Despite being orphaned, challenged for alpha status and ultimately being killed by a rival pack, wolf 907 leaves a legacy
EDITOR'S NOTE:This is the third installment of Howl, a five-part written series and podcast season produced in partnership between the Idaho Capital Sun, States Newsroom and Boise State Public Radio.
Sitting in an old-growth spruce fir forest, Doug Smith says he can see first-hand the impact of reintroducing wolves on the larger ecosystem of Yellowstone National Park.
Long before Yellowstone became the world's first national park in 1872, wolves thrived in the U.S. Rocky Mountains. But early Yellowstone rangers killed off the last of the park's wolves by 1926. By the late 1930s, the federal government had basically eradicated all the wolves in the American West.That fundamentally changed the ecosystem, as far as Smith is concerned.“To me it was just pretty scenery because it wasn't ecologically vibrant,” Smith said.
Then, in 1995, the U.S. government reintroduced wolves to Idaho and Yellowstone using wolves captured in Canada.
Smith helped bring them back to the park and was in charge of Yellowstone's wolf project for nearly 30 years until he retired in 2022.
“Yellowstone is a very different place, with and without wolves,” Smith said.
“Wolves definitely have changed this landscape with the help of other predators,” he added. “It's very different.”Many of the changes have to do with the wolves' status as an apex predator, at the top of the food chain. With the loss of wolves and the decline of other predators like cougar and grizzly bears, elk populations surged, Smith said.
Without the threat of wolves throughout much of the 20th century, the elk devoured woody vegetation in Yellowstone, like willows and stands of white bark Aspen trees.
When wolves were reintroduced, they preyed on elk, which reduced the number of elk and put pressure on the remaining animals to keep moving and not graze as long or as heavily in one place.
“I go to willow stands and aspen stands now that I was in 30 years ago, and literally, every single stem was eaten by an elk, and it was at the level of your knee,” Smith said. “And now I go in those stands, and you can lose your partner in them in regrowth of vegetation within 10 feet.”
Scientists debate an effect called the trophic cascade, which deals with how ecosystems are constructed and describes the cascading impact a predator has on its prey further down the food chain.
“Why it's interesting is when European settlers moved across North America, they killed all the predators,” Smith said. “So you've really disrupted this process of a trophic cascade.”
Smith said the debate over the effects of the trophic cascade gets complicated – quickly. He himself falls somewhere in the middle when it comes to buying into the impact and intensity of the effect. But as Smith backpacked near Cache Creek in the northern section of Yellowstone, he said the impact of wolves and other predators is easy to spot.
“You guys don't have to be ecologists to see all these Aspen are young,” Smith said. “Within a few years – and, man, give them 20 or 30 (years) – you're going to have a forest here, and we're going to be standing in the shade. Totally different ballgame, and I think that's restoring balance to the ecosystem.”
When vegetation grows back, as the aspen and willows grow tall, that impacts things like beaver populations, which Smith has documented, and even songbirds.The big picture for Smith? Wolves restored balance that was missing from Yellowstone's ecosystem when the predators were absent.
“It's a nice story, too,” Smith said. “We ruined Yellowstone. We're fixing it by bringing back the top carnivores, most notably wolves.”
Check out Episode 3 of the Howl podcast
For even more information about the impact wolf reintroduction had on the larger ecosystem in Yellowstone National Park, check out Episode 3 of the Howl podcast. During Episode 3 we hike into Yellowstone's backcountry to see the changes in the ecosystem. And we take a deeper dive into the trophic cascade with Doug Smith, who headed up Yellowstone's wolf program for nearly 30 years.
Truth be told, most Yellowstone visitors have likely never heard of the trophic cascade or deeply considered the wolves’ impact on the food chain and the larger ecosystem.But like the ecosystem, wolves have a powerful effect on many people, too. Reintroducing wolves also attracted a new crop of tourists hoping to see a wolf in the wild. And that has had a cascading effect on the local economy.Wolf-watching tourism has an estimated $80 million total economic impact on the communities surrounding Yellowstone National Park.
Any visitor to the wolves’ stronghold in the park, the Lamar Valley, can see the impact in the many tourists dotting hillsides looking through binoculars and spotting scopes hoping to spot canis lupus in the wild.
And one wolf, in particular, fascinated wolf watchers for longer than almost any other.
