Back in 2000, I wrote a piece for California Wild about the prospects for wolf restoration in the state. At that time, there had not been any wolves reported in the Golden State in decades. Nevertheless, I felt the state could easily support a wolf population.

In my article, I pretended that it was 2020, and I am sitting on a mountaintop in the Marble Mountains, hearing a wolf howl. It is interesting to reread the article and see that most of the predictions have been realized.

A recent article in the Los Angles Times documents that there are now at least 70 wolves in California in nine packs. Most of the parks are located in northern California, but at least one pack is found in the southern Sierra Nevada east of Bakersfield.

The first recorded wolf in California occurred 13 years ago when a wolf from northeastern Oregon known as OR-7 ventured into the Golden State . OR-7 went on to form a pack in southern Oregon.

A state conservation wolf plan suggests that California could support as many as 500 wolves north of I-80, which bisects the state from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe.I Interestingly study done by the Conservation Science Institute in the 1990s suggested thata population of 440 wolves was possible.

MY 2000 ARTICLE FROM CALIFORNIA WILD

Some biologists question whether early accounts of wolves in California might be skewed by the misidentification of coyotes, common throughout the state. The coyote is smaller and has a narrower build than its cousin the wolf.

July 17, 2020. “Here I am in the Marble Mountains. Just about dusk a beautiful yellow harvest moon rose over Elk Mountain. As the moon cleared the ragged tops of the forest, I heard a wolf howl.”

In the not too distant future, such a journal entry may be a reality, not just wishful thinking. Though wolves were extirpated from California nearly 80 years ago, the animals may soon be trotting back to the Golden State.

The earliest historical records mention wolves throughout much of California. For instance, Pedro Fages, who traveled the Coast Ranges from San Diego north to San Francisco in 1769 recorded the occurrence of both wolves and coyotes along his route. Other sightings place wolves along the coast near San Gabriel Mission, in Humboldt County, and in the Monterey Bay area.

The explorer and mapmaker John Fremont noted seeing wolves in the Sacramento Valley. After the gold rush of 1848, wolf sightings shifted to the Sierra Nevada and northern California. John Muir reports having seen wolves near Mount Shasta. Nevertheless, the only confirmed wolves found in the state were trapped in the 1920s. Three specimens of gray wolves are in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley. One was taken in the Providence Mountains in southern California, and the other two were caught in Modoc and Lassen counties in northern California.

Ron Jurek, a wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game in Sacramento, has studied most of the early historical accounts related to wolves and cautions about speculating too broadly about their historical occurrence in the state. For instance, Jurek points out, many early travelers failed to distinguish between coyote and wolf sightings, collectively calling both “wolves.” Secondly, says Jurek, the only undisputed records of wolves for the state are the three museum specimens collected in the 1920s. They were all males who could have been long-distance dispersers from breeding populations elsewhere. There are, he says, no undisputed records of actual wolf breeding in the state although some historical accounts do mention the capture of pups. Despite his skepticism, Jurek acknowledges that some wolves lived in California. If they hadn’t been here, it would be a mystery since there was good wolf habitat, an abundance of prey such as elk, antelope, and deer, and well-documented wolf populations in Oregon. There is no physical boundary at the Oregon border that would have kept breeding populations out.

However many Californian wolves there once were, none survived the eradication efforts that began with the first European settlers on the continent. Ten years after the founding of Plymouth Bay Colony in Massachusetts, a wolf bounty was enacted. Settlers were admonished to use restraint with their guns, with two exceptions. “The order of the General Court, subsequently, that whoever shall shoot off a gun on any unnecessary occasion, or at any game except at an Indian or a wolf, shall forfeit five shillings for every shot.”

The situation didn’t change much as the new Americans moved west. The first political actions taken in Oregon Territory were the so-called wolf meetings, held in 1843 to organize a means of taxing settlers to pay for the enactment of a wolf bounty in the state.

By the turn of the century, with strong support from the livestock industry, the extirpation of wolves became federal policy with the U.S. government paying bounties to trappers to systematically hunt down the last surviving lobos in the West. The devotion to eliminating the last wolves was almost maniacal, with trappers pursuing individual wolves for six months to a year. Even national parks were not immune from the wolf slaughter; the last wolves in Yellowstone were killed by the 1930s.

