On the heels of one rare gray wolf’s journey into California, another arrives

LOS ANGELES — A young male gray wolf crossed into far Northern California early this month — joining another wolf that trekked into the state in late January and made an epic journey south.

The latest wolf to arrive in California — called OR103 — was outfitted with a GPS collar in Deschutes County, Oregon. He entered northeastern Siskiyou County on May 4, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

It’s not clear exactly where OR-103 came from. There isn’t a pack of wolves in the area where he was collared, so it’s believed the roughly 1- to 2year-old wolf was in the process of dispersing — striking out from his pack in search of new territory and a mate, said Roblyn Brown, wolf program coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

With Oregon’s wolf population expanding, “there will be more wolves dispersing to California,” Brown said. “It just shows that there’s a healthy population growth of the wolves.”

There were at least 173 wolves in Oregon at the end of 2020, a 9.5% increase over the previous year’s tally, according to a state Department of Fish and Wildlife report.

Before 2011, a gray wolf hadn’t been spotted in California since the 1920s, when the native apex predators were wiped out by hunters. Over the last decade, there’s been a small but gradual increase in wolves coming in from out of state, exciting wildlife conservationists but alarming ranchers who fear for the safety of their livestock.

California lists the wolves as endangered, but they were removed from the federal roster in January by the Trump administration.

With just a few handful of wolves in California, conservationists see every new arrival as a potential boon to the species’ survival in one of its historic territories.

Oregon wildlife officials collected DNA from OR103 and sent it to a lab for analysis.

“Depending on whatever pack he came from, he could be lending new genetics to the California population of wolves,” said Pamela Flick, California program director for Defenders of Wildlife, a conservation organization.

OR-93, the wolf that preceded the most recent arrival, hailed from southeast of Mount Hood, whereas the majority of wolves in California are from northeast Oregon.

AUSTIN SMITH/CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF WARM SPRINGS OR-93 arrived in California in late January and has ventured farther south in the state than any other wolf in more than a century. A new wolf, OR-103, has also crossed over from Oregon into California.