If wolves establish themselves in Oregon, it won't be long before their howls reverberate again through the canyons and mountains of the Golden State. Such a sound will represent a small step towards healing the great wounds humans have inflicted upon our native ecosystems and a clear signal that at least some ecological changes wrought by us are reversible.
Grey Wolf, image from Stockcake.com
Back in 2000, I wrote a piece for California Wild about the
prospects for wolf restoration in the state. At that time, there had
not been any wolves reported in the Golden State in decades.
Nevertheless, I felt the state could easily support a wolf
population.
In my article, I pretended that it was 2020, and I am sitting on a
mountaintop in the Marble Mountains, hearing a wolf howl. It is
interesting to reread the article and see that most of the
predictions have been realized.
A recent article in the Los Angles Times documents that there are
now at least 70 wolves in California in nine packs. Most of the
parks are located in northern California, but at least one pack is
found in the southern Sierra Nevada east of Bakersfield.
The first recorded wolf in California occurred 13 years ago when a
wolf from northeastern Oregon known as OR-7 ventured into the Golden
State . OR-7 went on to form a pack in southern Oregon.
A state conservation wolf plan suggests that California could
support as many as 500 wolves north of I-80, which bisects the state
from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe.I Interestingly study done by the
Conservation Science Institute in the 1990s suggested thata
population of 440 wolves was possible.
MY 2000 ARTICLE FROM CALIFORNIA WILD
Some biologists question whether early accounts of wolves in
California might be skewed by the misidentification of coyotes,
common throughout the state. The coyote is smaller and has a
narrower build than its cousin the wolf.
July 17, 2020. “Here I am in the Marble Mountains. Just about dusk a
beautiful yellow harvest moon rose over Elk Mountain. As the moon
cleared the ragged tops of the forest, I heard a wolf howl.”
In the not too distant future, such a journal entry may be a
reality, not just wishful thinking. Though wolves were extirpated
from California nearly 80 years ago, the animals may soon be
trotting back to the Golden State.
The earliest historical records mention wolves throughout much of
California. For instance, Pedro Fages, who traveled the Coast Ranges
from San Diego north to San Francisco in 1769 recorded the
occurrence of both wolves and coyotes along his route. Other
sightings place wolves along the coast near San Gabriel Mission, in
Humboldt County, and in the Monterey Bay area.
The explorer and mapmaker John Fremont noted seeing wolves in the
Sacramento Valley. After the gold rush of 1848, wolf sightings
shifted to the Sierra Nevada and northern California. John Muir
reports having seen wolves near Mount Shasta. Nevertheless, the only
confirmed wolves found in the state were trapped in the 1920s. Three
specimens of gray wolves are in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at
the University of California at Berkeley. One was taken in the
Providence Mountains in southern California, and the other two were
caught in Modoc and Lassen counties in northern California.
Ron Jurek, a wildlife biologist with the California Department of
Fish and Game in Sacramento, has studied most of the early
historical accounts related to wolves and cautions about speculating
too broadly about their historical occurrence in the state. For
instance, Jurek points out, many early travelers failed to
distinguish between coyote and wolf sightings, collectively calling
both “wolves.” Secondly, says Jurek, the only undisputed records of
wolves for the state are the three museum specimens collected in the
1920s. They were all males who could have been long-distance
dispersers from breeding populations elsewhere. There are, he says,
no undisputed records of actual wolf breeding in the state although
some historical accounts do mention the capture of pups. Despite his
skepticism, Jurek acknowledges that some wolves lived in California.
If they hadn’t been here, it would be a mystery since there was good
wolf habitat, an abundance of prey such as elk, antelope, and deer,
and well-documented wolf populations in Oregon. There is no physical
boundary at the Oregon border that would have kept breeding
populations out.
However many Californian wolves there once were, none survived the
eradication efforts that began with the first European settlers on
the continent. Ten years after the founding of Plymouth Bay Colony
in Massachusetts, a wolf bounty was enacted. Settlers were
admonished to use restraint with their guns, with two exceptions.
“The order of the General Court, subsequently, that whoever shall
shoot off a gun on any unnecessary occasion, or at any game except
at an Indian or a wolf, shall forfeit five shillings for every
shot.”
The situation didn’t change much as the new Americans moved west.
The first political actions taken in Oregon Territory were the
so-called wolf meetings, held in 1843 to organize a means of taxing
settlers to pay for the enactment of a wolf bounty in the state.
By the turn of the century, with strong support from the livestock
industry, the extirpation of wolves became federal policy with the
U.S. government paying bounties to trappers to systematically hunt
down the last surviving lobos in the West. The devotion to
eliminating the last wolves was almost maniacal, with trappers
pursuing individual wolves for six months to a year. Even national
parks were not immune from the wolf slaughter; the last wolves in
Yellowstone were killed by the 1930s.
Though many critics of wolf restoration acknowledge that wolves once
lived in California, they suggest there is insufficient habitat in
the state for them today. However, an ongoing study by Carlos
Carroll, at the Klamath Center for Conservation Research, along with
Reed Noss (Conservation Science Incorporated) and Paul Paquet (World
Wildlife Fund), calls this assumption into question. Their research
suggests that wolves could indeed inhabit California and adjacent
areas of Oregon. Using prey (primarily deer) density, road density,
and human population density as variables, Carroll and his
colleagues did a preliminary analysis of northern California and
southern Oregon to determine habitat suitability for wolves. They
identified four areas with high-quality wolf habitat: the Modoc
Plateau in northeast California, the Lost Coast!Yolla Bolly area of
the northern California Coast Ranges, the southern Oregon Cascades,
and the Northern Kalmiopsis/Oregon coast on the California-Oregon
border. Carroll estimates that together these four areas could
support at least 440 wolves. His calculations did not include elk.
“When elk numbers are added in to the prey availability, we expect
the number of wolves that could be supported will be higher,” he
says.
Carroll points out that these core areas tend to be about half the
size of the wolf recovery areas found in Idaho and Wyoming. However,
the California and Oregon areas have higher year-round prey density
(it’s non-migratory, unlike most prey in the Rockies) with plenty of
lower elevation winter habitat in public land ownership or private
timber holdings, not ranches. So there is less potential conflict
with livestock operations. Since the core areas are smaller,
however, “linking these areas with corridors would be a critical
factor in increasing the long-term sustainability of resident wolf
populations,” says Carroll.
Bob Ferris, a biologist with Defenders of Wildlife, agrees. “Most of
the prey is going to be deer. And deer densities, at least in some
parts of northern California, are very high,” Ferris says. “Since
pack territory is determined somewhat by prey density and average
prey size, we can expect smaller territories and smaller packs than,
say, wolves feeding on moose scattered about Alaska’s relatively
unproductive boreal forest areas. This will enable wolves to fit
more readily into the smaller habitat patches found in California,”
he predicts.
The best potential wolf habitat in northern California is nearly
uninhabited by people. Human population density in Del Norte,
Siskiyou, Lassen, Humboldt, Trinity, Modoc, and other northern
California counties is actually far lower than the currently
occupied wolf habitat in Montana, Minnesota, Michigan, and
Wisconsin–all states where wolf populations are recovering.
Minnesota, for instance, has more than 2,500 wolves, far more than
the 440-plus wolves Carroll and his colleagues are predicting for
California.
And wolves don’t necessarily require wilderness to survive–as long
as people don’t shoot them. This past winter, a pack of wolves set
up housekeeping several miles from downtown Jackson, Wyoming,
creating quite a tourist spectacle. People sat inside roadside cafes
sipping coffee while they watched wolves bring down elk across the
road.
There is plenty of prey and wolf-worthy habitat between northern
California and wolf populations in Montana and Idaho. While there
are biological reasons to believe that wolf recovery in California
is feasible, “the restoration of wolves is as much a political as
biological question,” says Roy Heberger, assistant field supervisor
in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Snake River Basin
Office in Idaho. Wolf supporters like Defenders’s Ferris believe
that California politics are favorable for wolf restoration.
Compared to states like Wyoming and Idaho that have many anti-wolf
legislators, California’s congressional delegation includes such
staunch supporters of the Endangered Species Act as Senator Barbara
Boxer and Congressman George Miller, who Ferris expects would look
favorably upon California wolf restoration.
Patrick Valentino, executive director of the Julian Wolf Preserve
just northeast of San Diego, has already launched a public education
program aimed at creating a favorable political climate for
wolves–if and when they return to the state. Teaming up with
Defenders of Wildlife, Valentino’s organization has a traveling wolf
education booth that provides information at county fairs and other
public events. According to Valentino, the overwhelming response of
people to the prospect of wolf reintroduction is “very favorable.”
This is not surprising in urban southern California, but some
suspect the reception will be less welcoming in northern rural areas
where wolves are likely to roam.
Marcia Armstrong, executive director of the Siskiyou County
Cattleman’s Association and Siskiyou County Farm Bureau in Yreka is
one such rural resident. She responds indignantly to the suggestion
that wolves be restored to California. “Those people who want wolves
should have to live with them. Instead, they impose these animals on
us people living in the rural West while they get to live in the
safety of their cities. They want to make our home into an outdoor
zoo to placate their suburban guilt complex over how they have
destroyed the wildlife habitat where they live.”
Rancher Shawn Curtis, director of the Modoc County Farm Bureau, has
already talked with ranchers in Idaho about the impact of wolves
upon their operations. One of their major concerns is compensation
for livestock losses. Although Defenders of Wildlife will pay for
any wolf-related livestock losses, Curtis says the system doesn’t
work well on the ground. “You have to practically see a wolf
attacking your animals before you can get compensation. Given the
way that livestock is run in the West, it’s very difficult to find a
calf that has been killed before other scavengers destroy the
evidence. That’s not really acceptable from our standpoint.”
Wolf defenders like Brooks Fahy, who runs the Predator Defense
Institute in Eugene, Oregon, believe much of the conflict between
livestock operators and predators is self-created. “If ranchers
implemented better husbandry practices that minimized predator
opportunity such as the use of guard dogs, herders, and calving
barns, the losses to predators would be significantly reduced,” he
said. “These kinds of things should be a standard cost of operation
for them. Instead, western ranchers have externalized one of their
costs on to the public by eliminating most of the large predators in
the West.”
But to Armstrong, the real reason for opposing wolf restoration is
safety. “I don’t want to have to worry for my life when I take out
the garbage or for the safety of my daughter who likes to jog on
rural roads. You have to remember, the wolf once had a bounty on it.
It’s a vicious predator. It’s not cute and cuddly,” Armstrong says.
“Wolves kill animals, and we are animals. They won’t distinguish
between species.”
Ferris acknowledges that a vocal minority among rural residents will
always oppose wolf restoration. He is quick, however, to cite polls
in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, all far more rural in nature than
California, that show a majority of residents support wolf
restoration efforts. And another recent poll taken in Oregon this
past spring came to the same conclusion: most of the state’s
citizens, even in rural areas, support wolf restoration in their
state. Indeed, the only group that consistently opposes wolf
restoration is livestock producers.
If Armstrong has her way, there never will be wild wolves in
California. The Siskiyou County Cattleman’s Association is working
on legislation that would ban any attempts to restore wolves to the
state, she says.
There are two main ways wolves could find themselves back in
California, says Valentino. The first is capture and release:
capturing wolves elsewhere and releasing them in California. This
was the method used to bring wolves back to Idaho and Yellowstone.
One advantage of reintroduction, says Valentino, is that you can
“select areas with lower human conflicts than
might otherwise occur if wolves simply come back to California on
their own four feet.” Valentino strongly supports such a planned
reintroduction, but he acknowledges that it is unlikely to occur any
time soon.
The second scenario is more probable; wolves from elsewhere may come
to California on their own. According to Bob Ferris, more than 65
percent of Idaho’s wolves will be of dispersal age by this coming
winter. “It’s almost a certainty that within a few years at least
some of these wolves will find their way to Oregon, and later move
into California,” he says.
Wolves are long-distance migrants. Mollie Matteson, a research
biologist at the University of Montana who studied them, says there
are documented cases of wolves moving hundreds, even thousands of
miles. One wolf captured near Montana’s Glacier National Park was
later killed outside of Dawson City, British Columbia–nearly 450
miles further north. She notes that it’s only 275 miles from Idaho’s
occupied wolf territory to northeast California.
It doesn’t take a determined wolf long to cover the miles, either.
Theoretically, a wolf could move from Idaho to California in less
than a week. Heberger tells of one wolf captured in Montana. It was
released more than 100 air miles away only to be rediscovered back
in the original capture site less than 48 hours later.
More likely, wolves will establish themselves in Oregon before
coming to California. Such a scenario was givengreater credence last
winter after a radio-collared female Idaho wolf, dubbed B-45 by the
usfws, migrated across the Snake River into eastern Oregon. The
discovery of a live wolf in Oregon for the first time in more than
50 years took everyone by surprise. Local · ranchers and some state
officials demanded she be removed immediately, while wolf supporters
found they were no longer talking about the hypothetical recovery of
wolves in Oregon in the dim future.
Despite a strong public outpouring in favor of the wolf–the USFWS
got more than 500 telephone calls from supporters asking them to
leave the wolf alone. and even though B-45 had no record of
livestock depredation, the USFWS bowed to political pressure from
wolf opponents. The wolf was captured and relocated to Idaho.
Shortly after her release near Lola Pass in northern Idaho, she
began trotting back to Oregon. She covered more than 110 miles as
the crow flies (far more miles in the rugged terrain of central
Idaho) to settle just east of the Oregon border.
Whether she will stay in Idaho or return to Oregon is anybody’s
guess, but the dispersal of B-45 . put a shot across the bow” says
Heberger. “We just weren’t thinking that a wolf would be moving into
Oregon or other areas so soon.” The subsequent public outpouring of
support for wolves in Oregon prompted the usfws to revise its policy
of automatically capturing dispersing individuals that pose no
threat to livestock. If B-45 or another wolf moves into Oregon or
California, it will be given full protection under the Endangered
Species Act and be permitted to stay.
There are two legal challenges on the horizon that could jeopardize
wolf recovery in Oregon or California. The first is a proposal by
the USFWS to change the status of all wolves in the lower 48 from
Endangered to the less protective Threatened. Such a change would
weaken the legal mandate for recovery outside areas with existing
wolf populations.
Whether there will be any wolves left in Idaho to recolonize Oregon
or California may soon be determined by a legal suit now before a
panel of judges in Colorado. The 1995 and 1996 reintroduction of
wolves into Idaho and Yellowstone National Park are being challenged
by the American Farm Bureau Federation on a technicality of federal
environmental law. A Wyoming judge agreed with the Farm Bureau and
ordered the wolves removed, but stayed the order, pending decision
on an appeal presented to a higher Colorado court in August 1999.
But even if there is a positive outcome of the appeal process, and
wolf populations in the Rockies would expand, does that justify the
presence of wolves in California?
Many supporters argue that wolves are native to the state, and
restoration of native species has biological and ethical value. A
viable California population of wolves would help to ensure their
eventual removal from the Endangered Species list. But beyond
concern for the welfare of a particular species, wolves are also a
potent evolutionary force. To paraphrase the California poet
Robinson Jeffers, it was the fang of the wolf that whittled the
fleetness of the antelope. Wolves are to wild ungulates what fire is
to many California forest ecosystems–a force that needs to be
restored.
We can also expect some other potential ecological consequences. In
areas where wolves have been eliminated, coyote populations have
exploded. Since the density of coyotes is higher than that of
wolves, this has actually increased predator problems for livestock
producers. Bob Crabtree of Yellowstone Ecosystem Studies, who has
studied coyotes in Yellowstone National Park both before and after
the reintroduction of wolves, has found that coyote numbers dropped
by half in the presence of wolves. The restoration of wolves may
actually reduce predator losses for the livestock industry.
The numbers of some species, such as fox, could rise once released
from coyote predation. If wolves became widely established in
California, they could help the recovery of some endangered species,
such as the San Joaquin kit fox, which currently suffers high losses
to coyotes.
Though wolves occasionally prey upon domestic livestock, the losses
are small. According to a recent article in the Wildlife Society
Bulletin, in northwestern Montana between 1987 and 1997, the
livestock industry lost 142,000 sheep and 86,000 cattle to all
causes including disease, weather, and predation. Of this total,
wolves took an average of only ten animals a year, while domestic
dogs accounted for the deaths of more than 1,500 animals annually.
Even in Minnesota, with more than 2,500 wolves, losses to predators
account for typically fewer than 300 animals a year. Clearly, losses
from wolves are not a threat to the viability of the state’s
livestock industry.
What about human safety? Only a handful of documented records exist
of healthy wild wolves biting or threatening humans in North
America. No person has been killed. Most reported “wolf attacks” are
by captive dog-wolf hybrids. Indeed, one of the major ways that
Heberger uses to determine whether a reported wolf sighting is valid
is by the behavior of the animal.
Heberger says wild wolves are extremely shy and almost always run
away from humans. Matteson spent two full field seasons by herself
among wolves and grizzlies in Montana and Canada, but only saw
wolves in the wild once. “I heard wolves. I saw tracks,” she says.
“But even with the advantage of the radio tracking equipment, wolves
are so shy I never saw them, even though I knew they were almost
always someplace close by.”
Will wolves return to California? Most biologists who have looked
into the question believe they will. When and how is another matter.
But almost certainly if wolves establish themselves in Oregon, it
won’t be long before their howls reverberate again through the
canyons and mountains of the Golden State. Such a sound will
represent a small step towards healing the great wounds humans have
inflicted upon our native ecosystems and a clear signal that at
least some ecological changes wrought by us are reversible.