The howl is back

State biologists confirm wolf pack with pups in northeastern Oregon

Gray wolves are once more howling in the mountains of Oregon.

Russ Morgan, the state's wolf coordinator with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, used howling to confirm there are adult and pup gray wolves living in a forested area of northern Union County.

Wildlife officials have found signs of wolves in the area since November and have conducted regular surveys since. Morgan said he was mimicking wolf howls Friday as part of a wolf survey, just as he has done many times in two years of trying to find wolves living in Oregon.

"And it's very rare you get a response," he said.

But this time he got just what he was howling for.

Although Morgan couldn't determine how many wolves are living in the area, he confirmed there are at least two adults and two pups.

Oregon has a wolf conservation and management plan, which the ODFW created with extensive, state-wide public input and collaboration. The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission, which oversees ODFW, adopted the plan in 2005. Under the plan, biologists have a primary task of finding where wolves live. Getting this confirmation was "pretty thrilling," Morgan said.

And finding pups was particularly significant, Morgan said. The howls were the first evidence of multiple wolves and wolf reproduction in Oregon since the mid-1940s.

White settlers in the 1800s started killing wolves to protect livestock. In 1913, the Oregon State Game Commission paid a $20 wolf bounty and the state of Oregon paid another $5 per dead wolf.

Oregon paid its last wolf bounty in 1946, although there were four wolf sightings in Oregon between 1974 and 1980.

Morgan said the next step is to follow up with a ground survey of these new wolves. Further, Morgan said the state's plan calls for wildlife officials to place radio collars on one or more adult wolves to better monitor the areas the animals are in and determine the number of wolves.

Wildlife experts have long predicted wolves from the expanding Idaho population would continue to cross the Snake River and enter Oregon. Biologists have been investigating evidence of wolves in northeast Oregon for some time.

Morgan also said there is nothing to indicate these latest wolves are associated with wolf "B-300," a 2- to 3-year-old female gray wolf also living in northeastern Oregon. The wolf was from Idaho's Timberline Pack. Wildlife officials used radio signals from her tracking collar in January to confirm the wolf was in Oregon.

At the time, B-300 was traveling in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest near the Eagle Cap Wilderness Area, between Medical Springs and Wallowa. Morgan said while B-300 is still in Oregon and she hasn't bred.

In Oregon, state and federal law consider the gray wolf an endangered species. Shooting a wolf is illegal in Oregon, even if the shooter mistakes a wolf for another animal, such as a coyote.

While the federal government removed wolves in the eastern third of Oregon from the endangered species list in late March, last week U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy granted a preliminary injunction that restored federal wolf protections.