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11-06-2025
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River of No Return: How the Nez Perce Tribe stepped in to save wolf reintroduction in Idaho
After they were captured in Canada, the wolves released in Yellowstone National Park initially stayed in acclimation pens, like this wolf pictured in Crystal Creek on Jan. 26, 1996. (Photo courtesy of Jim Peaco/Yellowstone National Park) EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second installment of Howl, a five-part written series and podcast season produced in partnership between the Idaho Capital Sun, States Newsroom and Boise State Public Radio. Read the first installment by clicking here. NEZ PERCE RESERVATION, IDAHO – Long before the American government removed them both from their ancestral homelands, wolves and Native Americans coexisted side-by-side for centuries. Those connections run deep for Shannon Wheeler, the chairman of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee. Wheeler remembers growing up as a boy, hearing elder members of the Nez Perce Tribe tell stories about wolves. One story involves a young boy talking with his grandfather. 'They were talking and the grandfather told him that each of us have a wolf inside of us. We actually have two wolves inside of us. One's a good wolf, and one's a bad wolf. And they're constantly fighting one another. And the grandson asked him, 'Well, Grandpa, which wolf wins?' And he says, 'Whichever one you feed the most will win,'' Wheeler said. The story of the two wolves is one that Wheeler carries with him to this day. 'We're able to utilize that lesson and our teachings to our younger ones coming up as we continue to try to grow our people and to fit into part of a world that is outside of who we are and outside of our culture and so we need those strengths,' Wheeler said. 'We need to know that we're feeding the good wolf inside of us so that we are that strong.' In addition to the stories, some members of the Nez Perce Tribe develop even deeper spiritual connections with wolves. 'What I can tell you from my position as the Tribal chairman is the wolf has always played a significant part in who we are as people, based on even the names of our people,' Wheeler said. 'Many of our people have gone out for wéyekins … A wéyekin is something where you go and fast and you get your animal spirit, and it'll come to you. And sometimes it's a himíin, it's a wolf. Himíin is the name for us for wolf.' Nearly 70 years after the U.S. government drove the wolf population to near extinction in the U.S. Rocky Mountains, that spiritual connection is what led tribal members to work to bring the himíin back to Idaho, Yellowstone National Park and the West. This is the story of how the Nez Perce pulled off a task no one else wanted – and why they're still fighting for wolves today. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX For thousands of years the Nez Perce Tribe has lived, hunted, fished and traded in what are now parts of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana and Wyoming. Over time, members of the Nez Perce Tribe developed a deep connection to the land and animals, said Allen Pinkham, a member of the Nez Perce Tribe who was born in 1938. 'To us, we are given the opportunity by the Creator to occupy this land that we're at right now, and then we're supposed to take care of the land and all the species that we utilize because it's a life source,' Pinkham said. 'It's an opportunity to believe and have faith in your Creator. That's what we do, and we're supposed to take care of everything else, because it provides and sustains life for ourselves.' Today, the Nez Perce is a federally recognized tribe that has about 3,500 members and governs the Nez Perce Reservation that is located in north-central Idaho. The Tribe's headquarters is located in the town of Lapwai, Idaho, and the reservation sits on a fraction of the Nez Perces ancestral territory. Lapwai is a working-class town nestled in a valley and the reservation is a mix of grassland, forested mountains and rural communities anchored by the Clearwater River. An 1855 treaty between the Nez Perce Tribe and the U.S. government set aside about 7.5 million acres of land for the tribe. But after gold was discovered on the reservation, additional treaties shrunk its size to less than a tenth of what it was. It's now about 770,000 acres Thanks to bounties, trapping and widespread poisoning, by the 1930s the U.S. federal government all but killed off wolves that used to roam the U.S. Rocky Mountains from the Canadian border to Mexico. But in the 1990s the U.S. government undertook one of the most controversial wildlife programs in history – capturing wild wolves in Canada and reintroducing them in Idaho and Yellowstone National Jan. 14, 1995 – in the aftermath of a major snowstorm, Suzanne Asha Stone was part of a convoy of vehicles that made a white-knuckle drive across icy roads to release four wolves at Corn Creek at the edge of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in Central Idaho. At the time, Stone was an intern on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's wolf capture and reintroduction team. Conditions were so sketchy that some members of the team unbuckled their seatbelts as they worried about plunging into the freezing Salmon River below, Stone said. 'If you slid off the road into the river, you wouldn't have had time to disconnect your seat belt,' Stone said. 'It was kind of like the decision of what's the worst that could happen, and preparing for that.' Carter's Hope: After U.S. government killed off Western wolves, a bold experiment brought them back The wolves, which had been flown from Canada, were placed in kennels and driven in the back of U.S. Forest Service pickups to the Frank Church Wilderness. When they arrived at Corn Creek, the wolf team opened the kennel doors and immediately released the wolves into the wild. Those first four wolves reintroduced in Idaho had only been running wild for three days when the Idaho Legislature nearly derailed the entire operation. On Jan. 17, 1995, the Idaho Legislature rejected the Wolf Recovery and Management Plan developed by the Legislative Wolf Oversight Committee. The move blocked the state from leading wolf recovery in Idaho. And it left the federal government without a local partner to monitor and oversee the first wolf population to call Idaho home in more than half of a century. What happened next is a largely untold story of how the Nez Perce Tribe stepped in to save wolf reintroduction in Idaho. Even now, 30 years later, many people in Idaho don't know the role the Tribe played. Even as the Idaho Legislature said no to wolves, the Nez Perce Tribe was demonstrating its connection to wolves and investment in wolf reintroduction. Just before wolves were reintroduced to Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in January 1995, the late Horace Axtell, who was the spiritual leader of the traditional Nez Perce Seven-Drum religion, and Tribal member Allen Pinkham traveled to Missoula, Montana. Axtell and Pinkham came to offer blessings for the wolves that had been captured in Canada and were being kept in kennels at an airport hangar before their release. They met the wolves just before they were transported over the final leg of their journey for reintroduction. During the ceremony, Axtell welcomed the wolves back home to Montana, Idaho and Yellowstone. 