Gray wolf’s trip enters Monterey County
Epic journey of OR-93 takes surprising new turn; will 2-year-old gray wolf be safe in populated California counties?
Alone and far from home, OR93 appears to be looking for love in all the wrong places.
The journey of a 2-year-old male gray wolf from rural Oregon has turned from wondrous to worrisome, with authorities reporting late last week that he has arrived in Monterey County, land of Esalen hot tubs, the manicured Pebble Beach Golf Course and more than 400,000 wolf-wary humans.
For now, California Department of Fish and Wildlife has decided not to meddle by moving him to an area more suitable for his single status.
“Where would we relocate him to? How can we assume we know what he’s looking for, where he would find it and where to put him?” said CDFW spokesperson Jordan Traverso.
Fitted with a collar that transmits his location, the animal has traveled farther in the state than any known wolf in a century.
His story is more worthy of Rick Steves than Jack London. Born near Mt. Hood in the Cascades of northern Oregon, three months ago he set off on an adventure across at least 12 California counties.
He entered the state in its proverbial Empty Quarter, a desolate northeast region known for sage
brush, pine and fir forests, wheat fields and iron Daisy windmills.
From there, he headed south through the rugged Sierra Nevada — a fitting place for a creature who needs elbow room.
But then, inexplicably, he turned west. Traversing the agricultural San Joaquin Valley, he may have been sighted on a farm near the city of Huron, according to the Fresno County Farm Bureau.
Last week he crossed busy Interstate 5 and sent signals from pastoral San Benito County. Since then, he’s moved into Monterey County — more than 600 miles from home.
Is his compass broken? If seeking a mate, is he hopelessly lost and suffering from single-guy gloom?
“The dispersal of younger individuals from a pack is common,” said Traverso. “Dispersing wolves generally attempt to join other packs, carve out new territories within occupied habitat, or form their own pack in unoccupied habitat.”
OR-93 comes from a long line of restless souls. Nearly all of the wolves that now occupy Oregon and Washington are descended from 66 Canadian gray wolves introduced by the federal government to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho in the mid-1990s. They swam the Snake River into Oregon, then established that state’s first pack in 2009. Now there’s a pack in California’s Lassen County, as well.
Much of California is historic wolf habitat, Traverso
added.
Of course, during the century that wolves were eradicated from the state, a lot has changed. Their historic habitat is used for large scale cattle and sheep production.
In 1925, when California’s last wild wolf in California was shot and killed in Lassen County, only 4.5 million people lived in the state. Now, that number is nearly 40 million.
While environmentalists celebrate their return, farmers and ranchers are less welcoming. In April 2020, the Lassen County Board of Supervisors issued a statement describing wolves as an “introduced, invasive and noxious pest.”
“Things are a little different now, at least in California,” states Rebecca Dmytryk, who runs Humane Wildlife Control, Inc., a pest control company that specializes in resolving human-wildlife conflicts.
A resident of Monterey County, Dmytryk encourages ranchers and backyard hobbyists to take measures to protect their animals from predation, such as using guardian animals, erecting predatorproof fences and bringing livestock into protected areas to give birth.
OR-93’s arrival in Monterey County is a sign of positive habitat management and application of the right regulations and management plans, said Traverso.
“This is a great ecological story that wolves have returned to their historic habitat. We like it when things that belong here, are here,” she said.
“We always believed they would come back,” she said. “It was a matter of when, not if.”