907: the one-eyed the queen of Yellowstone wolves
Known for her large size, distinctive limp and missing left eye, Wolf 907F served as the alpha female leader of Yellowstone’s Junction Butte Pack four times. (Video courtesy of Yellowstone National Park)
Even from a great distance, the old wolf's large size and limp gave her identity away.
Gray, with a black nose, white legs, a cream-colored belly and black spot near the base of her tail, wolf 907F stood out from the pack. 907’s physical scars told the silent story of the struggles wolves endure fighting for control of the rugged Northern Range of Yellowstone National Park. Aside from a limp in her front paw, 907 was missing her left eye, the result of an injury park officials first noticed in 2017.
“Whatever tragedy, setback or loss she has, she just keeps on moving forward,” said Rick McIntyre, a retired Yellowstone National Park ranger and author who has studied 907’s pack since it formed.
“Nothing (stops her) – not health problems, getting beat up by a rival, the loss of her mother, the loss of her father, loss of pups,” McIntyre said.
Nobody in the world has seen more wolves in the wild than McIntyre.He started working at Yellowstone in 1994 as an interpretive wolf ranger and documented his 100,000th wolf sighting in 2019. Because he has 30 years of experience documenting wolves on a nearly daily basis, it takes a lot for a wolf to stand out to McIntyre.
But 907 accomplished something rare.
She was able to rise to the rank of alpha female four separate times and control one of the largest wolf packs ever documented in Yellowstone. And while she was at it, 907 outlasted her rivals long enough to grow old in the wild.
In 2024, 907 turned 11 years old and continued to lead hunts for bison and elk as the oldest wolf in the national park.
By comparison, the average wolf lives for about three or four years in Yellowstone, McIntyre said. Even pet dogs that sleep indoors, receive veterinary care and have a bowl of food waiting for them twice a day don't always make it to 11.
Because of her longevity and the fact that researchers put a radio collar on her when she was a pup, Yellowstone biologists and wolf watchers were able to study 907 so closely for so long that there are detailed numbers and statistics documenting much of her life.
For her to reach the age of 11, 907 had to defend her territory from rival wolves and endure 10 snowy, freezing Wyoming winters. She had to fight for most of her meals – sometimes getting kicked in the head by 2,000-pound bison and sent flying through the air.
Her stats are a snapshot of the turbulent life wild wolves face. Throughout her life, Yellowstone National Park staff watched 907 participate in 566 hunts.
Most of the time she chased bison (281 hunts) or elk (239 times).
She was successful 33 times, or in about 6% of the hunts that park officials documented.
Yellowstone officials once watched 907 and the Junction Butte Pack endure 12 days without finding anything to eat – only for the pack to triumphantly bring down a bull elk on empty stomachs.
When it comes to numbers, the biggest impact 907 may have had was building up the bloodline of Yellowstone wolves.
In 2024, at the age of 11, she produced her 10th litter of pups. That is the most for any wolf in 30 years of wolf research at Yellowstone National Park.
“With her being 11 years old and having new pups that would be somewhat similar to a woman in her mid 80s having kids,” McIntyre said.
Numbers even tell the story of how 907 got her name.When Yellowstone officials captured 907 and placed a radio collar around her neck in 2013, she got collar No. 907.
Each collar has a unique number to help identify and tell the wolves apart. Biologists use the “F” in 907F to designate her as female, but many people simply called her 907.
The collar allowed park officials to keep close tabs on 907 for more than a decade.
Many of the numbers and statistics about 907 can be found online in the 2024 Yellowstone Wolf, Cougar and Elk Project annual report, as well as previous yearly wolf reports.
The chance to observe a wolf queen's long reign attracts tourists to Yellowstone National Park
Wolf 907 and the Junction Butte Pack’s territory spanned mountains, valleys and creeks within an area called the Lamar Valley, which is in the northern part of Yellowstone National Park on the Wyoming-Montana border. It's one of the centers of wildlife activity in the park.
For years, 907 dug her den into a hillside covered by a mix of sagebrush and conifer trees overlooking Slough Creek, where 907 and her pack hunted bison and elk.
On a chilly July morning in 2024, the creek meandered through a giant meadow below the den, where bison wallowed as the morning sun crested the nearby mountain peaks.
The den was a mile or more from the closest road, near the top of a diagonal section of forest.
