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Email: timberwolfinfonetwork@gmail.com
Email: timberwolfinfonetwork@gmail.com

OR: Ranchers worried about wolf in Basin

WOOD RIVER VALLEY – Ranchers and residents in the area are concerned now that a young male gray wolf has settled near Fort Klamath after splitting from its pack in Northeastern Oregon.

They’ve heard stories of wolves’ impact on cattle herds elsewhere. They wish they were afforded more freedom to defend livestock from the federally-protected predators. And they worry what will happen if OR-7 establishes a pack near the Wood River Valley, which is home to more than 30,000 cattle each summer.

Wildlife advocates, on the other hand, are celebrating OR-7’s journey.

While OR-7 has made no documented livestock kills, the Imnaha pack from which he split is responsible for at least 19 livestock deaths since spring 2010, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

But livestock kills aren’t the main concern, said Nathan Jackson, president of the Klamath Cattlemen’s Association. Ranchers look for their cattle to gain 300 pounds in the nearly five months they graze in the area. But if they’re predated by wolves, cattle won’t graze properly and won’t gain weight.

“When cattle are worth a dollar-and-a-half a pound, it makes it pretty easy to lose a pile of money pretty fast,” he said.

For Rob Klavins, wildlands and wildlife advocate for Oregon Wild, OR-7’s trek to the area is a victory in the effort to reintroduce the once eradicated gray wold to the American West.

“This is a chapter in a great conservation success story: the return of wolves to Oregon and now western Oregon,” he said.

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