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 populaiton.
In my article, I pretended that it was 2020 and I sitting on a mountain top 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.
The newest pack in the state is roaming the area round Mt. Lassen National Park. Photo George Wuerthner
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 (bottom) is smaller and has a narrower build than its
cousin the wolf (top).
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.
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