Though many critics of wolf restoration acknowledge that wolves once lived in California, they suggest there is insufficient habitat in the state for them today. However, an ongoing study by Carlos Carroll, at the Klamath Center for Conservation Research, along with Reed Noss (Conservation Science Incorporated) and Paul Paquet (World Wildlife Fund), calls this assumption into question. Their research suggests that wolves could indeed inhabit California and adjacent areas of Oregon. Using prey (primarily deer) density, road density, and human population density as variables, Carroll and his colleagues did a preliminary analysis of northern California and southern Oregon to determine habitat suitability for wolves. They identified four areas with high-quality wolf habitat: the Modoc Plateau in northeast California, the Lost Coast!Yolla Bolly area of the northern California Coast Ranges, the southern Oregon Cascades, and the Northern Kalmiopsis/Oregon coast on the California-Oregon border. Carroll estimates that together these four areas could support at least 440 wolves. His calculations did not include elk. “When elk numbers are added in to the prey availability, we expect the number of wolves that could be supported will be higher,” he says.

Carroll points out that these core areas tend to be about half the size of the wolf recovery areas found in Idaho and Wyoming. However, the California and Oregon areas have higher year-round prey density (it’s non-migratory, unlike most prey in the Rockies) with plenty of lower elevation winter habitat in public land ownership or private timber holdings, not ranches. So there is less potential conflict with livestock operations. Since the core areas are smaller, however, “linking these areas with corridors would be a critical factor in increasing the long-term sustainability of resident wolf populations,” says Carroll.

Bob Ferris, a biologist with Defenders of Wildlife, agrees. “Most of the prey is going to be deer. And deer densities, at least in some parts of northern California, are very high,” Ferris says. “Since pack territory is determined somewhat by prey density and average prey size, we can expect smaller territories and smaller packs than, say, wolves feeding on moose scattered about Alaska’s relatively unproductive boreal forest areas. This will enable wolves to fit more readily into the smaller habitat patches found in California,” he predicts.

The best potential wolf habitat in northern California is nearly uninhabited by people. Human population density in Del Norte, Siskiyou, Lassen, Humboldt, Trinity, Modoc, and other northern California counties is actually far lower than the currently occupied wolf habitat in Montana, Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin–all states where wolf populations are recovering. Minnesota, for instance, has more than 2,500 wolves, far more than the 440-plus wolves Carroll and his colleagues are predicting for California.

And wolves don’t necessarily require wilderness to survive–as long as people don’t shoot them. This past winter, a pack of wolves set up housekeeping several miles from downtown Jackson, Wyoming, creating quite a tourist spectacle. People sat inside roadside cafes sipping coffee while they watched wolves bring down elk across the road.

There is plenty of prey and wolf-worthy habitat between northern California and wolf populations in Montana and Idaho. While there are biological reasons to believe that wolf recovery in California is feasible, “the restoration of wolves is as much a political as biological question,” says Roy Heberger, assistant field supervisor in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Snake River Basin Office in Idaho. Wolf supporters like Defenders’s Ferris believe that California politics are favorable for wolf restoration. Compared to states like Wyoming and Idaho that have many anti-wolf legislators, California’s congressional delegation includes such staunch supporters of the Endangered Species Act as Senator Barbara Boxer and Congressman George Miller, who Ferris expects would look favorably upon California wolf restoration.

Patrick Valentino, executive director of the Julian Wolf Preserve just northeast of San Diego, has already launched a public education program aimed at creating a favorable political climate for wolves–if and when they return to the state. Teaming up with Defenders of Wildlife, Valentino’s organization has a traveling wolf education booth that provides information at county fairs and other public events. According to Valentino, the overwhelming response of people to the prospect of wolf reintroduction is “very favorable.” This is not surprising in urban southern California, but some suspect the reception will be less welcoming in northern rural areas where wolves are likely to roam.

Marcia Armstrong, executive director of the Siskiyou County Cattleman’s Association and Siskiyou County Farm Bureau in Yreka is one such rural resident. She responds indignantly to the suggestion that wolves be restored to California. “Those people who want wolves should have to live with them. Instead, they impose these animals on us people living in the rural West while they get to live in the safety of their cities. They want to make our home into an outdoor zoo to placate their suburban guilt complex over how they have destroyed the wildlife habitat where they live.”

