Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer
The first wild gray wolf to enter California in almost a century has moved out of the farmlands of Siskiyou County and is now roaming the forests of eastern Shasta County looking for a mate that he may never find.
The lone male wolf, known as OR7, has traveled more than 100 miles into California through sagebrush and juniper, past ranching and irrigated agriculture into a forested area with better habitat, cover and more wild prey, state wildlife officials said.
The 2-year-old wolf, which is wearing a GPS collar that transmits his location to researchers every six hours, undoubtedly wants to start his own pack, but the nearest female is about 300 miles away in Oregon. The 90- to 100-pound predator has nevertheless created a furor throughout the state, with environmentalists packing binoculars and ranchers cocking hunting rifles.
“We’re being very conservative in terms of revealing his location,” said Mark Stopher, an ecologist and the senior policy adviser on environmental matters for the director of the California Department of Fish and Game. “It’s not just the danger of him being shot, but we also don’t want him to be harassed by people driving around looking for him just to see him. He’s got a lot going on, and we don’t know what kind of condition he is in.”
Wolves have been feared and revered in almost equal parts for centuries by virtually every culture that has come in contact with them. The mysterious canines were admired by Native Americans and many others for their cunning, but the perception of wolves these days is largely driven by fairy tales and myth.
“Most of the information people have about wolves comes from folklore, and that’s not a peer-reviewed scientific journal,” Stopher said.
Wolf extermination
Wolves were exterminated in much of Europe and in the lower 48 states largely because of all the negative huffing and puffing. The last wild wolf seen in California was trapped and killed in 1924.
Environmental scientists insist wolves are good for the ecosystem because they control elk and deer populations and prevent overgrazing of riparian habitat, which, in turn, helps improve water quality and regenerates fish, river otter and beaver populations.
Many California ranchers, on the other hand, still fear them 88 years after the last one was eliminated. After hearing that a wolf had crossed the state line, several California ranchers threatened to employ the “three S’s” – shoot, shovel and shut up – to get past U.S. Endangered Species Act protections.
“We’ve heard the accounts from families with children who have lived with reintroduced wolves and how it has restrained their lifestyles and put them in fear,” said Marcia Armstrong, a Siskiyou County supervisor whose constituents are mostly farmers and ranchers. “This is introducing a predator into a community where there are families. It may be romantic for some people, but it’s not romantic if you have to live with it.”
Fatal attacks rare
Armstrong claims wolves are the only predators who kill for fun, eating their prey while the animals are still alive and chewing fetuses out of cows. She and other wolf opponents are quick to bring up the wolf killings of Candice Berner in Alaska and Kenton Joel Carnegie in Canada.
Berner, 32, was attacked, killed and partially eaten by wolves on March 8, 2010, on a remote road outside Chignik Bay, on the Alaska Peninsula. The investigation determined that the special education teacher was listening to her iPod while jogging in the late afternoon when she was attacked by between two and four wolves coming from the other direction.
Carnegie, 22, a Canadian geological engineering student, was killed and partially eaten, apparently by a pack of wolves, on Nov. 8, 2005. He had gone for an evening walk near a dump site in Points North Landing, Saskatchewan, where black bears and wolves often fed.
Both victims put up a fight before they were killed.
The two attacks were the only fatal attacks in North America in the past 100 years. Investigators believe the fact that Berner was running at the time might have attracted the wolves. Carnegie’s killers were habituated to garbage and had apparently lost their natural fear of humans.
Looking at encounters
In fact, Stopher said, wildlife biologists have investigated dozens of encounters with aggressive wolves, and in almost every case the wolves were provoked or had become too accustomed to humans or their food. He said a high-profile case in British Columbia a few years ago in which hikers were bitten turned out to be caused by the victims, who had been feeding the wolves.
Wolves have occasionally attacked people’s dogs while they were out walking, a natural territorial response that game wardens said was directed at the pets and not the owners, who were ignored. Domestic dogs have, in fact, killed far more people than wolves. So have black bears and cougars, Stopher said, but those predators don’t get near the attention that wolves get.
“What’s remarkable about Candice Berner is how unique that attack was,” Stopher said. “There are 12,000 wolves in Alaska and this was the first documented human mortality.”
Stopher said the chances of being attacked by a wolf are about the same as being hit by something falling to Earth from outer space.
“It’s far more likely that you would be killed driving to a place where you can see them,” he said.
Wolves vs. livestock
OR7 – which is also being called “Journey” since the conservation group Oregon Wild held a naming contest – came from a pack in Wallowa County, Ore., one of four packs that migrated from Idaho after the famous mid-1990s introduction of Canadian wolves to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. There are now more than 1,600 wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains.
Wolves are uncannily intelligent and cooperative hunters, but they sometimes do take the easy way out and kill livestock. OR7’s former pack has killed 20 cows and calves over the past two years. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife killed his father and brother, who were implicated in the attacks.
Wolf packs have been known to kill extra prey, often during times of scarcity or in an effort to teach their young how to hunt, experts say.
Stopher said the killing of superfluous sheep is more common because the animals bunch together when they are threatened. This may account for the myth that wolves are thrill killers, but in fact fewer sheep, cows and calves are killed by wolves than by mountain lions, coyotes or bears, Stopher said.
No human contact
California’s wolf has zigzagged more than 800 miles through Oregon and steered completely clear of humans, Stopher said. He has been photographed once, using a remote camera.
“There is nothing in his behavior or actions that indicate he is going to get anywhere near people. In fact, all of the evidence is to the contrary,” Stopher said. “He hasn’t been around people, houses, garbage, and there has been no livestock depredation.”
Stopher said there are nonlethal techniques that can be used to protect domestic herds, including fencing, guard dogs and llamas, which bond with sheep and other livestock and are known to fend off wolves and other canine predators aggressively.
If a pack does get established in California, officials said, there will likely be compensation for killed livestock and other policies to help ranchers cope.
For now, OR7 is alone in the Cascades, which contain some of the most beautiful rivers, forests and parkland in the state, including Shasta National Forest and Lassen Volcanic Park.
The Department of Fish and Game does not plan to introduce any more wolves, so unless OR7 returns home and convinces a mate to come back with him, he will be a loner for the rest of his life.