'And so he sang a song for the wolves,' Pinkham said. About that time, the late Nez Perce leader Levi Holt traveled to Boise to meet with policymakers, said his nephew, James Holt. Levi Holt delivered a speech at the Idaho State Capitol pushing to have the Nez Perce Tribe take responsibility for the new wolf program in Idaho, James Holt said. 'My uncle Levi, being very active at that time, made that impassioned speech before decision makers to actually push them to have the Tribe be the managing partner for that reintroduction effort,' James Holt said. It worked. Because of the Tribe's connection to wolves and history of coexistence, the Nez Perce Tribe was ready to take over wolf reintroduction and conservation after the Idaho Legislature said no. 'The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was looking for a partner, and we became that partner,' said Aaron Miles Sr., who has worked as natural resources manager for the Nez Perce Tribe since 1999. Miles was still finishing his forestry degree at University of Idaho when the Nez Perce took over the program in Idaho. He took pride in seeing the Tribe taking a lead role in protecting a species that had shared a homeland with his ancestors. But Miles also heard plenty of stereotypes and lots of misinformation about the Tribe – even among college students he was helping tutor. 'I'd hear all the chatter about, well, can the Tribe do this? How can they do that?' Miles said. 'They're all these questions, and sometimes it was racist. It wasn't just the fact that they were asking an honest question. But it had to be like, 'OK, these Indians, this or that,' and here I am helping some of these guys with their homework, and that really upset me.' Biologist Marcie Carter is a member of the Nez Perce Tribe who served on the Tribe's wolf project starting in June 1997. Carter got her start while she was still a student at Lewis-Clark State College and helped put together the first wolf management plan. 'Our goal was to go into the field, find paired up wolves that potentially had pups, and document the reproduction of those wolves, and also count how many pups were out there,' Carter said. 'That summer I don't even recall how many, we probably had maybe five or six pairs of wolves that had puppies that year,' Carter said. 'So they started out very well.' Carter and another biologist spent their summer hiking around Central Idaho in places like Stanley and the Bear Valley area near the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, looking for wolves. The wolves had been fitted with radio collars that allowed the wolf project team to track their location. Typically a pilot and another team member would fly overhead, locate the wolves from the air and then use a radio to relay the animals' location to the biologists on the ground. At that point, the biologists would hike in and locate the wolves. 'We worked 10 days in a row, and then we'd take four days off,' Carter said. 'And we camped out, we backpacked and lived in a tent and slept on our Therm-A-Rest and ate packaged noodles. And every day for those 10 days, that's what we were doing. We were up, out and looking for any type of sign of wolves.' Although she grew up in Idaho and had spent time in the woods, Carter hadn't really ventured into the wilderness until she joined the Nez Perce's wolf project team. Before setting out, she had to borrow a backpack, sleeping bag, tent and cook stove. A typical assignment during her first summer in 1997 involved flying into Central Idaho's remote Chamberlain Basin with a team of other biologists. Located within the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the Chamberlain Basin was the site where one of the first wolf packs in Idaho established territory following the reintroduction of wolves. That pack became known as the Chamberlain Basin Pack. 'That was basically our lives during that time,' Carter said. 'It was just backpacking, walking, hiking, listening. It was a great time.' The reason they spent so much time in wolf country is because that is the best way to get an idea of how the wolves are doing and what they are up to. Carter and the team conducted howl surveys. With hands cupped over mouths, researchers threw their heads back and let out their best imitation wolf howls. They hoped to get live wolves to howl in response, which helped them track the wolves' location. 'Howl' is the largest investment in time and resources we've put toward one project at the Idaho Capital Sun. If you find value in what we do, you can support work like this with a one-time or recurring donation at To read the weekly installments of 'Howl,' released every Wednesday morning, sign up for our free email newsletter, To join us for our free live panel discussion 'Wolves in the West — 30 Years of Reintroduction and the New Threats Wolves Face Today' on June 17 at the Special Event Center in Boise State University's Student Union Building, register online. As the team hiked and drove across wolf country, they scoured the ground for wolf tracks and droppings that researchers call scat. They analyzed data from wolves fitted with radio collars. They documented the newborn pups. And they counted the wolves that were killed. Once a year the team packed all that data into a report documenting Idaho's wolf population. 'It was all very positive and very, very jaw-dropping type work,' Carter said. Although the wolf project started as a cool summer job for her, it became more than that. Carter soon began asking one of her grandfathers about wolves. Boise State Public Radio, Idaho Capital Sun partner for June 17 wolf reintroduction panel discussion They talked about how himíin, the Nimíipuu language word for wolf, comes from the word for mouth. That's because wolves talk to each other, Carter said, with their howls. When older members of the Nez Perce Tribe began to find out about the wolf project, they asked Carter about her work and shared stories about the Tribe's history. When they talked about losing wolves from the landscape, sometimes the older Nez Perce members talked to Carter about other losses the Tribe experienced. 'It was a learning experience for me, not just in the field, but culturally,' Carter said. 'It's just that it goes back to the loss of the connection that all Tribal people went through, with being moved to the reservation, being forced to stop speaking our language,' Carter said. 'It did kind of raise that awareness – also for other Tribal people – that loss that we had experienced and continue to experience,' Carter said. 'And then that reconnection – it happened with wolves. It's happening with salmon. Maybe someday it'll happen with grizzly bears.' Over six years on the wolf project, Carter documented growth and stabilization in Idaho's wolf population. And as she observed wolves in their natural habitat, Carter saw a very different side to the animals that people warned her about. 