A rare photo of the Gray wolf OR-7, taken when the wolf was in California. A wildlife advocacy group, Oregon Wild, says OR-7 has returned to its native state of Oregon.
Richard Shinn/ Calif. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife
A wandering male wolf known as OR-7 has crossed back into Oregon after spending more than a year in the mountains of northern California. It was originally born in Northeastern Oregon.
Most wolves don’t stray more than 100 miles from the pack they’re born into.OR-7 is an exception. The wolf has traveled about 15 miles a day since it arrived in California, mostly sticking to federal forests. GPS data from OR-7’s collar showed him crossing back into Oregon’s Klamath County Tuesday night.
Michelle Dennehy, with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, says OR-7’s GPS collar will continue to track him for another year, give or take.
OR-7's tracks in the Oregon Cascades in
2011. Credit: Amelia Templeton
“We can’t predict when it will fail, but that is probably within the typical lifespan of the GPS collar. The more information we get from a collar, the more you run the battery down,” she says.
Biologists haven’t decided what to do when the collar fails. OR-7 is one of just a handful wolves west of the Cascades in Oregon and Washington. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering whether to name those wolves a distinct northwest population. That could extend their protection under the Endangered Species Act.
OR-7 is the only documented wolf in Western Oregon and in California. The male was born in 2009, and dispersed from Northeastern Oregon's Imnaha pack in 2011, searching for a mate and territory.
According to the the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, OR-7 spent most of his time in California traversing public lands between Mount Shasta and Lassen Volcanic National Park, sometimes traveling more than 30 miles in a day. The agency reports OR-7 also spent a considerable amount of time on privately owned timberland. There were no reports that the wolf killed livestock while it was in California.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife created this detailed map of the first half of OR-7's travels across the state.
Wolf OR7 in California: December 2011- July 2012
