72 replies to this topic

[MarkBC]

"OR-7 heads into California -- the first wolf to return to the Golden State since 1924"

We've been watching this west-wandering wolf cross Oregon, from its home in northeast Oregon, over the past few months. Maybe he decided it was easier to head south than to cross west over the Siskiyous.



Yeah, wolves are somewhat controversial -- among cattle/sheep ranchers, anyway. California needs to establish another predator to keep the wolf population in natural balance, and I nominate grizzly bears. (grizzlies are on the CA flag, after all -- they belong there)

[Barko1]

Save the wolves, get them out of CA!! Turn back Mr Wolf, CA is a mess these days.

[ntsqd]

Maybe he'll make it all the way to sacatomatoes and get things sorted out there? There's more than a few there who should be thrown to the wolves....


Interesting though, any expert speculation on what has caused this migration?

[MarkBC]

Interesting though, any expert speculation on what has caused this migration?

Great question, but I haven't seen an explanation. I'm sure at least speculation (by professionals) must be out there.
Wolves are territorial, right? And young males of all species want to get away from domination of Mom & Dad. But you'd think that 100 miles of distance would have been plenty. So, yeah, why wander on for several hundred miles?

An interestingly similar animal wander occurred about 2 years ago when a mountain goat from northeast Oregon showed up in central Oregon, on the cliffs of Dry Canyon/Prehistoric River about 20 miles east of Bend. And this was way out of the range where mountain goats are found in Oregon. It may still be in the area. Earlier this year I saw it from the "Prehistoric River" viewpoint on Horse Ridge next to US 20.

BTW: WTW-member "Craggyman" was the first human to see and report this goat, which he spotted while hiking in the canyon...though he didn't receive credit in the press. He took a photo of the beast (in poor lighting and without telephoto) and sent it to me and a few others in the desert-lover community. One of those people went out there and took a better photo, and then the word spread.

[EdoHart]

"OR-7 has been elusive during his long trek, keeping away from people, and no photographs of him exist. Biologists fitted him with a GPS collar last February that periodically transmits his location."

Actually, they are tracking the GPS collar which was attached to the wolf known as OR-7. It's possible, (though, not probable) that OR-7's collar is no longer attached to said wolf. What if his collar is riding in the back of someone's pickup truck?

[pods8]

I'm waiting for the wolves to migrate into Mexico and have them complain about unwanted visitors, kinda like the wild hogs heading into Mexico from Texas. The comments the folks south of the border were making about the visitors was quite ironic.

Actually, they are tracking the GPS collar which was attached to the wolf known as OR-7. It's possible, (though, not probable) that OR-7's collar is no longer attached to said wolf. What if his collar is riding in the back of someone's pickup truck?

That would be a dumb hilly billy to be toting around evidence...

[UHAULER]

Interesting though, any expert speculation on what has caused this migration?

Free Government Cheese ??

[craig333]

Lack of a mate in CA is likely to make him turn around fairly quickly. Unless he's heading down to SF

[Ted]

We just got back from a trip to the northewest. Had we known this, we would have stayed a night in the Klamath falls area on the way back.

California needs to establish another predator to keep the wolf population in natural balance, and I nominate grizzly bears.

Actually the wolves do a pretty good job of keeping there own numbers in check with all the fighting between packs. But this idea would save us a lot of money. We are averaging a trip a year to Yellowstone just to catch glimpses of wolves and grizzlies a mile away. That is a lot of gas money. And there are always crowds of others there for the same reason. Any CA wildlife management people paying attention? That is a lot of tourism dollars that could be brought into the state.

[Smokecreek1]

Fantastic-what a thrill to maybe hear a wolf howling out there! Hope our locals don't get gun happy and start banging away at it. I remember in the late 70's when the first elk started migrating into Modoc County and some of the locals going ballistic thinking the elk were going to eat all that good cattle food and were demanding we shoot them-We feds, the state, some ranchers and the county folks had to come up with all sorts of management plans to protect them and the other beasts out there, once we figured it weren't just a lost few elk coming into country, but because of the changing climate patterns (sort of like today), things out there were changing (plants, animals and water) and the elk were starting to follow traditional migration routes not used in thousands of years. You ask how we figured that out-well most of the locals, including the Indians all were saying no one that ever seen an elk around here and there were no real oral traditions for them either, so i (among others) was tasked to go through the whats called the archaeological and scientific record ( a summation of all the data {surveys, studies, excavations, reports, collections, etc) to see if there were any reports of elk bones in any of them and i did find sites were elk bone was found in the High Rock Area and in several other areas when the climate was less desert like a few thousand years ago; while our environmental folks were doing the same thing by tracking prehistoric veg/climate/animal migrations from then till now. All the data seemed to say that elk were once here and really were just returning to what they used to do! Actually felt like I did something important back then and I really enjoyed working on that project. Just hope these new folks out here are ready to do the same type of things if someone starts trying to kill that wolf before we find out why its here-and let it be-remember what happened to the wolf populations after the feds gave management back to those unnamed states northeast of here-bang, bang, bang.

Smoke