Toward the left side of the forest, barely visible to the naked eye from more than a mile away, stood four small clusters of conifer trees.
At the base of one of the trees, near a patch of light colored dirt, 907 wrestled with two pups, one gray and one black
Unbeknownst to 907, she was often the object of attention from afar.
And on that morning in July a handful of people with high-powered scopes were watching her every move.
One of the wolf watchers was Laurie Lyman, a schoolteacher originally from California. Lyman became interested in wolves after realizing that third and fourth graders became more interested in learning about continents if Lyman described the animals that lived there.
One year, Lyman received a copy of Jim Dutcher's 1997 Emmy Award-winning documentary “Wolves at Our Door,” which Lyman and her students promptly fell in love with.
Something about wolves – how they live in packs that function like a family, where all of the wolves help raise the pups and contribute to hunting – made an immediate impression on Lyman.Within wolf packs, including 907’s own Junction Butte Pack, biologists have even documented one wolf raising another wolf’s pups. One spring, 907 had a litter of eight pups. Other female members of the Junction Butte Pack who lost their own litters helped 907 raise her large litter – even taking turns nursing the pups.
Before reintroduction, Lyman was fascinated by the ways the members of wolf packs worked together to take care of each other. But wolves had been absent from the landscape in the U.S. Rocky Mountains for her entire life, and Lyman assumed she would never see a wolf in the wild.That's how wolf reintroduction changed Lyman's life.
After wolves were reintroduced in 1995, Lyman started hearing about people seeing wild wolves again and she made a trip to see what it was all about.
“When they released them into Yellowstone, when they started to see them, it was incredible, and that was the changing point in my life,” Lyman said.
Lyman retired from teaching in 2005 and bought a house in Montana just outside of Yellowstone's Northeast Entrance to be closer to wolves.
She became friends with then-Yellowstone Ranger Rick McIntyre and purchased a spotting scope. And for the past 20 years, Lyman has been watching wolves and documenting her sightings online at www.yellowstonereports.com.
Now, she thinks of wolves and wolf packs a lot like students and classrooms.
“It's very similar to actually teaching my kids, watching the wolves out,” Lyman said. “It's like watching a recess. Because you have the adults sleeping. And you have the yearlings playing. And you have the pups and it's very much like kids in a sandbox, kids playing soccer. And then the older kids sitting in the lunch center talking.”
“My thing is getting to know them on an individual basis, so that I can easily recognize them,” Lyman added.
If you come at the queen, you best not miss
Thanks to their notes and years of daily field observations, McIntyre and Lyman have major details of 907’s life documented.
Even as a pup, 907 didn't have it easy.
She was born in 2013, the second year of the Junction Butte Pack's existence. Before the year was over, 907's mother died or disappeared, McIntyre said. About that same time, 907's father, wolf 911, took off, returning to the original wolf pack that he had been born into.
“In human terms, you could say that she was orphaned,” McIntyre said. “However, she was raised by the pack, raised by the family.”After she became an adult, 907 fought with her twin sister, wolf 969, for control of the Junction Butte Pack.
The two sisters regularly pinned each other to the ground and bit at each other, Lyman said.
“And they went back and forth several times on who had the alpha female position,” McIntyre said. “907 would have it for a while, the sister would take it away from her and then 907 would get it back.”
In 2017, 907 had a litter of pups and made her den in a remote location away from the rest of the Junction Butte Pack.
Park officials and wolf watchers noticed that the other adults in the pack stayed away from the den and didn’t appear to bring food to 907 or her pups.
In May, 907 returned to the pack, but her pups had died.
“And to make it worse, while she was desperately trying to save her pups, her sister at the time, 969, took advantage of that situation to seize the alpha position,” McIntyre said. “And when 907 rejoined the pack after losing all of her pups, she was beaten up by her sister and relegated to a very lowly position in the pack.”
“Everything that year was against her,” McIntyre said. Even though she was relegated to a subordinate role, 907 didn't leave the pack.
“She just has this ability to keep on moving forward, rather than dwelling on the past, dwelling on how unfair life has been,” McIntyre said. During the 2019-20 winter, the Junction Butte Pack experienced a bloody leadership shakeup.
The female wolves aggressively drove 969 – 907’s sister and rival – out of the pack.Wolf 969 survived her initial expulsion, but park officials noticed she appeared to be in poor physical condition. A few weeks after her exile, 969 encountered the Junction Butte Pack again one January night, leading to a fight.
