Wolf Believed to be First in California in 80 Years is Apparently Photographed

This guy wolf named "Journey" has traveled 700 miles from Oregon to California. According to the article this is the first time a wolf has been seen in California in over 80 years. I think wolves are very smart animals and there are plenty where I live, but there are many places that they have been hunted or forested to death.

He kind of looks like my dog

GRANTS PASS, Ore.—A young male gray wolf that wandered hundreds of miles across Oregon and eventually crossed into California as he searched for a mate has apparently been photographed for the first time.

The black-and-white photo shows a wolf sniffing the ground in a stand of dense forest. It is likely the animal known as OR-7, said Roblyn Schneider Brown, an Oregon state biologist.

The photo was taken Nov. 14 by an automatic trail camera set up by a hunter tracking blacktail deer on public land east of Butte Falls. Brown said the wolf in the photo appeared to be wearing a tracking collar, and GPS data showed that OR-7 was in the same area of the Cascades in southern Oregon around that time.

Though the 2-year-old wolf was captured and fitted with the collar by a state biologist last spring, OR-7 was not photographed. The animal made headlines last month when it wandered into the southern Cascade Range, becoming the first wolf in southwestern Oregon since 1946. Last week, he crossed into California, which has not seen a wolf in more than 80 years.

www.mercurynews.com...

I wonder if he will find a mate?

Poor guy must be getting lonely by now, wolves normally live in packs.

I feel so horrible for the little guy. I think they should take him to where his species strive.

Thought I'd add some background, this is a thread from awhile back regarding the wolf pack this one seems to have broken from. Last I tuned in, the alpha-female had lost her mate, but it now appears that a new alpha-male has joined the pack and this guy is bad news. The pack has been causing a lot of problems with the ranching community ... tensions are running high.

Hope your guy fairs better...

reply to post by Corruption Exposed


Well not if he's looking in California for one. He's the first in 80- years there wont be a lady waiting for him there. He better turn around and go back where he came from if he's looking for a mate.

reply to post by LadySkadi


Oh wow sounds like a soap opera

Thanks for sharing I just checked it out.

It's so easy to look at these creatures and see my own dog. They look so similar...they behave, at times, very similar. Then I have to remind myself.... My dog will lick my hand and look at me with love in her eyes. This critter will bite my hand clean off and look at me like I'm dinner and it's feeding time.

The wolves are a great idea under right controls and in limited geographic areas...but this is a predator totally unknown to the environments it's being put into. I hope they learn to balance and flourish...if not, well...it'll be tragic enough to cry over...but hunting these down a second time may not be a matter of sick profiteering and sport shooting as much as it's a last effort to safe an animal kingdom that wasn't prepared to have an Apex predator thrown into it.

reply to post by Corruption Exposed
There have been ups and downs, no doubt. Here is some more info. on OR-7 (kinda wanna name him something more personal than that) seems he's had quite the adventure since he left the Imnaha pack...

Link

Maybe he thought it was getting too crowded?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I certainly understand your concern about these animals being in urban areas, but there were not urban areas until we came around. I have gone hunting and seen many wolf tracks but never came across any in person.

Northern California is very low in population density, they have been killed off in many areas. I hope they can form a pack and thrive. I used to live in the PNW and the wildlife diversity is magnificent and there is plenty of room for them to have their freedom.

The only animal that scares me are mountain lions, I came across a couple of those in the past. Those things are incredible but scary. They were getting lower in numbers but they seem to have picked up, from what I hear due to increased sightings.

Oh, and bears scare me too

Originally posted by Corruption Exposed
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

I certainly understand your concern about these animals being in urban areas........



The only animal that scares me are mountain lions,

Actually, you misunderstand my primary concern. I care about the Ranchers and the Herders who are seeing their livestock attacked and eaten by Wolves that aren't native to the area...but they're big boys and can handle themselves. If a Wolf trots down my street, I'll do the same to it as I will and HAVE done to Coyotes in years past. I'll shoot it. Period. Some animals and man don't mix and were never meant to... I wouldn't hurt a Wolf or Bear in their natural habitat if I found them there.....but the same doesn't apply if they enter my natural habitat. They become a deadly threat.

