State biologists capture Okanogan wolves

YAKIMA — Biologists say they have captured two wolves in western Okanogan County and fitted both with radio collars to track their movements and learn more about them.

State Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Madonna Luers says the biologists took hair samples Friday for DNA testing to confirm the wolves are not hybrid animals.

But she says one of the wolves was a female nursing pups, and that domesticated hybrid animals are not known to reproduce in the wild.

Test results are expected back in a couple of weeks. If the animals are confirmed to be wild wolves, they would be the first reproducing pack in Washington state since the wolves were eradicated in the 1930s by poisoning, trapping and bounty hunting.

Washington state Fish and Wildlife biologists were assisted by wolf experts from Idaho in the captures.

Also this week, DNA tests of a roadkill near Spokane confirmed the remains were of a gray wolf, and that it was genetically similar to wolves in northwest Montana and southern British Columbia.

There have been numerous reports of wolves being seen or photographed in the northeast part of the state in recent years, but Luers said at least some may have been wolf hybrids. Numerous reports of wolves seen or photographed in remote parts of northeast Washington in recent years suggest the animals are dispersing from Idaho, Montana and Canada.

Friday, a federal judge in Montana restored endangered-species protections for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies. The species had been removed last spring from the federal endangered species list in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and the eastern third of Washington.

Washington state still considers the gray wolf endangered and is drafting a wolf-conservation and -management plan.