A young female wolf touring California from southern Oregon’s Rogue Pack became the first wolf sighted in the Sierra Nevada Mountains since gray wolves reintroduced themselves into the state. She’s thought to be the daughter of OR-7, the first wolf to visit California in almost a hundred years. OR-7 left northeastern Oregon’s Imnaha Pack in 2011 and wandered for over 1,000 miles. He first entered California in 2011 and went back to Oregon. Then returned in 2012 and spent a year here before settling with his mate in Oregon’s Rogue River area near Medford in 2013. They had pups in 2014 and were named the Rogue Pack . OR-7’s radio collar batteries died in 2015 and he’s been tracked since then by sightings and trail cameras. Two of his offspring have already founded packs in the Cascade Range of northern California.
The two-year-old OR-54 seems to share her father’s wanderlust. She might be dispersing in search of a mate, or left because her pack got too large and she is seeking food. Or maybe she just likes to travel. It’s her second visit to California. Earlier this year, she was spotted further north, near Chester (Lassen County). She had crossed into the state from Oregon on January 3rd and stayed until late February.
OR-54 returned to California in mid-April and was tracked last week to within a mile and a half of I-80 near Boreal Mountain, the first time a wolf has roamed in the Sierra Nevada mountains since the early 1900s (as far as we know). She moved north from Nevada County (Tahoe) again and now is in Sierra County. Her travels have covered at least 638 miles through five counties in California.
OR-7
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The Sierra Nevada/Cascade divide is roughly just below the tip of Butte County (blue star shaped county) at Plumas County border (grey green county to the east). Tahoe (Nevada County) is just above where the Nevada state border line angles (dark brown). Sierra County (light beige) is just above it, then Plumas (dark green), then Lassen (light grey). Shasta is the golden beige county in the top center and Siskiyou is the large blue-green county along the Oregon border. (Note that this map is only the northern half of the state.)
Perhaps OR-54 will find a mate from the Lassen Pack, although the first pups were born last year and are not old enough yet. Also, the Lassen Pack male is OR-7s son, thus might be OR-54’s brother from an earlier litter. An unrelated wolf, OR-44, has been found further north in Siskiyou County, but his radio collar has battery problems so he is difficult to track.
Shasta Pack, the first in the state, produced their first litter in 2015. Although they’ve not been seen for awhile (and some biologists think they were intentionally killed), the pups from that litter would be of suitable age to form a pack with OR-54. There might be other individual wolves in the state that aren’t trackable (no collars) and haven’t been sighted. Whenever OR-54 does decide to settle down and raise a family, perhaps she’ll agree with biologists that the Tahoe area is prime wolf habitat.
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