Two resident grey wolves scouting out western Lassen County were announced by California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) yesterday. The newly documented male/female pair includes a wolf initially seen late last year. Earlier in 2015, the first pack of seven wolves formed in Siskiyou County. Thus nine wolves now live in the state. As wolves re-introduce themselves into California and Oregon where they had been viewed as pests and extirpated, we need to think like a mountain, to consider broad landscapes not individuals. All pieces of a natural environment are interdependent and hold value. Scientists continue to learn more about the essential ecosystem roles of wolves and other predators. Yet some people still cling to archaic unscientific beliefs that drive trigger-itch. In Oregon at least five wolves were poached in 2015 and ten since 2007.
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A canid was documented by trail cameras in 2015 and spring 2016, but biologists weren’t certain it was a wolf and not a dog or coyote. I wrote about the sightings in late June. Subsequently, CDFW placed more trail cameras in potential use areas, noted tracks, collected scat, heard from eyewitnesses, and discovered the pair.
Scat sample analysis confirms two wolves, male and female. Genetic comparison indicates the male was born into Oregon’s Rogue Pack in 2014 and probably dispersed into California in 2015. The female’s DNA isn’t from any known Oregon wolves and she may have travelled here from another western state. A wolf can easily travel 30 miles in one day. Biologists are hoping to find better quality genetic material (fresher scat, hairs) to help identify her origin.
The Rogue Pack’s oldest male is the famous OR-7 who was the first wolf to enter California in 100 years when he roamed around in 2011 and 2012. He then returned to Oregon to mate and raise a family. The new Lassen County wolves won’t be named as a pack until they have pups who survive for a year. (Please, let’s not name them the Lassen Pack. Peter Lassen was a Danish immigrant who travelled west in 1840 and dropped his name everywhere.)
Maybe OR-7 told his son about the great territory to the south. In 2011 and 2012 he traveled across the Modoc Plateau, through Lassen and Plumas National Forests, and as far south as Tehama, Shasta, and Butte counties. OR-7 didn’t hurt anyone during his visit and stayed mostly on the extensive public lands. Young wolves usually leave the pack and disperse after one or two years to find a mate and establish their own packs.
The tracks, scat locations and other data suggests that OR-7’s son and the unknown female are travelling together enjoying the forested Cascade Mountains of western Lassen County. None of the evidence indicates that the pair has produced pups yet. Lassen County is lightly populated (about 35,000 people) with only one major town, the county seat of Susanville (population about 18,000). The western portion of the county is primarily forested mountains and includes the eastern portion of Lassen National Park.
If these two wolves stay in California, CDFW will try to capture at least one to attach a satellite-based GPS transmitter.
“The purpose of collaring gray wolves is to understand some key biological parameters such as habitat use, prey preferences and reproduction, as well as to potentially minimize wolf-livestock conflicts” said Karen Kovacs, a CDFW Wildlife Program Manager who has studied the wolves. “Due to concerns for the welfare of wolves, capturing them is generally not feasible in cold weather. Therefore, we would not attempt to capture and collar the wolves until late spring at the earliest.”
Lassen County is east and south of the territory where the first wolf pack has settled. I wrote about the Shasta Pack when the pack’s mated pair and five pups were announced in 2015. Until now, the seven members of the Shasta Pack were the only resident wolves known in California.
Historically prejudice, myth, and glamorized legends about wolves and other predators colored research and conservation practices. Now, as we are conducting unbiased studies of large vertebrate predators’ valuable ecosystem effects, their populations are dwindling fast. Scientists believe that conserving biodiversity and resilent ecosystems is an essential response to climate change. A study of the 31 largest mammalian carnivores (not including pinnipeds) found that more than 75 percent of the 31 are declining, and 17 species now occupy less than half of their former ranges.
Current ecological knowledge indicates that large carnivores are necessary for the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem function. Human actions cannot fully replace the role of large carnivores . . . .
Preventing the extinction of these species and the loss of their irreplaceable ecological function and importance will require novel, bold, and deliberate actions. We [the study authors] propose a Global Large Carnivore Initiative to coordinate local, national, and international research, conservation, and policy.
Seven of the 31 species — African lions, leopards, Eurasian lynx, cougars, gray wolves, sea otters and dingoes — are noted as especially important for their trophic cascade. These effects shape and influence entire ecosystems.
Predators eat prey. By so doing, predators can impact both prey abundance and behavior (e.g., prey get scared when predators are around and hide or move away). When the impact of a predator on its prey's ecology trickles down one more feeding level to affect the density and/or behavior of the prey's prey, ecologists term this interaction a feeding, or trophic cascade .... In this situation, by controlling densities and/or behavior of their prey, predators indirectly benefit and increase the abundance of their prey's prey.
Before ecologists coined the term, Aldo Leopold observed it in action and described it in his 1949 book A Sand Country Almanac. As a young Forest Service employee assigned to killing wolves in New Mexico, he believed this promoted larger deer herds important to human hunters. Through his experiences, though, he realized the abundant deer were eating plants so heavily that the ecosystems were unravelling. As plant cover and diversity decreased, Leopold noticed smaller animals lacked cover and browse, insect populations declined, rivers and streams without shade and bank protection from riparian habitats had fewer fish and flooded more frequently. With too many deer and too litte plant cover, erosion ate away mountain slopes.
Leopold saw that everything in nature is connected but humans were thinking like isolated individuals. By killing wolves as if the only consequence of wolves was on deer abundance, all of nature suffered. He wrote that one must think like a mountain and value the complex interwoven web of life.
I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But . . . I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.
Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.
I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades. So also with cows. The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf's job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.
Some people still live in fear of wolves. In Oregon, a three year old female wolf (OR-28) recently paired with an eight year old male (OR-3) and had her first pup. She was killed by a poacher in early October. A $20,000 reward is offered for information leading to the arrest of a poacher responsible. Because wolves are federally protected under the ESA in the western two-thirds of Oregon, the convicted poacher can receive a fine up to $100,000, one year in jail, or both.
Fines and imprisonment will not restore wildlife populations. Wolves have jobs as ecosystem managers and we need the biodiversity and resilience they promote. As climate change affects earth more and more, we must ensure that large carnivores and their habitats are maintained and restored. We must take the larger view and think like mountains.
Anyone with information about the Oregon poaching case can call the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at (503) 682-6131 or Oregon State Police Tip Line at (800) 452-7888. Callers may remain anonymous. Gray wolves in California are listed as endangered by both federal and state ESAs. If you see a wolf in California, please report it to CDFW through the Grey Wolf Sighting Report.
For more information see my earlier story: timeline of wolves reintroducing themselves to California in photos.
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