By Lynne Terry
OR-7’s long trek has ended as wildlife biologists has suspected, and wolf lovers had hoped: with offspring.
Oregon and U.S. wildlife biologists confirmed on Monday that Oregon’s erstwhile wandering wolf has at least two pups.
In May, biologists collected images from a remote camera in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest that indicated he had a mate, a black female. They suspected the two were denning. On Monday, they confirmed their suspicions, discovering two pups.
They mark the first known wolf reproduction in the Oregon Cascades since the mid-1940s.
“This is very exciting news,” said Paul Henson, state supervisor of the Oregon U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office. “It continues to illustrate that gray wolves are being recovered.”
Wolves usually produce four to six pups so there could be more. Biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife collected scat samples from the area for DNA analysis. Biologists have a wolf database that allows them to trace lineage.
Wolves throughout Oregon are protected by the state Endangered Species Act. West of Oregon Highways 395, 78 and 95, they also fall under federal protection. Last winter, biologists counted 64 wolves in Oregon, mostly in the northeast corner of the state.
Rob Klavins, wolf expert at Oregon Wild, said that it wasn’t that long ago that the only records of wolves in Oregon were of bounty kills.
“And here we are with the first pups born in Oregon in nearly a century,” Klavins said. “That’s a testament to what we can accomplish.”