Oregon Public Broadcasting

Wildlife biologists are trying out a new method to track and monitor the growing wolf population in the inland Northwest.  It’s an automated loudspeaker and recording device called a “Howlbox.” 

Researchers deployed four prototype Howlboxes in central Idaho this summer.  Two have been redeployed in northeastern Washington this fall.  Correspondent Tom Banse listened in to the initial results.

Next time you’re in wolf country and hear that iconic call of the wild, perhaps you should ask yourself, “Is it real, or is it Memorex?”

University of Montana’s Dave Ausband unpacks a “howlbox” call-and-response recorder.

That’s a recording echoing across the backcountry.  Wolf biologists hung loudspeakers in a tree and connected them to a digital player-recorder.

Dave Ausband: “The howlbox is programmed to turn on at a certain time, broadcast a wolf howl, and then it records responses on the microphone for two minutes.  Then it goes to sleep until the next scheduled broadcast. So you don’t have to be there to do anything.”

Researcher Dave Ausband of the University of Montana says there are now more than 700 gray wolves in Idaho.

Unknown numbers are colonizing wild lands in eastern Oregon and Washington as well.  Ausband is trying to devise a non-invasive way to count wolves, that’s cheaper too. 

Dave Ausband: “You could never tell a technician, ‘Camp out on this ridge for six months and howl four times a day. I’ll be back to pick you up.’ So we just wanted to take the labor out of the equation and see if it would even work.”

It’s not perfect yet, but it does work.  Wild wolves howl back, their answers amounting to a roll call.

Dave Ausband: “What’s cool with audio files, instead of just recording on a pair of headphones, you convert that to visual representation, you get what is called a spectrogram.  Wolves will howl on different frequencies. Particularly the pups will be a much higher frequency.”

Dave Ausband: “Some people with a really good recording of captive wolves can tell [that] each wolf would have its own acoustic fingerprint, just like you and I have fingerprints.”

Dave Ausband: “We’re recording in the wild so we have trees rustling, cows mooing, log truck brakes – you know, all kinds of background noise.  It will probably be hard for us to ever get there. But I think we could at least detect minimum numbers of pups, minimum numbers of adults. And that’s what we need to report to the federal government.”

The Nez Perce Tribe is paying for much of the development costs here.  The tribe is a partner in wolf management and has a cultural affinity with the animal. 

The Oregon Zoo and The Mountaineers Foundation of Seattle are also chipping in. 

Nez Perce wolf recovery coordinator Curt Mack wants to be prepared for when wolves come off the federal endangered species list and hunting resumes.

Curt Mack: “The landscape is going to be changing in terms of how we manage wolves. Federal funding is not going to be available anymore. So the tribe is really trying to look at ways that we can continue to monitor and track wolves in a more cost effective way.”

Mack says he was pleasantly surprised by how the initial deployment of four howlboxes in central Idaho went this past summer. 

Now Washington State Fish & Wildlife has borrowed several of the devices.  The agency wants to confirm whether wolf packs have crossed state lines and colonized northeastern Washington.  

So far, the howlboxes have not picked up any wolves in the first three weeks of remote monitoring in Pend Oreille County.

Online:
 
University of Montana – Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit