Wolf pack, Siskiyou-Shasta County border

Memo to California endangered wolves: do us a favor, stay north; don't travel south. 

Mother Nature Network/Jaymi Heimbuch, 8/23/15. "Wolf pack discovered in California for first time after 91-year absence."
 

  Meet the California Shasta Pack of wolves

Scientists are hailing it as an ecological breakthrough. Wolf advocates are howling with joy. And the Internet is eagerly awaiting the next trail cam photos of the male and female wolves and their five pups, which have been found living within California's state lines for the first time in 91 years.

I am not a coyote

Hopes were raised that wolves would return to California back in December 2011 when a wolf named OR7 entered the state for a short stint before returning to Oregon. It was a sign that maybe wolves would reestablish a population.

.... "In June 2014, the California Fish and Game Commission voted to list gray wolves as endangered under the California Endangered Species Act," writes CDFW. "The gray wolf is also listed as endangered in California, under the Federal Endangered Species Act of 1973. Gray wolves that enter California are therefore protected by the ESA making it illegal to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture or collect wolves, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct in California." Read more.

Related -  Grind TV/Pete Thomas, 8/20/15, "Wolf pack discovered in California; first in more than 90 years." Said Jamie Rappaport, president of the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife: “We have been given a second chance to restore this iconic species to a landscape they had been missing from for nearly one hundred years. We must seize this opportunity to forge new partnerships to help wolves live in harmony with people and livestock in their California home.” The wolf spotted in December 2011 was a GPS-collared animal cataloged as OR7, who became famous for ranging across Oregon into California, during a lengthy and fruitless search for a mate. He has since returned to southern Oregon and is the breeding male of what is known as the Rogue Pack.  

I am a coyote

The second wolf photographed twice near the Siskiyou-Shasta County border, via motion-sensor trail camera, is believed to be one of the adults raising the five pups. The CDFW, which captured the new images with additional trail cameras placed in the same general area, has designated this new family the Shasta Pack. Wolves were eradicated throughout the West in the early 1900s by trappers and ranchers. Their reintroduction in the Northern Rockies in 1995 was controversial not only because of livestock concerns, but because of possible impacts on elk herds in some areas.The cunning predators, believed by many to play an important role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem by thinning deer and elk herds of their weakest members, have flourished and have now spread to seven states (counting California)." 

Los Angeles Times/Julie Cart, Reporter, 8/20/15, "First wolf pack found in California in nearly a century." "State wildlife authorities last year added gray wolves to California's endangered species list, even though no wolves were known to be in the state. Officials said they anticipated that wolves beginning to establish in Oregon would eventually find their way into California’s northern counties. ...  In fact, the most serious impediment to wolf reintroduction has been animosity toward them from some ranchers and hunters, who say wolves kill livestock and reduce game herds on public lands. .... No such confusion will be possible with the animals in the Shasta Pack, Kovacs said. “It’s going to be pretty hard to look at a black wolf and conclude it’s a coyote.”

Note photographs.  Shasta Pack wolfs from the Mother Nature Network article (and everywhere else), courtesy of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.  Gray Wolf image from Grind TV/Wildlife pictures.  Coyote by Jitze/Wikimedia Commons from Broward Palm Beach New Times.  Tip of California, general visual Siskiyou-Shasta County location, see the Lions Club map outline, not shown as an image above.

Posted by Kathy Meeh