My concern is the balance in nature. We've done so much as humans to destroy that balance out of ignorance and pure naked greed in times past, I fear we're compensating for it by making yet another grave error with far better intentions.

To use another example...We have people on the Global Warming debate demanding solutions and action to mitigate the effects of warming. Yet, equally well educated people also observe the signs of a coming mini-Ice age like was last experience in the dark ages. If one were to, with good intentions of course, follow the first line of thought and the other proved true....those good intentions will have doomed us all.

So.. It's the throwing a top tier predator into an ecosystem of non-human critters it eats through that concerns me...and if one does some looking, there are conservation people starting.......just starting....to ring the same bells of alarm.

reply to post by LadySkadi


Just read your link - as of yesterday (since it's the 5th here) he has been named 'Journey'

TextIn an attempt to draw attention to the great conservation success story that is wolf recovery, Oregon Wild sponsored a kids art and naming contest. On January 4, 2012 OR-7 got a new name - Journey.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
Actually, you misunderstand my primary concern. I care about the Ranchers and the Herders who are seeing their livestock attacked and eaten by Wolves that aren't native to the area...but they're big boys and can handle themselves. If a Wolf trots down my street, I'll do the same to it as I will and HAVE done to Coyotes in years past. I'll shoot it. Period. Some animals and man don't mix and were never meant to... I wouldn't hurt a Wolf or Bear in their natural habitat if I found them there.....but the same doesn't apply if they enter my natural habitat. They become a deadly threat.

Sheesh, man, why kill a coyote? They're not even mean - at least not the ones I've encountered. I just saw one the other day and was able to get about 10 feet from it before it got spooked and took off. But, maybe it's because I'm not particularly afraid of wild animals and they don't sense any fear from me?

I don't know. But, you are forgetting that there are still predators in the forests of CA. While there are not a large number of grizzlies, there are still various black bears, mountain lions, and birds of prey. Not to mention foxes, coyotes, bobcats, and other smaller predators. The wolves were there originally, and everything worked out fine at that time. Sure, it may take a few years for the ecosystem to adjust, but it would all balance out on its own.

Nature is awesome that way.

Originally posted by ottobot
Sheesh, man, why kill a coyote? They're not even mean - at least not the ones I've encountered.

The wolves were there originally, and everything worked out fine at that time.

Nature is awesome that way.

I have no idea where or how you've experienced coyotes but I've never known them NOT to be a threat when amongst people. They were considered dangerous nuisance animals where I grew up in California and stories of pets being eaten and small children being threatened in their yards were not uncommon. It wasn't frequent..but often enough.

Here in Missouri, they don't play at all on the matter. Coyotes are among the very few animals in the state considered shoot on sight nuisance animals with no limit or season. It's more livestock here, but pets are also a concern.


On your other point, yes. The wolves were there originally. They haven't been there long enough for nature to have completely adapted and grown beyond their absence. They may as well have introduced any highly intelligent, social, pack hunting predators. The impact would only vary by issues to each species. It's still a foreign thing.

Simply because we as humans find the image romantic and we know on an intellectual level that Wolves once roamed the countryside does NOT mean the countryside is ready for a repeat. We'll see how this goes, of course.....but so far the results are VERY mixed depending entirely on whether the wolves stay in the deep timber or mix with people and domestic animals.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range. Sure, there would be the occasional story of a coyote attacking a farm or a pet. But, by and large, they kept to themselves. I never experienced any type of community-based fear or malice towards them, though.

I don't think there's anything romantic about a lone wolf venturing into CA and getting shot. It's a sad image to me.

All of your reasons they shouldn't be reintroduced have to do with humans. Animals go with their instincts; they don't kill livestock to be a nuisance, they are trying to find food. It would be nice if humans could understand this instead of taking a personal affront to animal behavior.

reply to post by ottobot

Well, we each see things differently, and always will. What I don't see romantic is an apex predator introduced to an ecosystem with no room or adaptation to it. Next, perhaps we can introduce tigers to the Southeast. After all, they are endangered, look really pretty in the wild...and the only objections would be man related right? Wolves USED to live in those forests. They haven't, long enough now, to make returning them as foreign as the Tigers.

