By TIMES-STANDARD
A wolf from California’s “missing” Shasta Pack was seen in Nevada late last year, according to that state’s wildlife department.
The animal was confirmed as part of the California pack by laboratory analysis of its droppings, Nevada Chief Game Warden Brian Wakeling said.
Until then, there had been no sign of the seven-wolf Shasta Pack since May 2016.
It was the first official confirmation of a wolf in Nevada since 1922.
The Nevada wolf was seen in November by “a sportsman, possibly out hunting or scouting,” who took video of it feeding on a mule deer, Wakeling said. The site was near Fox Mountain, just west of the Black Rock Desert and about 20 miles east of the California line.
Wildlife officials determined where the animal had been seen, collected droppings from the area and sent them to a lab at the University of Idaho. The droppings were confirmed to be from a male offspring of the Shasta Pack.
Wakeling said this didn’t mean wolves would necessarily be making a home in Nevada, but that they could periodically move through Nevada in search of food, preferable habitats or other wolves. He said wolves tend to concentrate in areas where there are larger prey such as elk and moose — which is not the case in the area of northwestern Nevada where the wolf was seen.
“There’s only a few places where wolves can make a living with an ample amount of food, and those are in the northeastern parts of the state,” Wakeling said. “It’s possible he was just passing through because there’s no evidence of the other members of the pack.”
The Shasta Pack, which had been in southeastern Siskiyou County, California, until about a year ago, consists of a dark-furred breeding pair and their five pups born in spring 2015. DNA collected from the adults’ droppings indicate the female is a sibling of OR-7, who in 2011 crossed over from Oregon and became the first wolf in California in almost a century.
OR-7 has since returned to Oregon and is part of the Rogue Pack there.
In addition to the Shasta Pack, a pair of wolves — the Lassen Pair — has been seen in California as recently as November.
Amaroq Weiss, West Coast wolf organizer for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the mystery of where the rest of the Shasta Pack is could be explained by several factors.
“April is a time when wolves give birth. If the Shasta Pack still exists in California, it could be that time, and if the Lassen Pair is still here, it could be possible that the female wolf is pregnant,” Weiss said. “We’re not going to know until someone sees them. It’s a matter of luck that they’re spotted either from a person or from a trail camera. This could be another exciting year for California’s wolves.”