'I saw these families of wolves taking care of each other and playing, and they are not this evil that people think,' Carter said. During Carter's time monitoring wolves, the population increased significantly. Compared to the original 15 wolves released in Idaho's Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in 1995, the Nez Perce Tribe reported a minimum of 192 wolves in the central Idaho recovery area in the fall of 2000. At the end of 2005 – a decade after wolves were reintroduced to Idaho – the Nez Perce team and Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologists had identified 59 resident wolf packs in Idaho. Biologists observed a minimum of 370 wolves in 2005, and estimated the state's wolf population to be 512 in 2005. By 2005, wolf territory in Idaho stretched from near the Canadian border, south to Interstate 84 and east from the Oregon border to the Montana and Wyoming borders, the wolf team noted in its annual report. During 2005, Wildlife Services officials said 26 cattle, 218 sheep and nine dogs were reported as 'confirmed' or 'probable' wolf kills. As the number of wolves and wolf kills increased, so did the calls to remove the wolf from the Endangered Species List and turn management of wolves over to the states. Under the Endangered Species Act, animals that are listed in danger of extinction are given protections – like the protection of critical habitat and prohibitions on hunting – and recovery plans. For species protected by the Endangered Species Act, the animals' recovery and stabilization is the priority. Animal species that have been saved by Endangered Special Act protections include the bald eagle, the California condor, the whooping crane and grizzly bear, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Once species are removed from Endangered Species Act protections, regulations can be eased and states can approve hunting rules or other management and lethal population control methods. In January 2006, then-Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Interior transferring day-to-day management of wolves to the state of Idaho. After about a decade, the Nez Perce Tribes' role leading wolf recovery in Idaho had come to an end. 'I think we would have kept it, but the funding was going away, and so we did not have the money to keep a program going,' Carter said. 'And so I think the only way was basically to hand it over to the state.' By 2007, the state of Idaho was officially planning for its first wolf hunts since reintroduction in 1995. At that same time, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife put forward plans to remove the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List. A series of legal battles ensued, where wolves were removed and then returned to the Endangered Species List. In January 2009, Samuel N. Penney, the then-chairman of Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, wrote a letter expressing the Tribe's full support for removing wolves from Endangered Species Act protections in Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, northern Utah and eastern Washington. Penney told then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar that wolves met recovery goals for the Northern Rocky Mountain region in 2002. By 2008, Idaho's wolf population was estimated at over 800 wolves in 88 packs, Penney wrote. 'The Tribe wants, and understands that citizens of United States also want, wolves to be conserved,' Penney wrote. 'The Tribe is confident that you understand the importance we place on being able to make decisions locally about how to wisely manage this resource in combination with all our other wildlife resources.' Ultimately, wolves were removed from Endangered Species Act protections in 2011 after Congress inserted language into the federal budget requiring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove wolves in Idaho, Montana, eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and north-central Utah from the Endangered Species List. By May 2011, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game had taken over management of wolves in Idaho, and put wolf hunting tags up for sale. Then in 2021, the Idaho Legislature expanded wolf hunting and trapping by removing the limit on the number of wolf tags hunters can buy, allowing trapping on private land year round and allowing the state to enter into contracts with third parties to kill wolves. The state of Idaho had officially set out to reduce the wolf population by killing the predators. Now Marcie Carter and other wolf advocates worry the government is starting to go down the same road it did 100 years ago when wolves were eradicated from the U.S. Rocky Mountains. 'We did all this great work, and we spent hours and hours out in the woods and then to come to this point where they're treated like vermin, it's really disorienting,' Carter said. 'It's definitely being undone,' Carter added. 'It's been being undone since we stepped out. It's very expensive to recover wolves and it's not very expensive to take them off the landscape.' Journalists Clark Corbin and Heath Druzin reported and wrote Howl over the course of 14 months, trekking deep into the backcountry in some of the most remote places in the Lower 48 chasing the story of America's wildest and most controversial wildlife comeback story – wolf reintroduction. New installments of the written series will be published in the Idaho Capital Sun each Wednesday through July 2. The Howl podcast is available free everywhere that podcasts are available. Upcoming Howl schedule: Wednesday, June 18: Fixing Yellowstone: How an intact ecosystem set the stage for a wolf queen's long reign. Despite being orphaned and repeatedly challenged for alpha status and ultimately being killed by a rival pack, Wolf 907 leaves a long legacy. Wednesday, June 25: Cattle Battle: How wolves and livestock collide – and how one Idaho project offers solutions. Western ranchers say their livelihood is at stake after wolves were reintroduced into the Lower 48 30 years ago. Wednesday, July 2: Ghost Wolves: While wolves might represent nature's greatest and most controversial comeback, some longtime wolf advocates say they aren't seeing wolves in the same places they always used to after the Idaho Legislature expanded wolf hunting and trapping in the state. Some scientists have openly questioned how the state of Idaho tracks and counts wolves, and some original members of the wolf reintroduction team worry 30 years of hard work to bring wolves back could be undone. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
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04-06-2025
- Politics
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Carter's Hope: After U.S. government killed off Western wolves, a bold experiment brought them back
