RED LODGE, Mont. (AP) - A pack of up to seven wolves has been sighted in southcentral Montana and could be a new pack for the region, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service confirmed.
"It's not unusual for big packs to split up," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
None of the wolves has a radio collar, he said. There have been previous sightings of wolves in the area, which makes officials think the pack may have denned there last year.
Bangs said pregnant female wolves will be denning soon. If that is the case, he said, wolf recovery officials would dart one and put a radio collar on it to keep track of the pack.
The wolves are not the first to venture along the Beartooth Front.
A litter of eight pups was born near Red Lodge in 1995. The lead male of the pack was killed illegally nearby. Biologists collected the litter and its mother and moved them from Red Lodge to Yellowstone National Park, where the group - called the Rose Creek pack - rebuilt itself and has remained since.
The pups were the first young born to wolves freed in Yellowstone under the federal wolf recovery plan.
In 1996, a pack and its pups that denned near Nye on the Custer National Forest also were moved to prevent confrontations with livestock. That same year the Soda Butte pack denned on private land near the town of Roscoe.
