Wolf’s 1,000-mile journey ends in death

Oregon-born gray wolf that trekked across California killed by vehicle in Kern County

In a heartbreaking end to an epic journey, California’s most intrepid wolf was found dead earlier this month near Interstate 5 in Kern County, state wildlife officials announced Wednesday, killed by traffic.

He had roamed deeper into the Golden State than any wolf in a century.

The carcass of the gray wolf, a young male named OR-93, was spotted by a truck driver on the edge of a Tejon Pass mountain town, east of Santa Barbara, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Born in the eastern Cascades of northern Oregon, the wolf set off last January on a lonesome journey into California, then across 18 counties, traveling more than 1,000 miles, averaging 16 miles per day. He was last reported in Ventura County in October, where wolves hadn’t been spotted since the 1920s.

News of OR-93’s death outside the small town of Lebec traveled much more quickly Wednesday.

“It was hard to hear,” said Austin Smith Jr., a wildlife manager with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon, who in 2019 collared OR-93 as a pup. “We were hoping he’d turn around, come back and find himself a mate.”

“We owe a responsibility to them,” said Smith, 35, and a Wasco tribal member. But in the century since wolves roamed California, “the habitat has changed. There’s growth, urban sprawl, and loss of forest. It’s not the first time that a collared wolf has ended up on the side of the road.”

When found, OR-93 was still wearing his purple collar, although its satellite transmitter stopped working last April. A necropsy, conducted by the Wildlife Health Laboratory in Rancho

Cordova, found significant tissue trauma to his left rear leg, a dislocated knee and soft tissue trauma to the abdomen. The injuries were attributed to a vehicle strike.

OR-93’s ignoble death ends the dream that other wolves might follow his scent south, creating a new pack of the endangered wolves closer to humans.

California’s three packs all reside in the remote northwest corner of the state: the Lassen Pack in western Lassen and northern Plumas counties, which has produced 28 pups; the Whaleback Pack in Siskiyou County, with seven pups; and the Beckwourth Pack in southern Plumas County, which is not yet reproductive. The state’s first recent pack, the Shasta Pack of eastern Siskiyou County, produced five pups but has since vanished.

While extraordinary, OR-93’s journey was not that unusual for a young wolf, said Wendy McIntyre, professor of environmental studies at the University of Redlands, who studies wolf reintroduction on public lands.

“It’s only natural for them to wander. That’s what they do,” she said. “The packs have their territories, so juvenile males are kicked out. So they need to branch off and travel, going somewhere else and start their own pack.”

“It’s such a tragic end to this animal’s existence,” she said. “It breaks my heart.”

Smith first spotted OR93 as a youngster, part of a larger pack that traversed the tribes’ 600,000-acre landscape of ponderosa pine and oak scrub. As the elder brother of the newest litter, he had begun to linger far from the den. To catch him, Smith and his team set up a humane rubber-jawed trap, then tranquilized and collared him.

“There is a majestic wildness to them, in their nature,” he said. The wolf was young and lean, weighing only 80 pounds, he said.

But he was docile, Smith recalled, and trotted off into the woods after awakening from the sedative.

OR-93 then headed south. After entering California last January, he traveled hundreds of miles from Modoc County in the state’s desolate northeast region known for sagebrush, pine and fir forests, wheat fields and iron Daisy windmills. From there, he journeyed across the rugged Sierra Nevada.

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.

By March, he reached the pastoral county of San Benito, 40 miles east of the Monterey Peninsula and only an hour’s drive south of the San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley. In April, he was reported in Monterey County, land of Esalen hot tubs and the manicured Pebble Beach Golf Course.

A trail camera video from May showed a collared gray wolf drinking water from a trough in Kern County.

Last month, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said that it received three reports of a wolf with a purple collar in the northern part of Ventura County, and officials were able to confirm wolf tracks in the vicinity.

Wildlife officials decided not to meddle with his trek, opting not to move him.

“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 Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Jordan Traverso.

Wolves roamed broadly across North America for thousands of years. Their numbers collapsed after they were hunted widely over concerns by ranchers and settlers in the 1800s that they can eat calves and sheep. Many Western states, including California, paid bounties to people who killed wolves in the 1800s. Some bounty programs in Washington and Oregon continued until the 1930s and 1940s.

In 1925, when California’s last wild wolf was shot and killed in Lassen County, only 4.5 million people lived in the state. Now, that number is nearly 40 million.

OR-93’s demise along I-5 underscores the need for more wildlife crossing structures throughout the state to facilitate safe passage for animals, said Pamela Flick, California program director with Defenders of Wildlife.

They are legally protected under California’s Endangered Species Act. Killing or injuring one can bring steep fines or jail time.

In recent years, the animals have been making a comeback. More than 7,000 gray wolves are estimated to be living in Alaska, 3,700 in the Great Lakes region, about 1,675 in the Northern Rockies and 275 in the Pacific Northwest.

“In this annual time of reflection, I thank him for the hope he gave us and for a brief glimpse into what it would be like for wolves to roam wild and free again,” said Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity.

“I only wish,” she said, “we’d been able to provide him with a safer world.”