Reports of wolves roaming Yellowstone National Park made since one apparently was captured on videotape last month are not enough to justify a search for the predators.
Wayne Brewster, a wildlife biologist who is the park's research administrator, said last week only two of the various reports made to rangers seem credible."After the animal was filmed, we had a report come through the system that someone had observed a large, dark canine the Wednesday before the filming," Brewster said. "And then we've had several other reports shortly after that in the general area, but no concentration of reports."
The last credible sighting was reported on Sept. 1, he said.
In mid-August, a film crew captured a large canine resembling a wolf feeding on a bison in the Hayden Valley in the park's interior. While the animal behaved like a wolf, there's a possibility that it was a wolf-dog cross, according to biologists. It's impossible to say whether the animal was a full-blooded wolf without blood tests, they add.
Wolves have not been docu-mented in Yellowstone since 1926, when the park's last wolf was trapped and killed under a government-authorized extermination program. Efforts are under way by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to finalize a plan to return wolves to Yellowstone.
If wolves, an endangered species, have returned to the park on their own it could alter the plan to introduce an experimental population of wolves to the park.
So far, though, there is no evidence that wolves have set up residence in Yellowstone. The animal that appeared on videotape last month might have been a lone wolf roaming through the region in search of a mate.
Brewster said if additional, credible, sightings are received officials might agree to spend the time and money to search for wolves.
"There are ways to try to find wolves, but one of them is not paying huge aircraft bills and flying, looking for them in the summer," he said. "If the animals set up a consistent use area, they are visible enough" to generate additional sighting reports.
"Then it's time to perhaps invest some time and perhaps some aircraft time into looking," Brewster said. "Before that you can be chasing reports of lone wolves all the time and getting nothing out of it."