Rancher Shawn Curtis, director of the Modoc County Farm Bureau, has already talked with ranchers in Idaho about the impact of wolves upon their operations. One of their major concerns is compensation for livestock losses. Although Defenders of Wildlife will pay for any wolf-related livestock losses, Curtis says the system doesn’t work well on the ground. “You have to practically see a wolf attacking your animals before you can get compensation. Given the way that livestock is run in the West, it’s very difficult to find a calf that has been killed before other scavengers destroy the evidence. That’s not really acceptable from our standpoint.”

Wolf defenders like Brooks Fahy, who runs the Predator Defense Institute in Eugene, Oregon, believe much of the conflict between livestock operators and predators is self-created. “If ranchers implemented better husbandry practices that minimized predator opportunity such as the use of guard dogs, herders, and calving barns, the losses to predators would be significantly reduced,” he said. “These kinds of things should be a standard cost of operation for them. Instead, western ranchers have externalized one of their costs on to the public by eliminating most of the large predators in the West.”

But to Armstrong, the real reason for opposing wolf restoration is safety. “I don’t want to have to worry for my life when I take out the garbage or for the safety of my daughter who likes to jog on rural roads. You have to remember, the wolf once had a bounty on it. It’s a vicious predator. It’s not cute and cuddly,” Armstrong says. “Wolves kill animals, and we are animals. They won’t distinguish between species.”

Ferris acknowledges that a vocal minority among rural residents will always oppose wolf restoration. He is quick, however, to cite polls in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, all far more rural in nature than California, that show a majority of residents support wolf restoration efforts. And another recent poll taken in Oregon this past spring came to the same conclusion: most of the state’s citizens, even in rural areas, support wolf restoration in their state. Indeed, the only group that consistently opposes wolf restoration is livestock producers.

If Armstrong has her way, there never will be wild wolves in California. The Siskiyou County Cattleman’s Association is working on legislation that would ban any attempts to restore wolves to the state, she says.

There are two main ways wolves could find themselves back in California, says Valentino. The first is capture and release: capturing wolves elsewhere and releasing them in California. This was the method used to bring wolves back to Idaho and Yellowstone. One advantage of reintroduction, says Valentino, is that you can “select areas with lower human conflicts than
might otherwise occur if wolves simply come back to California on their own four feet.” Valentino strongly supports such a planned reintroduction, but he acknowledges that it is unlikely to occur any time soon.

The second scenario is more probable; wolves from elsewhere may come to California on their own. According to Bob Ferris, more than 65 percent of Idaho’s wolves will be of dispersal age by this coming winter. “It’s almost a certainty that within a few years at least some of these wolves will find their way to Oregon, and later move into California,” he says.

Wolves are long-distance migrants. Mollie Matteson, a research biologist at the University of Montana who studied them, says there are documented cases of wolves moving hundreds, even thousands of miles. One wolf captured near Montana’s Glacier National Park was later killed outside of Dawson City, British Columbia–nearly 450 miles further north. She notes that it’s only 275 miles from Idaho’s occupied wolf territory to northeast California.

It doesn’t take a determined wolf long to cover the miles, either.

Theoretically, a wolf could move from Idaho to California in less than a week. Heberger tells of one wolf captured in Montana. It was released more than 100 air miles away only to be rediscovered back in the original capture site less than 48 hours later.

More likely, wolves will establish themselves in Oregon before coming to California. Such a scenario was givengreater credence last winter after a radio-collared female Idaho wolf, dubbed B-45 by the usfws, migrated across the Snake River into eastern Oregon. The discovery of a live wolf in Oregon for the first time in more than 50 years took everyone by surprise. Local · ranchers and some state officials demanded she be removed immediately, while wolf supporters found they were no longer talking about the hypothetical recovery of wolves in Oregon in the dim future.

Despite a strong public outpouring in favor of the wolf–the USFWS got more than 500 telephone calls from supporters asking them to leave the wolf alone. and even though B-45 had no record of livestock depredation, the USFWS bowed to political pressure from wolf opponents. The wolf was captured and relocated to Idaho. Shortly after her release near Lola Pass in northern Idaho, she began trotting back to Oregon. She covered more than 110 miles as the crow flies (far more miles in the rugged terrain of central Idaho) to settle just east of the Oregon border.

