Wolf (Canis lupus)

[Tshokwane]

Credits to Leo Leckie - Yellowstone Wolf Family Tree.

FAREWELL TO A WILD WOLF, A LEADER

779Fb was born into the Mollie's pack in April 2010. She was one of seven surviving pups born to alphas 486Fg and 495Mb. She was radio collared as a pup on January 27, 2011.

After the death of her parents in 2011, her older sister 686Fg became the new alpha female for a short time, until her death in September 2013. Both females may have produced pups that year, but only 779Fb’s five pups were believed to survive. 779Fb then took over as the new Mollie’s alpha female of the pack. She produced six pups in 2014, all of which survived to the end of the year.

She is the mother of the alpha male of the Wapiti Lake Pack, 1015Mb, born in 2014, and to his older brother and fellow Wapiti packmate, 1014Mb, born in 2013.

In August 2015 her mate alpha male 980Mg was kicked by a bull elk while the pack was hunting and died from his injuries. This left alpha female 779Fb with six pups from 2015 and nine yearlings and two-year-old wolves to lead and care for that winter, all of which were related to her. Thus, 779Fb began the search for a new mate in the winter of 2015-2016, leading her pack north through enemy territory along the Northern Range of the park.

Her persistence paid off and 890Mb (a wolf nicknamed "Patch") of the Junction Butte pack became her new alpha male in 2016. 779Fb was re-collared in 2017, but did not give birth to pups that year. She along with several other females from different packs had shown signs of having given birth to pups, but no pups survived in any of those packs in 2017 (Mollie's, Junction Butte, Lamar Canyon). The unusual death of so many pups from different packs may suggest that there was a disease outbreak in 2017, perhaps of canine distemper.

In early April 2018, just prior to the denning season and immediately following our previous post about the Mollies entitled "Yellowstone's Oldest Pack," her radio collar emitted a mortality signal in the Jasper Bench area of Lamar Valley. She had been seen visibly in distress with a problem in her front legs in the days preceding her death.

Because of deep snows, the Yellowstone Wolf Project has not been able to retrieve her body or determine whether she was pregnant with pups, and the exact cause of her death is unknown.

She was eight years old, and lived all of her life as a member of the Mollie's Pack. She stepped up to lead one of Yellowstone's most remarkable packs for five amazing years that many of us were blessed to witness. She lived and died naturally, a wild and free wolf.

Her mate 890Mb is not related to any of 779Fb's breedable daughters, and thus will be able to breed with them in the future.

We will wait to see which of those daughters steps up to assume the mantle of leadership of Yellowstone's oldest pack.

(In the accompanying photo I took on Feb 25, 2016 in Lamar Valley, 799Fb is the larger and graying black wolf, second from the right and in the foreground.)

*This image is copyright of its original author

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