Man messing with nature to fix things is often as bad as man breaking them in the first place. Sometimes, worse. I'd be a lot more comfortable if we just took the world as we find it TODAY...not as it was or how we'd envision it to be...and learn to live in it without trying to fundamentally change it in ways only Nature should ever have influence over. Just my thoughts.....and no, they aren't all about the effect on man. The natural world around us is far more important. That doesn't mean one must come at the expense of the other, either.

reply to post by Corruption Exposed




Wolves of Our Lives

Wolves are highly social creatures and do hunt in packs but sometimes young males from rival alpha males are shunned from the pack to go find other packs to join. maintains genetic diversity. Sometimes they find their way back to the original pack and sometimes they start their own pack. fascinating creatures and very intelligent. Makes the smartest dog species look retarded. I suppose since they evolved to be our pets from wolves they have lost that killer instinct. I would love to have a half wolf half huskie. Now thats a guard dog.

I dont know a single human male that would hike hundreds of miles just to find a date. Must be part of that lazyness gene that we seem to have and wolves dont

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


While I see your point, I do have to disagree.

The wolf traveled through a continuous forest to reach the forests of CA. There are no state lines to animals. If he turns around and walks back into OR, is he still a threat?

If there really are no other wolves in CA, is he a threat to the ecosystem, since he can't procreate?

The reason there have been no wolves "seen" in CA in the past 80 years is because they were all killed as soon as they were seen. This doesn't mean there aren't any wolves in the mountains, it just means none have been stupid or desperate enough to venture down into "human territory" and get caught. Do you know, for a fact, that no wolves have ever ranged into CA in the past 80 years?

And how, exactly, is [hu]man messing with nature if the wolf wandered into, as he perceives it, unclaimed territory? The forest is his world, he belongs there.

It is humans who say he doesn't belong there. Not because he is a "foreign predator", but because they are afraid of him.

Tigers have never been native to the US. If introduced, they would either die off or adapt. I'm not sure why you would equate tigers, which are jungle creatures, to wolves? I guess I'm just not following your logic.

It would make more sense to equate wolves in CA to grizzlies or condors, since those have both been hunted to the brink of extinction and are now being bred and slowly and successfully reintroduced to the ecosystem.

reply to post by ottobot

I think we're still talking past each other. I understand entirely your point about animals being free to roam and migrate whether we like or not...whether it was planned that way or not. THAT is the problem, actually.

There is one fact here that supercedes all the talk about Wolves natural habitats or the presence of a wolf being a natural thing in the forests.

Prior to the re-introduction of these animals into the wild at Yellowstone, they HAD been hunted into what pretty much amounts to extinction. Now, we have them again. What changed? Nature didn't change..and nature didn't put these animals there. MAN put them there. Nothing more and nothing less. That means the physical presence of a wolf in California at all comes back to one factor. MAN put an animal into nature that WAS NOT MEANT TO BE THERE.

It was meant to be there a century ago..but Man's lack of thought and compassion for the four legged variety insured that ceased to be true. Putting them back into a world that adapted to not having them, isn't restoring anything but what HUMANS want to see in their forests. Nature was already doing well in moving on without this resident.....and so...there is NOTHING natural about a Wolf in the California Forest in 2012.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Yes, I see that you want to accept the world as it is... But, IMO, this would also mean accepting that humans are trying to fix what we broke in our collective ignorance.

We've already started reintroducing endangered species, nothing can change that (other than us killing them off again). If those species wander instinctively into what were their species' natural habitats, you must also accept this.

I agree, the ecosystem has adapted to one less large predator. But, this does not mean that it cannot adapt to having one more large predator... which was my initial point.

Nature will balance itself. Clearly, some wolves survived human interference. When left alone, they would and did thrive. If this wolf and any other wolves in the area are left alone, they will reintegrate into the ecosystem naturally over time.