California’s wolf pack grows with 8 new pups
Eight new wolf puppies are now roaming the wilds of Lassen and Plumas counties, an indication that California’s only known wolf pack is thriving and likely to stay, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
A video taken in July of the newest members of the Lassen Pack was released this week on the Fish and Wildlife website. It shows six black puppies and two lightercolored lobos sniffing around in a field. Biologists have genetically identified four males and two females.
The Lassen Pack, which has staked out territory in western Lassen and in the northernmost portion of Plumas County, has produced puppies every year since 2017, but this year’s litter was fathered by a different wolf.
The wolf that started the pack in 2016 was the son of the famous wolf known as OR7,who made the historic first pilgrimage through California in 2011, 87 years after the state’s last native wolf was killed.
Fish and Wildlife biologists have confirmed through fieldwork and genetic analysis of scat that a black male wolf replaced OR7’s son last year as the pack’s breeding male. The new leader is not related to other known California wolves, officials said. It is not know what happened to the former pack leader.
Two of the six adult Lassen pack members, a yearling male and the breeding female, were fitted with radio collars this summer and are now being tracked. Many lone, uncollared wolves have been detected in Northern California over the past decade, but the Lassen Pack is the only documented family group.
The presence of Canis lupus in California is considered a milestone in the steady movement of wolves across the Western United States. Up to 2 million gray wolves once lived in North America, but ranchers and bounty hunters drove them to nearextinction in the lower 48 states.
California wolves are now protected under the state and federal endangered species acts, but some ranchers and hunting groups are not happy. State wildlife officials have documented several instances of livestock being attacked and killed by wolves and are working with agricultural officials on nonlethal ways to halt that behavior.
The Lassen Pack is actually the second pack to establish territory in California. The first, called the Shasta Pack, was documented in eastern Siskiyou County in 2015 and was believed to be responsible for the first reported case of livestock depredation by wolves in the state.
The seven members of the Shasta Pack — which sported distinctive black coats — disappeared shortly after that incident ,and some wolf advocates feared they had been killed in retalitation. One member of the pack was later confirmed in northwestern Nevada.