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Email: timberwolfinfonetwork@gmail.com

CA: Wolf could have big impact in California

The Associated Press

If a young gray wolf that has taken up residency in the upper Klamath Basin continues southward, experts say, he could start the repopulation of a vanished species in California, where threatened and endangered species historically have relied on the help of man.

“I can’t think of another species that was completely extirpated in California that has returned,” said Michael Stopher, who has been monitoring the wolf for the California Department of Fish and Game. “As a scientist, seeing the possible restoration of our historic mega fauna thrills me.”

Gray wolves are much bigger than coyotes and are the ancestors of domestic dogs. They stand three-feet at the shoulder with massive heads, a bite powerful enough to snap a bone, and paws up to six-inches wide.

The last gray wolf in California was killed in 1924 about 50 miles from the Oregon border by a trapper intent on making the West safe for cattle. Livestock ranchers are watching warily this lone wolf’s progress too.

“There’s going to be a lot of pressure elsewhere before it gets here,” said Billy Flournoy, 70, whose family has been ranching in Modoc County on the state’s northern border since 1871. “We’ll have more problems with coyotes and mountain lions. Wolves like bigger prey.”

In three months, he has zigzagged for 730 miles across the Blue Mountains and high desert plains, killing at least one elk along the way. He ended up outside of Medford on Mt. McLaughlin in the Cascades, 300 crow-fly miles away from home.

“If he climbed high enough, he would have been able to see Mt. Shasta” in California, said Stopher.

That’s as close as he has come so far, though Stopher, the department’s environmental program manager, has been preparing for years for the possible migration of wolves into California.

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