Whether she will stay in Idaho or return to Oregon is anybody’s guess, but the dispersal of B-45 . put a shot across the bow” says Heberger. “We just weren’t thinking that a wolf would be moving into Oregon or other areas so soon.” The subsequent public outpouring of support for wolves in Oregon prompted the usfws to revise its policy of automatically capturing dispersing individuals that pose no threat to livestock. If B-45 or another wolf moves into Oregon or California, it will be given full protection under the Endangered Species Act and be permitted to stay.

There are two legal challenges on the horizon that could jeopardize wolf recovery in Oregon or California. The first is a proposal by the USFWS to change the status of all wolves in the lower 48 from Endangered to the less protective Threatened. Such a change would weaken the legal mandate for recovery outside areas with existing wolf populations.

Whether there will be any wolves left in Idaho to recolonize Oregon or California may soon be determined by a legal suit now before a panel of judges in Colorado. The 1995 and 1996 reintroduction of wolves into Idaho and Yellowstone National Park are being challenged by the American Farm Bureau Federation on a technicality of federal environmental law. A Wyoming judge agreed with the Farm Bureau and ordered the wolves removed, but stayed the order, pending decision on an appeal presented to a higher Colorado court in August 1999.

But even if there is a positive outcome of the appeal process, and wolf populations in the Rockies would expand, does that justify the presence of wolves in California?

Many supporters argue that wolves are native to the state, and restoration of native species has biological and ethical value. A viable California population of wolves would help to ensure their eventual removal from the Endangered Species list. But beyond concern for the welfare of a particular species, wolves are also a potent evolutionary force. To paraphrase the California poet Robinson Jeffers, it was the fang of the wolf that whittled the fleetness of the antelope. Wolves are to wild ungulates what fire is to many California forest ecosystems–a force that needs to be restored.

We can also expect some other potential ecological consequences. In areas where wolves have been eliminated, coyote populations have exploded. Since the density of coyotes is higher than that of wolves, this has actually increased predator problems for livestock producers. Bob Crabtree of Yellowstone Ecosystem Studies, who has studied coyotes in Yellowstone National Park both before and after the reintroduction of wolves, has found that coyote numbers dropped by half in the presence of wolves. The restoration of wolves may actually reduce predator losses for the livestock industry.

The numbers of some species, such as fox, could rise once released from coyote predation. If wolves became widely established in California, they could help the recovery of some endangered species, such as the San Joaquin kit fox, which currently suffers high losses to coyotes.

Though wolves occasionally prey upon domestic livestock, the losses are small. According to a recent article in the Wildlife Society Bulletin, in northwestern Montana between 1987 and 1997, the livestock industry lost 142,000 sheep and 86,000 cattle to all causes including disease, weather, and predation. Of this total, wolves took an average of only ten animals a year, while domestic dogs accounted for the deaths of more than 1,500 animals annually. Even in Minnesota, with more than 2,500 wolves, losses to predators account for typically fewer than 300 animals a year. Clearly, losses from wolves are not a threat to the viability of the state’s livestock industry.

What about human safety? Only a handful of documented records exist of healthy wild wolves biting or threatening humans in North America. No person has been killed. Most reported “wolf attacks” are by captive dog-wolf hybrids. Indeed, one of the major ways that Heberger uses to determine whether a reported wolf sighting is valid is by the behavior of the animal.

Heberger says wild wolves are extremely shy and almost always run away from humans. Matteson spent two full field seasons by herself among wolves and grizzlies in Montana and Canada, but only saw wolves in the wild once. “I heard wolves. I saw tracks,” she says. “But even with the advantage of the radio tracking equipment, wolves are so shy I never saw them, even though I knew they were almost always someplace close by.”

Will wolves return to California? Most biologists who have looked into the question believe they will. When and how is another matter. But almost certainly if wolves establish themselves in Oregon, it won’t be long before their howls reverberate again through the canyons and mountains of the Golden State. Such a sound will represent a small step towards healing the
great wounds humans have inflicted upon our native ecosystems and a clear
signal that at least some ecological changes wrought by us are reversible.

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