By Richard Cockle, The Oregonian
JOSEPH — Oregon’s gray wolf census is greater by one more young wolf than state biologists had guessed.
Photos captured Dec. 11 by an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife remote camera show that the state’s Wenaha pack produced a pup earlier this year. The striking nighttime photos bring Oregon’s official wolf population to 25.
“That’s the number we can account for,” but there could be more wolves that state biologists don’t yet know about, said Michelle Dennehy, ODFW spokeswoman.
The photos — from a forest in western Wallowa County — show a half-grown young wolf with a full coat of gray fur sniffing the snow and then testing the air. They provide the first indication that the pack’s alpha male and female reproduced.
The pup is believed to have been born last spring, probably in April, Dennehy said. The packs are all in the state’s rugged northeastern corner, and the Wenaha pack roams the Blue Mountains along the southern boundary of the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness.
Biologists now know that all four wolf packs in Oregon reproduced this year, Dennehy said. The Imnaha, Wenaha and Snake River packs all dropped at least one pup, and the Walla Walla pack had at least three pups, she said.
At last count, the Wenaha pack had five wolves, including the new pup. The Imnaha pack also had five wolves, the Walla Walla pack had six wolves and the Snake River pack had five wolves. Two more wolves roam northern Umatilla County and two “dispersers” have left northeastern Oregon.
Dennehy said any reproduction is good news for wolf conservation, but only the Walla Walla pack is likely to be deemed a “breeding pair” for 2011. A breeding pair is a pack that produces at least two pups that survive through the end of the year when they were born.
The first physical evidence that wolves had returned to Oregon by migrating across the Snake River from Idaho came in 2007, when a rancher found tracks on the south end of the Eagle Cap Wilderness.
Biologists’ efforts to find additional wolf pups in the wild will continue so the department can get a complete year-end count of all pups born during 2011.
The Wenaha pack’s new pup was alone in the photograph, but “one could presume he’s still traveling with an adult,” Dennehy said.