Written by Michael Dotson in October 2024

Thirteen years ago, a wandering wolf (tagged as OR-7) made its way from northeastern Oregon’s Imnaha Pack to become the first wolf in almost a century to cross into California. After a journey of several hundred miles, OR-7 the wolf eventually settled in the southern Cascades of Oregon, found a mate, and established southwest Oregon’s first wolf pack known as the Rogue Pack. Since that fateful year when OR-7 came through the Klamath-Siskiyou and settled in the region, KS Wild has been a member of the Pacific Wolf Coalition which works up and down the West Coast to support wolf recovery in places like Washington, Oregon, and California. 

While OR-7 and his mate passed on a few years ago, their legacy lives on with newer wolf packs popping up in northern California, some of which extend all the way down to the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains. Earlier this year, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife identified a new wolf pack in the Sequoia National Monument, and one of the parents of that pack is known to come from the Rogue Pack! Just as OR-7 traveled hundreds of miles to make his way to a new home, OR-7’s offspring are embarking on their own epic journeys to establish new territory.  

Pacific Wolf Coalition 

Earlier this month, KS Wild had the pleasure of traveling to Spokane, Washington, to take part in the Pacific Wolf Coalition’s annual retreat. At this yearly gathering, conservation groups from the West Coast and a few national partners shared insight and strategies with each other to support wolf recovery and conservation. The keynote presentation was provided Dr. Francisco Santiago-Avila of Washington Wildlife First, where he serves as Science and Advocacy Director. “Fran”, as he is politely known, is new to the Pacific Northwest but spent over a decade working on carnivore conservations with the national outfit Project Coyote. His presentation centered on research over the past decade that has looked at how states and agencies approach lethal removal and non-lethal tactics when it comes to managing wolf populations. Dr. Santiago-Avila shared valuable insight on dozens of papers from the last several years that shows a distinct trend in wolf management: if states really want to take wolf recovery and conservation seriously, then they’re going to need to reconsider how lethal removal impacts wolf dispersal and livestock conflicts. Time and again, research is showing that non-lethal techniques – things like fladry and range-riding – are the most effective tools to employ when wanting to discourage wolf packs from predating on livestock. 

A tale of two recovery efforts – what’s happening in Oregon and California 

I always enjoy my time at the annual Pacific Wolf Coalition retreats, but I often return home feeling both a sense of joy and sadness about the state of wolf recovery in the West. While the West Coast states do not have state-sanctioned killing contests like Wyoming and Idaho, places like Washington and Oregon do grant themselves the authority to kill wolves in their state wildlife management plans. Here in places like Oregon we are seeing more wolves killed by the state wildlife agency, and at the same time we are seeing illegal poaching of wolves going up. In fact, ODFW has reported numerous poisonings in eastern Oregon from Klamath & Lake Counties all the way up into northeastern Oregon’s Wallowa Range. In some of these instances, additional wildlife like hawks and eagles have been killed alongside wolves. On top of illegal poaching of wolves in Oregon, the state also captured 10 wolves in the winter of 2023-2024 and relocated them to Colorado as a pilot project to reintroduce wolves there. While those wolves didn’t die, they do take away from the state’s wolf population, which has been stagnate for a few years now. 

While Oregon’s wolf population numbers are troubling, there is good news to report in places like California. The state now reports a total of 7 wolf packs, stretching from the Oregon border in the north all the way down into southern California’s Tulare County. Many of the parents of these packs can have their lineage traced to wolves that once resided in Oregon, and we know the Klamath-Siskiyou region is a vital connectivity corridor for wolves to move further south on the West Coast. As wolves recover in places like California, the state legislature is taking it upon themselves to support livestock producers in addressing non-lethal measures for ranchers and farmers. Last year, the California Assembly passed a $3 million package to support livestock operators with funds to address direct losses due to wolf depredation, but also had funding for non-lethal management and ‘pay for presence.’ 

It remains to be seen how successful California’s pilot program will be for remedying wolf-livestock conflict, but we can count on wolf management to be a controversial issue in Oregon’s legislature for the foreseeable future. KS Wild will be monitoring a couple of possible bills in the 2025 Oregon legislative session that could set wolf recovery back in the state. Though we are not an official member, KS Wild supports the work of the Oregon Wildlife Coalition in their efforts to help wolves and other keystone species recover. During this National Wolf Awareness Week, we are grateful for the work of our partners, and encourage our community to support the work of Cascadia Wildlands, Oregon Wild, Western Environmental Law Center, and Defenders of Wildlife in their wolf advocacy efforts.