Seven district commissioners, appointed by the state’s governor, work with dedicated biologists to do so.
As a hunter myself, I find management to be a funny way of saying, “hunting.” In other words, how many animals can humans kill each year without lowering the overall population of said animals. So as long as the elk population in the neighborhood remains stable, we may harvest elk. The same can be said for mule deer, for moose, etc. The tone of the conversation shifts when animals like wolves are mentioned, or coyotes, or mountain lions, ground squirrels, foxes, weasels, beaver, so on and so forth. Not all wildlife are created equal, and those flagged as inconvenient sometimes receive the shorter end of the stick, if they can get any hold at all. I will save the conversation around nuisance permitting, accidental bycatch, and wildlife services for another day.
Long story short, if you’re a wolf in Yellowstone, do your damndest to stay there.
The Shrimp Lake Pack, despite losing its establishing alpha male that first fall to the wolf hunt in Wyoming, managed to survive for a while. An ode to 1228’s wittiness, and wisdom—I’d imagine garnered by the hours spent wandering solo through Yellowstone’s Northern Range in her early years. She found a new mate not long after the death of her first, a grey male, who would sire their subsequent litter in 2023. Three grey pups that second year brought the pack total to 7. It was about this time that I stopped seeing them.
Other than occasional glimpses of a wolf traveling over a hill, or reports from a lucky visitor who happened upon them super early in the morning, Shrimp Lake became somewhat of a mystery. I can’t recall the last time I saw 1228, but I have an idea. There were moments in that winter of 2023 where I may have glimpsed her one final time, as I know others did. Could it be that their transition to secrecy, to the dark timber in the heart of their territory, came as a reaction to the loss of their founding alpha male? Insert a wanting of the ability to talk to animals here. What I do know is, despite my many years as a field scientist, I yield to the philosophical parts of my brain far too often. As they say, to live life is to wonder.
In a conversation with a friend recently, he mentioned the last time he saw 1228: “Yeah, Soda Butte Valley early in 2024, I think January. Matt’s group was here.” All seven wolves were out that morning, 1228 leading the pack. It was late winter, and they seemed to be hot on the trail of something to eat.
Soon came April, and as most wolves do during this sensitive time (denning season), Shrimp Lake vanished again. Every time I drove through Soda Butte Valley that spring, I thought about those wolves, about 1228. I wanted that magical encounter with her and her pack mates once more, to see them traveling with my own eyes—that luck never quite found me. By mid summer, I caught wind of reports that a collared grey wolf, a lactating female, had been removed for livestock conflict in Wyoming’s Sunlight Basin, just next door to Yellowstone’s border. With it, several others. These wolves had been shot for predating chickens.
Pardon me, while I get philosophical again. I do believe that there will come a day when all, not some, can appreciate how old—not in the sense of 200 years, but 2,000 or more—the world still feels here. Greater Yellowstone is not like other places. There are mountains and rivers in Colorado, and in Utah. There are mule deer and elk in Nevada, cougars along the coastal ranges of Washington and Oregon, even some in the hills of California, though, no other place in the Lower 48 rivals that of the grizzly bear-rich wilderness surrounding the Yellowstone Volcano, nor the high elevation valleys still teeming with wild American bison, nor the howls of wild wolves that carry over it all. However, that day is not today.
The science, if you so dare to believe it, says that wolves would rather eat elk than cattle. It says that despite living alongside one of the highest densities of wolves anywhere in the world, the elk in northern Yellowstone are slightly over objective population goals. It also says, sure, removing a few hundred wolves from each of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming in winter won’t affect the population negatively. Because in April, a few will be born again. What the science doesn’t say is that right now, well within the last natural ecosystem of its kind in the Lower 48 states, there are some that wish to destroy native wildlife to spare the life of a chicken.
If it meant keeping the fire burning in a wolf’s eyes for another day, I’d give up my chickens tomorrow. But for now, on the cusp of a much-needed shift in the way so many think about wildlife, those that have been here long before us will be dying at change’s door.