PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 28 (UPI) — A wolf pup photographed by an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife remote camera brings the state’s wolf population to 25, officials said.
The photos taken Dec. 11 show Oregon’s Wenaha gray wolf pack produced a pup earlier this year, bringing the official count to 25, The (Portland) Oregonian reported Tuesday.
“That’s the number we can account for,” but there could be more wolves state biologists haven’t yet discovered, ODFW spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy said.
The photos from a forest in Wallowa County show a half-grown young wolf with a full coat of gray fur, the first indication the pack’s alpha male and female reproduced.
The pup was probably born in April, Dennehy said.
Oregon’s wolf packs live in the state’s mountainous northeast corner, with the Wenaha pack inhabiting the Blue Mountains along the southern boundary of the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness.
All four of the state’s known packs have reproduced this year, state biologists said.