Endangered gray wolf travels far south into California on lonely search for companions
California’s newly arriving wolves have been busy these last few weeks.
A pair of new wolves may be forming a pack in the far northern part of the state, and another traveled as far south as Mono County, marking the furthest south wolves have traveled since they were exterminated in the Golden State nearly a century ago.
This week, the Department of Fish and Wildlife announced a wolf from the White River pack in western Oregon near Mt. Hood wandered into California earlier this month.
Oregon biologists had trapped and collared the young wolf in June, and they labeled him OR93, representing the 93rd time that that state’s biologists had put a tracking collar on a new wolf.
Like many young wolves, OR93 struck out on a lonely journey to find a new pack or a new mate.
In just a matter of weeks, his collar tracked him traveling from Modoc County in the far northeastern corner of the state all the way to Alpine County, between the trans-Sierra State Highways 4 and 108, biologists said. He then passed this week into Mono County, hundreds of miles from the Oregon state line.
OR93 is the 16th gray wolf known to have wandered into California, most of them from packs in Oregon, in the years since OR7 in 2011 became the first known wolf to venture into California in nearly a century. In total, about 40 wolves have passed through, settled or been born in California, most of them in a remote, five-county region about the size of West Virginia in California’s northeastern corner.
Another male Oregon wolf, OR85, from Oregon’s Mt. Emily Pack, entered Modoc County on Nov. 3 and appears to have paired up with a gray uncollared female in Siskiyou County.
State biologists believe it’s likely they’ll have pups this spring. If they do have a litter, they will be the second small wolf pack known to be in the state. The other is the Lassen Pack in Lassen and Plumas counties.
Conflicts with California ranchers
The arrival of wolves hasn’t always been welcomed as they’ve begun reclaiming lands shared with cattle that graze on private and public rangeland.
Since 2015, state investigators have listed around two dozen dead cattle being “probable” or “confirmed” wolf kills. Other reported “attacks” were inconclusive or turned out to be wolves feeding on cattle that had died from other causes.
At the same time, several wolves have disappeared or died under suspicious circumstances.
The state’s first wolf family group, the Shasta Pack in Siskiyou County, had five pups in 2015 before it vanished late that year.
Another wolf from an Oregon pack had traveled more than 8,700 miles as she looked for a mate for months across California as far south as Interstate 80 and Lake Tahoe, with forays into Nevada and back into Oregon.
The wolf, known as OR54, was found dead last year in Shasta County. Officials haven’t released the cause of death, citing an ongoing investigation. But they warn that game wardens take “very seriously any threats to this recovering wolf population.”
And late last year, a Sacramento Bee investigation revealed that state wildlife officers had served search warrants in 2019 on a ranching family’s property in northeastern California after they found the GPS-collared wolf OR59, another male from Oregon, dead on the side of a Modoc County road.
The black-furred wolf had been shot through the spine by a rifle bullet. No arrests have been made, despite $7,500 in rewards.
Last year, the Trump administration began the process of removing most American wolves from the protections of the U.S. Endangered Species Act, saying the country’s wolf packs had sufficiently recovered.
California’s wolves remain protected under the state’s Endangered Species Act.
This story was originally published February 27, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Endangered gray wolf travels far south into California on lonely search for companions."