Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Washington
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

The gray wolf is protected as an endangered species by the State of Washington. Washington State law requires periodic review of the status of protected species, during which progress toward recovery criteria can be assessed. The purpose of this project is to develop a spatially explicit integrated population model for gray wolves in Washington, making use of a variety of data collected in Washington over the past 12 years. The goal is to build a model that will allow for estimation of demographic rates and dispersal and provide projections of probability of extinction, expected time to recovery, distribution, and abundance under a variety of ecological and management scenarios, developed in collaboration with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. This modeling tool will provide the basis for a status review of gray wolves in Washington.