Mike Phillips, Jim Evanoff, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Director Mollie Beattie, Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Mike Finley and U.S. Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt carry the first crate with a wolf in it to the Crystal Bench Pen in Yellowstone National Park in January 1995. (Photo courtesy of Yellowstone National Park) EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first installment of Howl, a five-part written series and podcast season brought you in partnership between the Idaho Capital Sun, States Newsroom and Boise State Public Radio. The helicopter was flying low above a remote snow-covered mountain ridge outside Hinton, Alberta, Canada, when pilot Clay Wilson jumped the wolves and gave chase. Carter Niemeyer picked the tranquilizer gun off his lap and sighted through the opening where the helicopter's passenger side door had been removed especially for the mission. Less than 50 feet below, a 9-month-old wolf pup broke into a run, bounding through the December snowpack. His coat was the color of coal. Even though the pup wasn't yet a year old, he weighed 83 pounds and had developed a thick coat that would help him endure his first winter in the mountains. The chopper made a pass at the wolf and doubled back, but Niemeyer wasn't close enough to fire a dart loaded with tranquilizer drugs. After essentially killing off all wolves in the U.S. Rocky Mountains by the 1930s, the United States government sent Niemeyer and a small team to Canada just over 30 years ago to sedate, catch, study and reintroduce wolves to the American West, where wolves were a native species. Wilson and Niemeyer had never flown together before this flight took off in December 1994. Niemeyer was an experienced government trapper and wildlife biologist with a United States government agency called Animal Damage Control (which later changed its name to USDA Wildlife Services), but he had never been to Hinton and didn't know his way around Alberta's Northern Rockies. To make matters worse, the local tranquilizer gunners the government hired for the mission hadn't shown up yet. Niemeyer was supposed to be on the ground, carrying wolves out of the snow to a safe spot to land the helicopter after the wolves were darted from the air. 'I was mostly mugging,' Niemeyer said. 'The mugger is the guy who you dump out in snow 20 feet deep. And you roll and crawl and drag yourself through this ungodly deep snow, sometimes where just the little tops of the pine trees were sticking out, because the wolves get darted in there and you can't land (a helicopter). It's too dangerous, between snags and deep snow that could collapse. So the mugger, you've got to get that wolf out of that deep snow situation, down the slope and try and drag them to river ice, somewhere where you've got a footing, where the helicopter can land securely.' An average adult male wolf weighs about 100 pounds. The largest wolf caught for wolf reintroduction in 1995 and 1996 weighed 135 pounds, Niemeyer said. 'And, yeah, talk about a workout,' Niemeyer said. 'Sometimes it was something else.' The reason Niemeyer was in Hinton is because the U.S. government decided to bring back wolves after a decades-long extermination campaign. The controversial plan called for Niemeyer and the reintroduction team to capture gray wolves from Canada and release them in Yellowstone National Park and the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho. And the only way to do so was by hand. But when Niemeyer showed up to Canada searching for wolves to bring back to the Lower 48, he found the local trappers who were supposed to be capturing live wolves for collaring and medical exams had grown distrustful of the American government. Instead of caring for live wolves, the local trappers were killing them. 'The guys were killing them, skinning them and putting them on stretching boards and then I got up there and met them, and we had a confrontation, me and them, and they told me (to) take my truck and get the hell out of town,' Niemeyer said. An already tense situation in Canada came to a head when a local trapper hauled in two dead wolves and threw them at Niemeyer's feet. Standing 6 feet, 6 inches tall and fond of wearing a mustache and a fur trappers hat, Niemeyer wasn't one to back down from a challenge. Since he was a boy following in his father's footsteps, Niemeyer had trapped, skinned or taxidermied just about every predator and varmint in the West. It started with pocket gophers – 10 cents a head. That night he ended up squaring off with a local trapper in a drunken wolf skinning competition inside the man's cabin. It had been about 60 years since the wolves' howl fell silent across the U.S. Rocky Mountains. If wolves were going to make a comeback, things were off to a bad start. Wolves are a keystone species of apex predators that ranged from the Arctic, down through the Rocky Mountains and plains of the United States and into Mexico for thousands of years. There used to be tens of thousands of wolves in the U.S. Rocky Mountains. But thanks to government bounties meant to encourage westward expansion, settlers used trapping and widespread poisoning to kill off virtually every wolf in the American West by the 1930s. Between 1914 and 1926, at least 136 wolves were killed in Yellowstone, including two wolf pups killed in 1926 near a geologic feature named Soda Butte. Yellowstone National Park reports that the last wolf pack in the park was killed in 1926. It wasn't hunters or poachers who killed off the last Yellowstone wolves. It was park rangers. Congress had put up $125,000 to remove wolves and other predators from public lands, and it worked. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game says the last wolf in Idaho was believed to have been killed in the 1930s. Wolves survived in Alaska, Canada and Minnesota but they were functionally extinct in the Western U.S. Then things began to change for wolves in 1974, slowly at first. Four subspecies of gray wolves, including the gray wolf of the Northern Rocky Mountains, were listed under the Endangered Species Act, which had just been signed into law the year before by President Richard Nixon. Dozens of conservation groups, nonprofit organizations, biologists, veterinarians and members of the public pushed to save and restore wolves. Meanwhile ranchers, hunters, politicians across Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and countless residents of small rural communities pushed just as hard in the opposite direction. By 1980, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery plan recommended reintroducing wolves to Central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. As the federal government set wolf reintroduction in motion, hunters and ranchers vehemently opposed the plan. They warned of conflicts between humans, wolves and livestock. 'Howl' is the largest investment in time and resources we've put toward one project at the Idaho Capital Sun. If you find value in what we do, you can support work like this with a one-time or recurring donation at To read the weekly installments of 'Howl,' released every Wednesday morning, sign up for our free email newsletter, To join us for our free live panel discussion 'Wolves in the West — 30 Years of Reintroduction and the New Threats Wolves Face Today' on June 17 at the Special Event Center in Boise State University's Student Union Building, register online. Ranchers said the loss of livestock like sheep and cattle would threaten to wipe out generations-old family businesses. They were already struggling with the thinnest of margins and facing uncertainties like drought. They didn't need wolves eating their livestock. 'We have family stories from my grandfather and great grandfather about the first generation of wolves and how they warned us about keeping them away from our livestock, and how important it was to not have livestock interactions with wolves,' said Jay Smith, owner of J Lazy S Angus Ranch in Carmen, Idaho. 