Search for Profanity Peak wolves halted

I'm Bob Larson. The hunt for the few surviving members of the Profanity Peak wolfpack in Northeast Washington has been called off.

State Wildlife managers believe they complied with the newly established protocol for dealing with the wolves, but that does not mean there will be no more attacks ...

DONNY MARTORELLO ... "Yes, we're going to see wolves and livestock in conflict in the future. The majority of time I think, like other states, they'll coexist just fine and share the landscape, but we will have these kinds of conflicts in the future in some of the packs. And so I think that just stresses and emphasizes the importance of working with stakeholders and Washingtonians about how the department responds and manages those kinds of conflicts."

Wolf policy lead Donny Martorello says the likelihood of depredations, or attacks, in the near future is now low ...

DONNY MARTORELLO ... "And that's because a majority of the livestock are now off of the hillside where we've seen the past 15 depredations over the course of the summer, have been on a federal grazing allotments administered by U.S. Forest Service. So the majority of those livestock are now off of those federal grazing allotments and going to where they winter. And that since the first week of August, we've removed seven wolves from a pack of twelve."

Martorello says they intended to eliminate the entire pack, but the remaining female and her three pups were elusive in the rugged and heavily forested terrain.

There are still 19 known wolfpacks in the state of Washington.