California's lone wolf pack welcomes eight pups
Eight newborn wolf pups — offspring of the only wolf pack in California — are holed up these days in a topsecret location somewhere in the northern part of the state. Exactly where, the Department of Fish and Wildlife isn’t saying.
The agency sent out the lupine birth announcement Monday. Wildlife biologists were thrilled to learn of the fourth consecutive annual litter for the state’s lone pack.
“This is incredible news,” said Amaroq Weiss, a wildlife biologist and wolf advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity. “This is an endangered species that humans once tried to wipe from the face of the Earth. These little ones give hope to everyone who wants to see wolves reestablished.”
The wolf den, state officials said, is located somewhere in Plumas or Lassen counties — a region with a combined area of 7,300 square miles. The secrecy is to keep the state’s rarest critters safe from wolf hunters who would do them harm, as well as from wolf admirers who would disturb the new family’s privacy.
The pups — four male, two female and two gender unknown — were fathered by a different male than the wolf that fathered the three previous litters, Weiss said. The pack now numbers 14, including four adolescent wolves from previous litters.
There are many pressures that might make a female wolf decide to change partners, as other Californians are known to do. Wolves fall victim to hunters, disease, accidents, traps and unsuccessful attempts to take down prey, according to biologists.
“It’s not easy being a wolf,” Weiss said. “Sometimes an elk kicks a wolf in the head. People think wolves are killing machines. That’s not the way it is. Most of the time, a wolf comes back from a hunt emptyhanded.”
The wolf that fathered the litters in 2017, 2018 and 2019 was observed on wildlife cameras to have developed a limp from an unknown cause — possibly a steel trap, Weiss said. That might have enabled the new male wolf to muscle in on his turf — and his female — this year.
Tracing the wolves’ family tree is a complicated affair. The California pack was originally formed by the descendant of one of the Canadian wolves that was resettled in the Yellowstone National Park area in 1995 in an attempt to restore the species, which had been wiped out in the U.S.
Sheep and cattle ranchers opposed bringing the wolves back, but biologists have said wolves are good for the environment because they cull weak elk and other prey, keeping herds healthy and diseasefree.
The grandfather of the adolescents in the California pack, a wolf known to biologists as OR7, spent years roaming Oregon and California on a lonely 4,000mile love prowl before finding a mate. A male wolf locates a female wolf by leaving his scent through urination and then checking back to see if any intrigued females have responded in kind.
The genders of six of the eight new cubs were determined by gathering their scat and subjecting it to DNA analysis. Scat from the two other cubs has yet to be found, Weiss said, but biologists remain ever hopeful.
Wolf watching is a big business in Yellowstone National Park, with scores of binoculartoting wolf fans seeking to catch glimpses each winter. Authorities in California want wolf fans to do their admiring online.
The fate of an endangered species, Weiss said, reflects the fate of the planet.
“I don’t know how to tell people that they should care for other species, but they should,” Weiss said
In other wolf news, wildlife officers reported a fatal wolf attack on a calf in Modoc County in May, and authorities are investigating two other reports of wolfrelated cattle deaths in June.