Nine gray wolves plucked from the Canadian backcountry for release in the Idaho backcountry on Wednesday fell to eight after one bit a handler and had to be destroyed, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported.
The remaining wolves were being transported by snowmobile to a drop-off point along the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. Biologists hoped to release them by Wednesday night, said Ed Bangs, Fish and Wildlife's wolf recovery chief.
The handler was trying to put ice in the male wolf's transport box. It has two doors; one hung up and the man reached in to free it.
"It bit the guy on the thumb," Bangs said. "You can imagine a wolf nip is a big thing. It broke the bone and some skin.
"The veterinarian protocol calls for the animal to be euthanized. The skull is then checked for rabies.
"The guy who was bitten felt bad about it," Bangs said. "I know he didn't want the wolf put down, but that's the procedure."
A major storm over central Idaho forced the agency to abandon plans to fly the wolves into the Indian Creek airstrip.
Instead, the eight wolves were trucked from Missoula to Idaho. Then the plan called for their cages to be transferred to sleds and hauled to a release site by snowmobile.
Robert G. Ruesink, the service's state director at Boise, said the new release site was also along the Middle Fork but said the agency would not reveal the specific location.
"We got weathered out so we're going in by cars and trucks and snowmobiles," Ruesink said.
The bad weather Wednesday mirrored the first release of gray wolves in Idaho last January, when biologists hoped to fly 15 into the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. They were grounded by snow for several days with the wolves remaining in transport boxes before finally driving them to the main Salmon River.
One of the wolves was shot shortly after the January 1995 release on a Salmon-area ranch. Lemhi County officials clashed with Fish and Wildlife biologists who traveled to Gene Hussey's ranch to investigate the predator's death after it fed on a stillborn calf.
Bangs said a snowstorm blasted Missoula Wednesday and biologists were forced to move the wolves south by truck and then snowmobile.
Lemhi County commissioners said they were pretty sure the wolves will not be released in their jurisdiction again.
Commissioner Heber Stokes said Fish and Wildlife told him they would not stop in Lemhi County with the wolves "any longer than it takes the traffic light to change."
A pack of five wolves took in their new one-acre pen on Wednesday, 15 miles east of the Idaho border in Yellowstone National Park near Old Faithful, preparing for a new life.
The relatively large animals one weighing 130 pounds were captured in British Columbia while feeding on a bison. Park Service biologists hope the new pack will zero in on the more than 3,000 bison that live in the Madison and Firehole river valleys instead of following the annual elk migration in and out of Idaho.
"We know they can prey on bison. We know there is a healthy bison herd around Nez Perce Creek," said Mike Phillips on Yellowstone's wolf project.
They were part of a shipment of 11 wolves that arrived in the park Tuesday.
The Nez Perce Creek pen in Yellowstone where the two adults and three pups will acclimate to their new surroundings for the next two months is also only a few miles from the summer range of Idaho's 3,000-head Sand Creek elk herd. Since wolves can travel hundreds of miles, the pack could decide to move to Idaho or even Jackson Hole.
The 11 wolves in Yellowstone were to be joined by the end of the week by six or seven more.
Bangs said another 11 to 12 will be brought into Idaho and released. This year's Canadian capture program is done and all the wolves should be in Idaho and the park by the weekend, he said.