Known from transmitter pings and a possible cameo appearance in a trail cam video, highly sought by paparazzi and repugnant ranchers throughout California, this handsome boy may also have set a record for the longest gray wolf journey in 100 years. Now believed to be in Ventura County, OR-93 is the first wolf spotted this far south since humans paved over much of Southern California. In 1922, a wolf was seen in San Bernardino, but none have been documented since then.
Conservationists consider OR-93 a miracle, a survivor who traveled from his northern Oregon home territory into northeastern California, then down the length of the state, looking for a mate. He’s crossed major highways and roamed through some of the most wolf-phobic portions of the state. "OR-93 is blowing out all the records for the farthest south a wolf has traveled into California in modern times," said the Center for Biological Diversity's Amaroq Weiss. "This is truly historic for California, but also demonstrates that wolves naturally travel long distances. If protections are in place to allow them to do so, there's real hope for their future here."
Five months ago, however, hope dimmed—OR-93’s purple-collared radio transmitter stopped sending pings—and his story looked grim.
NBC Bay Area:
Wildlife officials who track OR-93 through his radio collar said he stopped emitting “pings” April 5 in San Luis Obispo County, which is roughly midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. But officials also have not picked up a “mortality signal” from the 2-year-old’s collar, which indicates when a wolf has not moved for at least eight hours, the Los Angeles Times reported over the weekend.
The wolf’s radio collar could be broken or malfunctioning due to dead batteries, said Jordan Traverso, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. He may be dead or running wild with a Central Coast pack that no one knew existed, she said.
Hopes for OR-93’s survival perked up in late September, after the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) received three reports of a gray wolf with a snazzy purple collar in northern Ventura County, the county just north of western Los Angeles. When wildlife officials went looking for signs, they found recent wolf tracks in the same area. Because of the purple collar and the absence of any other collared wolf known to be in SoCal, CDFW believes this to be OR-93, although they don’t have forensic evidence to confirm this yet.
OR-93 is a two-year-old male from the White River pack, whose territory includes the Warm Springs Indian Reservation near Mount Hood, Oregon. After leaving the pack’s territory in northern Oregon, OR-93 entered California in late January of this year, left briefly, and then returned for the second time in February. Since then, he has journeyed through 16 counties, traveling south through the the eastern part of the Golden State, then west, crossing S.R. 99 and I-5, before moving into the mountains along the central coast, where his collar transmitter stopped pinging.
“He was in Monterey County on April 1 and his last collar transmission was from San Luis Obispo County on April 5,” an Oct. 1 CDFW press release reports. “Through April 5 he had traveled at least 935 air miles in California, a minimum average of 16 air miles per day.”
The CDFW press release continues:
“In August, CDFW received trail camera video(opens in new tab) from May 15, 2021 showing a collared gray wolf in southwest Kern County that may have been OR-93. The trail camera records wildlife use at a water trough on private property. “ As the map above shows, southwestern Kern County is adjacent to both San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties.
If you live or travel in California, keep a lookout for wolves and wolf signs. Even though Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to drop the species from the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA), gray wolves are still listed as endangered under California’s ESA. It’s unlawful to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, or capture gray wolves. Anyone who believes they have seen a wolf in California can report it to CDFW online.
No matter where you live, you can take action in support of reestablishing Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in the United States, as well as support management practices based on science instead of the archaic rancher myths largely responsible for wolf eradication from the western states 100 years ago.
"Gray wolves are an iconic species, important to our Tribes and state folklore, and Californians are very passionate about them," CDFW’s Jordan Traverso said. "I’ve been here 13 years and I’ve seen people get impassioned about few other species like they do wolves. They are charismatic megafauna in California."
The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge.
We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns spinning around us.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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Your turn: OR-93’s journey skirted around my “backyard,” and I’m glad he didn’t come closer because it’s not safe here. What’s the story from your backyard today?