The Continental Divide Trail (CDT) unites us. From Gateway Community residents to thru-travelers, and everyone in between, our diverse community is connected by our mission to protect the CDT. We are showcasing stories of the people and places that make up our community with our series, Voices of the CDT. Each month, look out for new stories that highlight these diverse experiences, histories, and faces, against the backdrop of the awe-inspiring Continental Divide.

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Wolf and carnivore specialist for region 1 of Montana FWP.

CDTC: Can you give CDTC a brief overview of who you are and what you do in your career?

Wendy Cole: My name is Wendy Cole and I am the wolf and carnivore specialist for Region 1 of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, which covers about 11,000 miles in the Northwest part of the state. I have been working in wildlife biology and field research since 2003, where I began doing field research seasonally. Most of my focus has been on carnivores such as lynx, black footed ferrets, wolverines and fishers, and my Master’s degree was on bobcats. The field work I have done has mostly been out west in Wyoming, Montana, and the mountains of California.

I study wildlife through a variety of methods including motion-activated wildlife cameras, hair snares, and trapping and collaring wildlife, which gives you a snapshot of the animal. Part of my time throughout the year is spent in the office and doing presentations with members of the public and the other part is spent out in the forest monitoring wildlife. Education and research go hand in hand. We have education presentations about wolf management and conservation history, as well as conducting outreach and information sessions for people who are trying to get wolf harvesting licenses.

Currently, my job has me trying to keep up with about 80 packs of wolves with huge territories who travel extremely long distances. This involves a lot of driving between territories to track, survey, and capture with foothold traps (with offset rubber jaws to grab but not cut into wolves paws). We check them frequently so the wolves are not waiting around for a while, since the main priority for us when putting a GPS tracking collar on an animal is to try to think about the wellbeing of the animal and their health and safety. We want wolves contributing collar data for research to be a good representation of their species and they can’t be that if they are hurt or injured. The Forest Service and National Park Service are also great partners in helping to communicate wolf sightings.

In addition to my current role, I worked for Glacier National Park for a couple of years coordinating in the citizen science program and doing research on pika and mountain goats, and now I volunteer for them. It’s a perfect fit for my free time, since I love to do a lot of backpacking and hiking. Nothing as long as the CDT! However, I have hiked the John Muir Trail and most of the trails in Glacier National Park.

CDTC: What led you to want to work with carnivores, and more specifically, wolves?

WC: Carnivores have always fascinated me. There’s just something about them that captures the imagination and awe of all humans in general. Carnivores cover really large territory and face many conflicts with people, roads, and livestock. Their prey are also well adapted to their environment and often have more human defenders than carnivores do.

I think one reason they’ve always interested me is because I admire them. Wolves and the distances they travel are amazing, they’re super tough. Additionally, they have really interesting social dynamics. Other carnivores are often very solitary (compared to around 12% of a wolf population being lone wolves instead of a pack) and it was thought that they really only met up for mating. However, we’re constantly learning new things about them and questioning what we know. For example, we always thought that the female wolverines raise their kits alone, but actually, the fathers sometimes come back and take the young on little excursions and hunting trips for a few days.

CDTC: What have you learned about wolves in your career that has surprised you?

WC: I’ve been amazed at how incredible their sense of smell is. A wolf’s sense of smell is 100x better than a humans and they can smell skin or water droplets that have come off of humans for up to weeks. This makes it very difficult to try to trap them and we have to somehow make them overcome that sense of caution and fear that they have. Sometimes, a video survey camera will be set up and then you’ll see them, on camera, smelling where you set something down for 30 seconds because they realize something is different there.

CDTC: What sort of tools and techniques do you use to study wolf populations?

WC: We do a number of things including track and scat surveys, remote cameras, and howling surveys. Howling surveys are common because in the spring, when wolves have young pups, they get really howl happy and all want to chorus in. Pups are left behind with a babysitter while the rest of the wolves go off to hunt and when they get back together they have a big reunion howling party. Thus howling surveys help pinpoint where wolves are and even den locations. Howling also helps wolves communicate when they are seperated across long distances as wolves can hear howls up to 6 miles away.

We also do observations with cameras and in person and combine that with sightings from other people to get counts of how many animals there are per pack. Using sightings and collar data can help us record where packs are and estimate how big their population is. We are also able to use a program called iPOM which is a modeling system that integrates data from our monitoring work to get a more accurate estimate of wolves. It is impossible to count every single wolf, so trying to get an estimate is important yet difficult.

CDTC: The CDT goes through both Yellowstone and Glacier. Can you talk about and compare the recovery of wolves in Yellowstone and Glacier?

