Where wolves wander Dedicated watchers get front-row seat to gr

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. -- Cliff Browne huddles against the cold air, his camera lens pointed toward two distant dots on a hazy horizon. Daylight has broken, and the gray wolves are showing themselves.

Browne's voice fills with excitement as he begins counting them, but rises to little more than a whisper as he angles his head for a better view. "I love it!" he says. "I love it!"

Several wolves run across the snowy landscape before disappearing from view into the trees. Another takes it slow, plopping down in the powder. One releases a lonesome howl.

Here on the northeast corner of the nation's first national park, patient wildlife enthusiasts like Browne have had a front-row seat to watch the gray wolves' sometimes controversial return to Yellowstone.

Wolf watchers will spend hours a day to catch even a glimpse of the animals; some like Browne are out here almost every day during winter.

'Part of the game'

The wolf watchers slowly traverse the roads winding through the park's Lamar Valley, carefully scanning the hills and fields. They maintain vigil for long periods at roadside turnouts, bundled in layers of warm clothing, scrunched over tripods, with their binoculars, cameras and spotting scopes surveying areas the wolves are known to frequent.

Some days are better than others, said Browne, of Cooke City, Mont., who has made a living selling the images of wolves he captures on film.

"You've got to put hours in. And, sometimes, you might be here all day long and never see anything," he said. "Sometimes, you think, 'What a wasted day.' But that's part of the game."

Other days are a gold mine. Ed and Kathleen Dunn came from Chicago, hoping to see just one wolf. They were not disappointed. The wolves cooperated, getting close enough for a good view.

One, visible in the rugged distance without binoculars, silenced their anxious chatter with a howl that carried on the wind.

"That wolf up there on the hill, when she turned around and started to howl ...," Kathleen Dunn said.

"It was really almost chilling," Ed Dunn finishes.

More than 130 in park

People come to Yellowstone expecting to see wildlife. But only in recent years has the public had any real chance of seeing gray wolves in their natural setting.

Once eradicated from the park, the wolves were brought back under a contentious reintroduction program that began in 1995. They now number more than 130 within the park, and total more than 570 in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.