“The next morning 969F was seen with injuries and she died later that day,” officials wrote in the Yellowstone Wolf Project’s 2020 annual report. “Her injuries were caused by other wolves and she weighed only 33 kilograms (73 pounds).”Even after her sister and closest rival was killed, 907 continued to face challenges from rival female wolves.
First, it was her sister's daughter, wolf 1382, who became a problem for 907.
Then wolf 1262 took over as the pack's alpha female.Finally it was wolf 1276.
But after 1276 was last seen alive in October 2023, 907 again took her crown as the Junction Butte Pack’s alpha female.
“And this is her fourth term as alpha female, meaning that she lost it three times,” McIntyre said. “And in those cases, it was either to a sister or a niece. So she's had a lot of hard times in her life, and she's always been able to fight back and prevail.”
From 2016 to 2024, 907 claimed the rank of alpha female four separate times.
And she gave birth to pups every spring from 2015 to 2024.
For those reasons, Lyman views 907 as the stabilizing force in the Junction Butte Pack and one of her favorite wolves of all time.“
She would just put her head down and walk into the wind no matter what adversity came to her,” Lyman said.
Ambushed in the dark, a queen makes her last stand in Yellowstone
Despite her long rivalry with her sister, it turns out 907’s greatest threat came from outside her own pack.
It was just before Christmas 2024 when 907 made her last stand.
During the final few weeks of 2024, the Junction Butte Pack left the invisible, unfenced boundary of Yellowstone National Park and entered Montana, where hunting season was underway.From Dec. 17 through Dec. 19, hunters legally killed two other adult members of the Junction Butte Pack outside of the park, Yellowstone officials wrote.
After the shootings, 907 and some of the surviving members of the Junction Butte Pack returned to their home territory in the Lamar Valley inside of Yellowstone.
But the Junction Butte Pack’s numbers were reduced. Lyman said there were only six other wolves with 907 when the final battle went down – and one or two of them may have been pups.
A much larger force of 19 wolves from the Rescue Creek Pack ambushed 907 and the Junction Butte Pack on Dec. 22 after wolf watchers spotted the diminished Junction Butte Pack feeding on a carcass.
The attack occurred at night.
Lyman wasn't there, but she received a tearful phone call from a friend who was.
“She was filming and her camera lights things up so she could see things pretty well,” Lyman said. “She called me and she said, ‘You know, it's over. They got her.’”
The radio collar 907 was wearing was designed to enter mortality mode and emit a unique signal after several hours passed without any movement from the wolf. Officials didn't detect a mortality signal from 907 until about three days after the attack, Lyman said. Lyman was heartbroken thinking about 907 suffering at the end.
It may be impossible to know exactly what went down in the dark woods after the Rescue Creek wolves advanced on the Junction Butte Pack.
But this much seems certain.
907 died fighting a larger, rival wolf pack that had attacked her and the Junction Butte Pack – the family she had lived with her entire life with.
No other members of the Junction Butte Pack died in the brawl with the Rescue Creek wolves.
That means 907’s pack, including some of her pups and nieces, live on without her.
Strange as it sounds, Lyman takes comfort in that.
Despite the sadness, people like Lyman were happy that 907 lived and died naturally, as wolves did before humans became a factor.
At least 907 wasn't shot by hunters, like 15 other members of the Junction Butte Pack who were killed when they strayed outside of the park's boundaries, Lyman said.
The same week 907 died, her counterpart, the alpha male of the Junction Butte Pack, was killed by a poacher. The alpha male, who did not have a number or a radio collar, was killed Dec. 24, while the wolf was outside of Yellowstone National Park, in Montana.
After living to be the fifth-oldest wolf ever recorded in Yellowstone and having more litters of pups than any Yellowstone wolf since the species was reintroduced 30 years ago, 907 went out fighting.
“This is a wolf in the wild, and this is what wolves do,” Lyman said. “They're wired to rise to the top to survive, and this is what they have to do to do it.”
“She just did what she had to do to make sure that her pack survived,” Lyman said. “So to me, she is a key to the Junctions surviving until now. And her legacy is in those three females that are left there in the pack.”
That's one of the gifts of a wolf, Lyman said.
“Just like a regular family does, you pass down what you know and help them learn to survive. And she really did that.”