'So we have that long, long family history of knowledge on top of our own.' Smith is a fourth-generation rancher. His ancestors first bought a ranch on Carmen Creek in 1924. His own ranch is located a few ridges over from Corn Creek in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness – the original site of wolf reintroduction in Idaho in 1995. Smith calls the area 'wolf ground zero.' From the ranch, Smith can gaze across the valley and see the Diamond Moose grazing allotment. It was one of the first – and remains one of the most consistent – sites of conflict between wolves and livestock, Smith said. 'There's no rhyme or reason,' Smith said. 'You know, in 30 years, we never know what to expect. One year we'll lose 20 head of cattle, and one year we'll lose zero. And we just never quite know how to explain or how to do better, or how to mitigate that risk.' Ranchers weren't the only ones worried about wolf reintroduction. Hunters warned the return of wolves would lead to the decimation of elk herds, which would threaten a way of life for generations of passionate hunters. A series of heated wolf reintroduction public meetings played out in cities and small towns across Idaho, Wyoming and Montana in the 1990s. Yellowstone National Park staff reported that over about 2.5 years, the team developing the environmental impact state conducted more than 130 meetings and considered more than 160,000 public comments, which came in from all 50 states and 40 foreign countries. Upcoming Howl schedule Wednesday, June 11: River of No Return: How the Nez Perce Tribe stepped in to save wolf reintroduction in Idaho. After the Idaho Legislature nearly derailed the entire operation, the tribe faced racist questions on whether it was capable of repopulating the Lower 48. Wednesday, June 18: Fixing Yellowstone: How an intact ecosystem set the stage for a wolf queen's long reign. Despite being orphaned and repeatedly challenged for alpha status and ultimately being killed by a rival pack, Wolf 907 leaves a long legacy. Wednesday, June 25: Cattle Battle: How wolves and livestock collide – and how one Idaho project offers solutions. Western ranchers say their livelihood is at stake after wolves were reintroduced into the Lower 48 30 years ago. Wednesday, July 2: Ghost Wolves: While wolves might represent nature's greatest comeback, some longtime advocates say they aren't seeing wolves in the same places they always used to after the Idaho Legislature expanded wolf hunting and trapping in the state. Some scientists have openly questioned how the state tracks and counts wolves, and some original members of the wolf reintroduction team worry 30 years of hard work to bring wolves back could be undone. Several people in the room during those meetings described increasingly tense hearings, where emotion and fear trumped science and reason. 'Working with wolves all the years I did before coming here, you can't underestimate human hatred of wolves,' said Doug Smith, a biologist who led wolf reintroduction and monitoring in Yellowstone for nearly 30 years until he retired in 2022. 'I mean reason, compromise, facts, science doesn't even dent people's attitudes about (wolves).' 'Prior to wolves being listed as an endangered species, they weren't just killed, they were tortured,' Smith continued. 'People cut their lower jaws off and set them free, and they died that way. They would wire their jaws shut. They would take nails or razor blades and put it in hunks of meat… So they'd swallow the razor blades and nails. This is human hatred.' Some wolf meetings ended in screaming matches. But in 1994, former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt authorized the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho. 'It was a long slog,' Smith said. 'Wolves were listed in 1974, so it was a 20 year process to get wolves back.' After it became clear wolf reintroduction was going to happen, Doug Smith landed his dream job in 1994 – becoming a wolf project biologist at Yellowstone National Park. There were no wolves there yet, but he was there to lay the groundwork for reintroduction. Within two years, Smith was named leader of the Yellowstone Wolf Project. 'If you'd studied wolves at all, or carnivores at all, it was the biggest opportunity in decades to come along,' Smith said. 'I mean, wolves are eradicated from Yellowstone by the government. The government decides to restore them. It's the largest intact temperate zone ecosystem in the world, and the government's going to undertake wolf reintroduction – as controversial a thing as you can get.' Babbitt's authorization to reintroduce wolves didn't ease the tension. A few weeks before wolf reintroduction, Suzanne Asha Stone and a team of researchers were surveying the land where the wolves would be reintroduced in Idaho's Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. Stone is the co-founder of the International Wildlife Coexistence Network. At the time, she was an intern working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a member of the wolf reintroduction team. After landing a small plane on a wilderness airstrip, the researchers received a report of a wolf sighting in an area called Bear Valley, just outside of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. 'Dr. (Steven) Fritz was teaching me how to howl for wolves,' Stone said. 'That's how we used to look for wolves before there were more of the digital type recordings that you would play for them. You just go out and do some howling. And so he was teaching me how to do that. And it was my first time to go solo.' 'We were on a Forest Service road out in the backcountry on the national forest and I got to my second howl, and we had rifle bullets just zing right over the top of our heads,' Stone said. Nobody was hurt, and Stone still doesn't know if the shooters knew people were in the area. But the episode served as a wakeup call, a visceral reminder of how deep wolf hatred ran for some. I got to my second howl, and we had rifle bullets just zing right over the top of our heads. – Suzanne Asha Stone, member of wolf reintroduction team By the time Stone and the reintroduction team arrived in Salmon to prepare to reintroduce wolves in Idaho, Stone was concerned for the team's safety and worried about the potential for violence. Members of the reintroduction team began to travel with an armed guard. 'We'd already received death threats in town from people's signs,' Stone said. 'They were handwritten. And it said, 'kill all the wolves and all the people who brought them here.'' Babbitt's signature cleared the way for Carter Niemeyer and the reintroduction team to head to Hinton in November 1994. And that brings us back to that alcohol-fueled wolf-skinning competition. Niemeyer, refusing to blink, won the competition with the local trappers and earned their respect. That's when the capture and reintroduction mission finally got off the ground. With his credibility firmly established, Niemeyer got in touch with Clay Wilson, a helicopter pilot out of Cranbrook, British Columbia. Niemeyer and Wilson hoped to search for wolves by air, dart them with tranquilizers fired from the helicopter and then fit the wolves with radio collars. Once the captured wolves were temporarily released again, the radio collars would help the reintroduction team track the wolves to the location of the larger pack. But the gunners hired for the operation hadn't arrived yet. Wilson decided to take a test flight and invited Niemeyer. Niemeyer was a seasoned hunter and government trapper who had experience using sedative drugs like telazol and ketamine. But he did not know the area or have any leads on local wolves. 