WC: By the 1970s we were seeing wolves repopulating in northwest Montana naturally from Canada and the wolves were some of the first animals protected by the Endangered Species Act after it passed in 1973. At first, when dealing with repopulating wolves, it was a watch and see approach. Early in the 1990s there were five packs of wolves naturally coming back. Glacier National Park was one of the first places wolves denned west of the Mississippi river ince the early 1990’s. Low conflict spaces were so important for giving wolves the space to come back, and Glacier is well known for being a good place for species that need those large territories so it allowed the wolves to come back naturally.

When it came to Yellowstone National Park it was a question of when they would repopulate, not if. It would happen eventually, but would take a while due to the barriers between there and previously occupied wolf territory. There was one wolf in 1987 who traveled 550 miles in a period of 7 months along the Continental Divide in Canada. The distance this wolf traveled north from Glacier was actually further than it would’ve taken for her to get to Yellowstone.

We continue to see wolf dispersals all over. Wolves in the West are a part of what we call a meta population because they are all connected genetically due to dispersing wolves. For example, a collar found recently was discovered to be from a wolf in Banff that trotted at least 300 miles along natural corridors to get there, which is not unusual. We assume that wolves have actually gone down to Yellowstone from Glacier because we’ve seen those distances in other directions, but since we only have a small amount of wolves collared we can’t say for sure.

Wolves were eventually manually reintroduced in Yellowstone and Idaho in 1994-95 and 95-96 and were brought from Canada, which is part of the same historic metapopulation that connects them by dispersal today. Their recovery was jump started because of human-induced reintroductions, but high prey densities, protected areas, and human tolerance is what enabled those wolves to continue to spread.

CDTC: Do you have any ideas for how to secure the future of wolves, since we’ve seen, like with the Yellowstone Pack, that they can move from a protected area into an unprotected one?

WC: The most important thing to note is that wolves are really resilient and they’re inhabiting areas they haven’t for a hundred years. They can take a big population decrease and still be okay. It can be hard for people to see on an individual level, but on a population level they‘re doing quite well. It’s understandable why folks care so much about wolves and their survival as they are charismatic and interesting creatures. However, the future of wolves has already been made secure by reintroduction and the nature of wolves themselves and how amazing they are at dispersing. The parks are really a very small part of the wolf territory across the continent right now and as long as there are wild spaces, habitat, and prey for wolves, and as long as they have responsible management that prevents them from being overharvested or villainized, they will persist..

CDTC: What do you wish more people knew about wolves?

WC: I wish more people knew that they’re a wildlife species that has a lot of myths, both positive and negative. David Mech, a longtime wolf researcher from the Midwest, said, “the wolf is neither devil nor saint, except in the eyes of the viewer.”. Wolves are one of those species that people like to assign with their own actions, intent, and emotions. It is important to remember that wolves are just wild animals who are trying to survive and do what comes instinctually.

CDTC: In what ways are wolves connected to the Continental Divide landscape?

WC: Well there is a big correlation between where the trail is and where a lot of wolves are, even down to Mexican gray wolves. They are connected to the ruggedness and wildness of the CDT, which is beneficial to wildlife. Also, there have been a lot of wolf sightings right where the CDT is in Colorado for years. It makes sense that they would follow the same trail as humans to connect across the Divide.

CDTC: In what ways are you connected to the Continental Divide Landscape?

WC: Well for one I used to live in Butte, which is a Continental Divide Trail Gateway Community. I also think the Continental Divide is one of my most favorite areas in the world because it is rugged and wild and beautiful and hosts so many species all while making people feel more connected to the landscape and wildlife. I’ve spent my entire life admiring mountains and the CDT goes through many spectacular wilderness areas which makes me feel really grateful that trails like the CDT exist so people can enjoy and experience and love those wilderness areas more. It is so hard to value and protect something that you don’t know and trails give people an opportunity to know an area. Some of my personal best memories have been hiking and backpacking in the CDT ecosystem.

CDTC: Do you have a favorite wolf story you’d like to share?

WC: I was working on a trap line in the mountains and I had a couple of traps that were down a game trail on an old closed road that was signed for the safety of others. I was walking along the trap line for 5 days and hadn’t seen anything the whole time. I was feeling super discouraged and decided to send up a howl to see if I could get something in return. All of a sudden four howls sprung up around me about 50 meters away. I needed to call out to them in their language and then they spoke back to me. It was satisfying and spine tingling all at once and I felt connected to those evolutionary drivers that made people afraid of wolves in the past, despite knowing that I wasn’t really in any danger. It was such a rewarding moment.

CDTC: Is there anything else you’d want a trail user to know about wolves?

WC: An important thing to mention is that as you’re using the trail you probably aren’t going to see a wolf because their territories are so large and they are very wary around humans. But if you do, enjoy the experience from a distance and while it’s good to be cautious since they’re wild animals, understand they probably aren’t a danger to you. You can think of wolves as solo travelers on the landscape who want to get their miles in just like you.