By Richard Cockle, The Oregonian
Oregon officially is now home to 53 gray wolves, up from 29 a year ago.
“There definitely could be more out there than what we see and are aware of,” said Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy. “All our counts are based on hard evidence,” such as tracks, sightings and remote camera footage.
The 53 wolves are in seven packs in the state’s northeastern corner and consist of at least five breeding pairs, she said. A goal of the state’s wolf plan is to have four breeding pairs of gray wolves for three consecutive years east of the Cascade Range.
A pack is defined as at least four wolves that travel together in winter. A breeding pair is two adult wolves that produce at least two pups that survive through Dec. 31 of the year of their birth.
The department’s count may change as biologists gather additional information during the winter, Dennehy said.
Oregon would have even more gray wolves, but some have abandoned the state. OR-7, Oregon’s most famous wolf sometimes known as Journey, trotted across the state and into California last year, becoming the first wolf in California in almost a century.
Then, on Dec. 19, an 85-pound male known to biologists as OR-16 swam the Snake River into Idaho. Biologists say dispersal of young wolves away from their birth packs into new areas is a normal function of wolf ecology.