'When the pilots got there they go, 'So do we have anybody who knows how to gun that could go ride with us to go dart a wolf?'' Niemeyer said. 'And I was the only one.' The team took two helicopters up. Wilson and Niemeyer eventually spotted a group of three or four wolves, including that 9-month-old male pup with the thick black winter coat. After several passes, Wilson flew in low and Niemeyer finally fired at the running pup. The dart struck the wolf on one its front paws – just barely. Wilson landed the helicopter, and Niemeyer sprang after the young wolf. The wolf was only partially sedated, still staggering and thrashing through the snow. After a mad dash, Niemeyer got close enough to slip a catchpole over the wolf and administer another round of drugs to sedate it. It was a moment he will never forget: Niemeyer had just darted and captured the first wolf for reintroduction in America. 'I named it Carter's Hope, because it was the first wolf we caught up in Canada by darting,' Niemeyer said. 'And I was just being silly and called it Carter's Hope. Hoping that this was the beginning of a successful project, which it turned out to be.' Once the wolves were darted and captured, they were sent to Idaho and Yellowstone National Park, where they underwent medical examinations, were given vaccinations and tested for disease. During exams, the wolves were given numbered radio collars that allowed biologists or park rangers to track the wolf's location. Idaho elementary school students decorated collars for each of the wolves bound for Central Idaho. Each collar has a different number and Carter's Hope, who was bound for Yellowstone, received collar number 15. (Niemeyer said the collars don't have any negative effects on the wolves who wear them.) After his capture, Carter's Hope was flown to Montana and then driven to Yellowstone National Park in January 1995. As the horse trailers carrying Carter's Hope and the other wolves entered Yellowstone's North Entrance at Gardiner, Montana, and passed under the iconic Roosevelt Arch, crowds of people lining the side of the road cheered and waved. Carter's Hope became one of the original members of the Soda Butte Pack, one of the first three packs of wild wolves to live in Yellowstone in nearly 70 years. Initially, the Yellowstone wolves were kept in one-acre acclimation pens, set back from the park's roads, as part of a so-called soft release. 'We were on the receiving team, so our job was to take care of the wolves in the pens for 10 weeks. That meant visiting them twice a week, every week, to feed them, check on them, and then release them,' Smith said. Yellowstone staffers used horse-drawn sleds to haul animal carcasses to the pens to feed the wolves. But outside of the temporary acclimation pens where the new wolves were first held upon reintroduction, Yellowstone National Park is wild landscape with no fences – the park boundary is an invisible line. After the wolves were released from Yellowstone's acclimation pens in March 1995, Carter's Hope didn't stay within the boundaries of Yellowstone, where rangers patrolled and poaching was almost unheard of. Wolves were still listed as an endangered species in 1995, but protecting them in the vast tracts of national forest and ranchland outside of the park would be a challenge. After Carter's Hope and the Soda Butte Pack left the park in April 1995, Niemeyer and Smith worried the wolves could be at risk of poaching anytime they strayed beyond Yellowstone's invisible boundaries. CONTACT US 'We've learned through decades of wolf research that making it illegal to kill wolves doesn't stop people from killing them,' Smith said in an interview in the Yellowstone backcountry. 'Wolves are one of those cultural lightning rods that a ton of society doesn't care about what the rules are. They hate wolves so much they're going to shoot them. And you know, a country like this that I'm looking out upon is broken country. It's forested. The wolves have got a chance to get away from human killing. (But) ringing the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is a sea of humanity, and it's open country. And what I mean by open county is no place to hide. People jump on four wheelers. People jump in pickup trucks, and they'll run them down… Yeah, they run them down with snowmobiles, or four wheelers. Or they get close enough where they can take a rifle shot on them when there's no place to hide. And there's no place to hide all around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.' Aside from poaching, Smith and Niemeyer worried about wildlife control officers killing wolves if the wolves killed livestock outside of the park. It turns out, it was only a matter of time. The first report came in December 1995 – wolves killed a dog in Fishtail, Montana. By spring and early summer 1996, wolves had killed sheep on a ranch about 30 miles north of Yellowstone's border. This time, Niemeyer was able to capture Carter's Hope and bring the wolf back to a Yellowstone acclimation pen for two more months. While Carter's Hope was in the pen, a young visitor took notice. Wolf 26, a female wolf pup from the Nez Perce Pack, began hanging around the pen. Wolf 26 was one of the wolves brought to Yellowstone from Canada during the second year of reintroduction, in 1996, Yellowstone National Park records show. After inching closer and closer, Wolf 26 and Carter's Hope touched noses through the fence in the pen, Niemeyer wrote in his memoir, 'Wolfer.' No longer a part of the Soda Butte Pack, Carter's Hope paired off with Wolf 26 after he was re-released from the pen on Sept. 27, 1996. Along with humans, wolves are among the few mammals that form long-term pair bonds – often remaining together for life, raising pups jointly and sharing food. Carter's Hope and Wolf 26 stayed together and traveled throughout the southern portions of Yellowstone National Park through the end of 1996, Yellowstone records show. Eventually the two wolves left Yellowstone, heading south to Wyoming, where Wolf 26 had five pups. The new pack was named the Washakie Pack. Carter's Hope had become an alpha wolf and made history. 'He did successfully acclimate to being a wild wolf and got away from livestock, and he became the first breeding male wolf to establish a pack in the state of Wyoming,' Niemeyer said. But two years after Carter's Hope arrived in Yellowstone, ranchers reported more calves were killed near the Washakie Pack's territory. This time, Niemeyer couldn't save the wolf. Carter's Hope was shot and killed by a USDA Wildlife Services officer in October 1997 for killing livestock outside of Yellowstone National Park, according to the Yellowstone Wolf Project's 1998 annual report. Although wolves were still an endangered species, animal control officers tracked and killed Carter's Hope under rules established to reduce conflict with ranchers. Niemeyer still thinks killing Carter's Hope was unnecessary. 