Nature Friendly: The Return of the Wolf

For decades, the last wolf in California had been documented in 1924. It was a three-legged, emaciated thing that was shot in Lassen County. But Dec. 28, a wolf returned.
Mark Stopher, senior policy adviser to the director of the Department of Fish & Game, has been keeping a close eye on California’s lone wolf ever since.
“The reason we know about OR-7 is that he has a collar on him,” Stopher said. “He is from the Imnaha pack in northeastern Oregon, and he was collared on Feb. 25 of last year by Oregon Fish and Wildlife to collect data on movement patterns and home ranges during different seasons.”
Officials collared the wolf in deep snow with the temperature 13 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. He traveled with his pack until September and then began his solitary trek — traveling 730 miles in Oregon and another 470 miles since entering California.
“He astonishes me,” Stopher said. “His ability to pick up and move is nothing less than astonishing; in two days, he traveled 80 miles over lava flows, across rivers, across highways, over mountains.”
OR-7’s GPS collar records his location four times a day and uploads the information to a satellite at 6 a.m.
“I get up every morning and I can’t wait to find out what he did last night and where’s he’s been,” the ecologist said.
The California wolf is the progeny of wolves reintroduced into Idaho in the mid-1990s from British Columbia. Those 66 original wolves, including some in Yellowstone, have grown to 1,700 to 1,800 in the northern Rocky Mountains. They have expanded their territory into Oregon and Washington state, and in Oregon, they have increased their population from zero to 25 since 1999.
Wolf watchers shouldn’t expect to see the same happen here, however.
“Frankly, California is not likely to have wolf packs for several years,” Stopher said. “The reason for that is that most of the packs that are reproducing now are in the northeastern corner of Oregon, some 200-plus miles from our state. Until Oregon has reproducing wolf packs in southern Oregon, we’re not likely to see enough dispersing animals moving across the border to have wolf packs become established.”
Why did OR-7 leave his pack?
“He’s looking for a female.”
But he went the wrong way.
“He didn’t have a map, and eHarmony was not working for him. This is typical behavior for a 2- to 3-year-old male or female juvenile, because the alpha male and female in the pack reproduce but prevent other wolves from reproducing. It’s very high-risk behavior,” Stopher said.
“Most of them die not long after they leave their pack. Another wolf pack could kill them, and a lone wolf is not as an efficient hunter as a pack. Game that they eat is at its lowest population this time of year, and they could get run over by a car.”
Stopher has traveled around the state listening to disparate constituencies. Some would like to see the gray wolf dead, the “shoot, shovel, and shut up” form of wolf management.
Most people, however, told him the Department of Fish and Game should be working on a five-year management plan for the future.
“We don’t have any funding that is set up for wolf management; neither did Oregon in 1999. But wolves are in our future, and this would be a good time for us to be thinking about how to manage that population now,” Stopher said.
“In five to 10 years, we are likely to see a few more dispersing animals. Random possibilities could make that sooner. No matter what happens with OR-7, looking down the road five years from now, we need to be working on how will we respond, what are the likely populations of wolves we might see, how do we set up systems to keep the public and stakeholders involved?”
Concerning the new horror film “The Grey,” in which a wolf pack kills a group of men, Stopher said, “There’s nothing in that movie that is accurate. There has only been one documented killing in recorded history. Unfortunately, there is an irony in that the movie is coming out now while OR-7 is in California.”
Experts say that wolves seek to avoid people. That is the reason there have been no sightings of OR-7: He wants to stay hidden.
Stopher said he believed that “although the future of wolves in California is not yet written, it is the restoration of an important part of an ecosystem that has been long absent in our state.”
Do you believe there will come a day when we will hear the howl of the wolf in the Santa Cruz Mountains?
If you want updates on OR-7 or want to learn more about wolves, click on www.dfg.ca.gov/wildlife/nongame/wolf/.
– Carol Carson, M.Ed., is a writer, naturalist and educator.