SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The number of gray wolves in Washington state kept growing last year and for the first time the state documented a pack living west of the Cascade Range, wildlife officials said Thursday.
The state has a minimum of 126 wolves in 27 packs with 15 successful breeding pairs, defined as male and female adults that have raised at least two pups that survived through the end of the year, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife found in its annual wolf census.
A year ago, there were 122 wolves in 22 packs with 14 breeding pairs.
The pack west of the Cascade Range, in Skagit County, consists of a single male wolf, captured in 2016 and released with a radio collar, that has been traveling with a female wolf through the winter. Biologists named the pack Diobsud Creek.
Wolves were nearly wiped out in Washington by the 1930s but started returning to the state from surrounding areas early in this century. The animals have preyed on livestock, causing conflicts with ranchers.
The census numbers are compiled from state, tribal, and federal wildlife specialists based on aerial surveys, remote cameras, wolf tracks and signals from radio-collared wolves. The count leads to estimates of the minimum numbers of wolves, because it is not possible to count every animal.
Most of the packs live in Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille counties in the northeast corner of the state. But the census showed increasing numbers in Washington's southeast corner and its north-central region.
Since 1980, gray wolves have been listed as endangered throughout Washington. They are classified as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act In the western two-thirds of the state.
The agency recorded 12 wolf deaths last year. Six were legally killed by tribal hunters; four were killed by the wildlife agency in response to repeated wolf-caused livestock deaths; and two deaths apparently caused by humans remained under investigation at year's end.
Their numbers have increased by an average of 28% a year since 2008.
Five of the 27 packs in Washington last year were involved in at least one livestock death.
Wolves killed at least 11 cattle and one sheep, and injured another 19 cattle and two sheep. The agency processed five livestock damage claims totaling $7,536 to compensate producers for direct wolf-caused livestock losses.