'I was upset, and I was saddened,' Niemeyer said. 'I was disappointed.' But he also realized the place Carter's Hope holds in history. Carter's Hope was one of the 66 wolves captured in Canada released in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and 1996. 'He made it a couple, three years, but he did have pups, and that's a nice thing with wolves – they're prolific animals, and some of his progeny lived to see another day,' Niemeyer said. Today, just over 30 years later, there are an estimated 2,800 wolves in the Western United States. Almost all of them descended from Carter's Hope and the other 65 other wolves that a small team of biologists, veterinarians, trappers, pilots and conservationists reintroduced to America. Today, 30 years removed from reintroduction, Niemeyer, Stone and Smith say wolves are in danger once more. Wolves were removed from the Endangered Species List in 2011. Now, Niemeyer, Smith and Stone worry about increased hunting and trapping and new government programs enacted in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming that are intended to reduce the wolf population. 'I am worried about the future, because the most important thing for wolf restoration is human attitudes, and human attitudes have not changed about wolves,' Smith said. 'One of my favorite sound bites when I started working in Yellowstone 30 years ago was, 'I hope in 30 years, some of the controversy has died down, and people have gotten used to the ideas that wolves aren't that bad.' And that hasn't happened at all. They are still hated as much as they were 30 years ago. They're still a political football. They're still controversial.' Journalists Clark Corbin and Heath Druzin reported and wrote Howl over the course of 14 months, trekking deep into the backcountry in some of the most remote places in the Lower 48 chasing the story of America's wildest and most controversial wildlife comeback story – wolf reintroduction. New installments of the written series will be published in the Idaho Capital Sun each Wednesday through July 2. The Howl podcast is available free everywhere that podcasts are available. Coming next week: Part 2: Find out how members of the Nez Perce Tribe stepped up to lead wolf reintroduction 30 years ago when the Idaho Legislature rejected the plan for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to lead wolf reintroduction. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Boise State Public Radio, Idaho Capital Sun partner for June 17 wolf reintroduction panel discussion
Thirty years ago, there were virtually no wolves in the Western U.S., the result of a decades-long eradication campaign. Then in 1995, the federal government brought them back, in their most controversial wildlife program ever. Reporters Heath Druzin, producer of the podcast Extremely American, and Clark Corbin of the Idaho Capital Sun took a 1,000-mile journey through wolf country to produce the podcast and written series Howl, which launches Wednesday. They talk to the people who endured death threats, gun shots and frostbite to help spark one of nature's greatest comebacks. In conjunction with the release of Howl, join Boise State Public Radio and the Idaho Capital Sun on Tuesday, June 17 for a discussion around the history, reintroduction and politics of wolves. Heath and Clark will be joined by Marcie Carter, Suzanne Asha Stone and Carter Niemeyer who were key figures in bringing wolves back to the American West. When: Tuesday, June 17 from 6-8 p.m. Where: Special Event Center, in the SUB at Boise State University 1700 W University Dr. Boise, ID 83725 This event is free, with a suggested donation of $10. Register here. *parking available directly across from the SUB in the Lincoln Garage for $5 SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Carter Niemeyer has been a state trapper for the Montana Department of Livestock, and a district supervisor for USDA Wildlife Services. As wolf management specialist for USDA, he was responsible for livestock depredation investigation, as well as wolf capture and removal. Niemeyer was the trapper and tracker who led the mission to capture the Canadian wolves that would repopulate the Northern Rockies in the 1990s. He wrote his first memoir, Wolfer, in 2010. His second memoir, Wolf Land was published in 2016. In 2025 he released a third memoir, The Other Ten Wolves: A Yellowstone Backstory. Suzanne Asha Stone has dedicated her life to wolf conservation and coexistence. Beginning her journey in 1988 as a college intern with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) Tribe, she contributed to early wolf activity monitoring in Idaho. A pivotal USA/Canada team member for the 1995 Yellowstone and central Idaho wolf reintroduction, she played a key role in transporting and releasing wolves and securing critical funding for the 1996 operations. In 1999, Suzanne became the western wolf restoration lead for Defenders of Wildlife, overseeing compensation programs and creating nonlethal coexistence strategies to address wolf and livestock conflicts. Marcie D. Carter was born and raised in Lewiston, Idaho, she is an enrolled member of the Nez Perce Tribe. Marcie has a BS in Biology from Lewis Clark State College and an MS in Wildlife Resources from the UI. She is currently working on a PhD in Natural Resources at the UI-CNR. Marcie works full time with the Nez Perce Tribe-Department of Fisheries Resource Management-Watershed Division as the Watershed Coordinator. Heath Druzin is a reporter and podcaster who covers extremism, politics and the environment. His series Extremely American looks at the intersection between extremist groups and mainstream politics. He has reported for outlets such as NPR, BBC and the Daily Beast. Clark Corbin reports on politics, state government, public lands and climate change for the Idaho Capital Sun, part of the States Newsroom network. Corbin has followed stories deep into the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park, abandoned mines of Central Idaho and the halls of the Idaho State Capitol. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Express Tribune
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Ditch AI filters, consume real art
If you're an artist or just someone who admires the effort that goes into drawing and animation, you must have strong feelings about the heaps of AI-generated art that's been plaguing social media for a long time now. The recent trend of AI-generated images that has beguiled netizens recreates the visual style of Studio Ghibli's signature 2D animation. And if there are any doubts as to where the studio's founder — Hayao Miyazaki — would stand, here are his views on machine-created art that resurfaced after OpenAI launched its update: "I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself." In case you're not aware of what Studio Ghibli films are, I — first and foremost - express my deepest sympathies that you had to learn through this trend, but I am also happy to inform you that you've come to the right place. If your curiosity is pushing you to find out what life looks like through the Ghibli lens, you need not wait any longer. Here are four of the studio's films to introduce you to the painstakingly hand-drawn and remarkably emotive world of animation — or, if you're a fan, to trick you into a binge watch. 'Howl's Moving Castle' It has become culturally imperative to begin your Ghibli journey with this one. Howl's Moving Castle follows Sophie, a young woman cursed by a jealous witch to transform into an old lady due to the witch's affection for Howl, a vagabond wizard who crosses paths with Sophie in the beginning. As the curse makes our protagonist forget her identity, she accidentally moves in with Howl's motley crew and helps them out with domestic duties, oblivious to the fact that the solution to her problem is nearby. If the found-family trope is an easy way to your heart, this film will win you over no sweat while serving you an extra slice of tender romance. Although a stunningly serene film, it strikes a fine balance between wholesome moments and gut-wrenching reality that'll have you aching for more. 'Kiki's Delivery Service' If you like witchcraft in your media and are looking for more magic after Howl's Moving Castle, you'll find it all in Kiki's Delivery Service. This coming-of-age fantasy story follows Kiki, a young witch who heads out of home to fulfill her desire for self-exploration. Aside from flaunting the picturesque world of Studio Ghibli, this film is your reassurance that hardships are a necessary part of growing up on your own. From introducing animal companions to unexpected friends, it reminds you that every step out of your comfort zone is worth the anticipation. 'The Secret World of Arrietty' If you grew up adoring Thumbelina or illustrated tales of a similar nature, it might be time to indulge your inner child with this heartwarming film. The Secret World of Arrietty follows its titular character in a miniature world as she "borrows" from the world of the much-larger humans for a living. Everything seems to be working in her family's favour until they are discovered by the humans and must fend for themselves. Packing compelling visuals that every Ghibli film is decked with, this feature stands out for its immersive look into the world that exists around us, just much bigger. If you're in the mood of a story that champions hope and courage, you wouldn't want to miss this one. 'Spirited Away' Ever wondered what your most inexplicable dreams would look like onscreen? Spirited Away is your answer. It focuses on Chihiro, a ten-year-old girl who visits an amusement park with her family but soon realises that something is off, though her protests are dismissed by her parents. After a mysterious meal turns them into pigs, it is up to Chihiro to bring them back by stepping into the world of uncanny supernatural beings. Released at a time when animation was seen as a form of entertainment reserved only for children, Spirited Away would sooner be a kid's nightmare than a fond core memory to look back on. But for grownups who don't mind being unnerved, the film's appeal lies in its unsettling elements and melancholic storyline. Does hope prevail in the end? Find out for yourself.
Express Tribune
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
4 Studio Ghibli films to distract you from OpenAI's viral filter
If you're an artist or just someone who admires the effort that goes into drawing and animation, you must have strong feelings about the heaps of AI-generated art that's been plaguing social media for a long time now. The recent trend of AI-generated images that has beguiled netizens recreates the visual style of Studio Ghibli's signature 2D animation. And if there are any doubts as to where the studio's founder — Hayao Miyazaki — would stand, here are his views on machine-created art that resurfaced after OpenAI launched its update: "I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself." In case you're not aware of what Studio Ghibli films are, I — first and foremost — express my deepest sympathies that you had to learn through this trend, but I am also happy to inform you that you've come to the right place. If your curiosity is pushing you to find out what life looks like through the Ghibli lens, you need not wait any longer. Here are four of the studio's films to introduce you to the painstakingly hand-drawn and remarkably emotive world of animation — or, if you're a fan, to trick you into a binge watch. 'Howl's Moving Castle' It has become culturally imperative to begin your Ghibli journey with this one. Howl's Moving Castle follows Sophie, a young woman cursed by a jealous witch to transform into an old lady due to the witch's affection for Howl, a vagabond wizard who crosses paths with Sophie in the beginning. As the curse makes our protagonist forget her identity, she accidentally moves in with Howl's motley crew and helps them out with domestic duties, oblivious to the fact that the solution to her problem is nearby. If the found-family trope is an easy way to your heart, this film will win you over no sweat while serving you an extra slice of tender romance. Although a stunningly serene film, it strikes a fine balance between wholesome moments and gut-wrenching reality that'll have you aching for more. 'Kiki's Delivery Service' If you like witchcraft in your media and are looking for more magic after Howl's Moving Castle, you'll find it all in Kiki's Delivery Service. This coming-of-age fantasy story follows Kiki, a young witch who heads out of home to fulfill her desire for self-exploration. Aside from flaunting the picturesque world of Studio Ghibli, this film is your reassurance that hardships are a necessary part of growing up on your own. From introducing animal companions to unexpected friends, it reminds you that every step out of your comfort zone is worth the anticipation. 'The Secret World of Arrietty' If you grew up adoring Thumbelina or illustrated tales of a similar nature, it might be time to indulge your inner child with this heartwarming film. The Secret World of Arrietty follows its titular character in a miniature world as she 'borrows' from the world of the much-larger humans for a living. Everything seems to be working in her family's favour until they are discovered by the humans and must fend for themselves. Packing compelling visuals that every Ghibli film is decked with, this feature stands out for its immersive look into the world that exists around us, just much bigger. If you're in the mood of a story that champions hope and courage, you wouldn't want to miss this one. 'Spirited Away' Ever wondered what your most inexplicable dreams would look like onscreen? Spirited Away is your answer. It focuses on Chihiro, a ten-year-old girl who visits an amusement park with her family but soon realises that something is off, though her protests are dismissed by her parents. After a mysterious meal turns them into pigs, it is up to Chihiro to bring them back by stepping into the world of uncanny supernatural beings. Released at a time when animation was seen as a form of entertainment reserved only for children, Spirited Away would sooner be a kid's nightmare than a fond core memory to look back on. But for grownups who don't mind being unnerved, the film's appeal lies in its unsettling elements and melancholic storyline. Does hope prevail in the end? Find out for yourself. Have something to add to the story? Share it in the comments below.
