Wild wolves heard in Eastern Oregon

Although not seen, pack of at least four located near Washington border

So, you've read that wolves are howling, and, for the first time in 60-some years, are making puppies in the Oregon wilderness, and you want to pack up the kids and go see one.

Despite the discovery of a breeding pack just inside the state line in the northeast corner of the state, the advice from the experts remains unchanged:

Unless you plan to spend a lot of hours under the stars, put a lot of miles on your hiking boots and stretch your wildlife-seeking wanderlust to the limit, go to Yellowstone.

"There's this perception that our wolves are going to be like in a national park where they are visible wolves, even though less that one out of eight times you're going to see them," said Russ Morgan, the wolf coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

"What people need to know is that these are secretive animals, and although they are spotted in the open at times, they are primarily nocturnal and they're an exceptionally secretive carnivore. They're shy and they avoid humans."

There's also the problem of where these critters hang out.

"They're in very remote, heavily timbered habitat where it's nearly impossible to see them," Morgan said.

The wolf pack that was heard — not seen — before dawn by wildlife biologists last week was just outside the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness, which is tucked against the Washington state line northeast of Pendleton.

The only access is on backcountry U.S. Forest Service roads that have such metropolises as Elgin at one end and Flora at the other.

"The area where these wolves were heard, and where some in the past have been seen, is in such rugged and remote country that unless you know exactly where you're going, it's just too extreme," said Rick Hargrave, a public-affairs specialist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

"It's not one of those places people can get out of their car and walk a couple hundred yards and expect to see something. It's not for your common everyday 'hiker guy.' It's the kind of country that requires some specific familiarity with the terrain."

Even a veteran woodsman could backpack and hike and scope hillsides and listen all night for months, perhaps even years, and never encounter a wolf, Morgan said.

"Purely wild and wild-living wolves are just very rarely seen, and when they are, it's often just by chance," Morgan said. "It's an odds thing. The more time you spend in the woods, the more your odds of running into one. We've been searching for wolves in northeast Oregon for two solid years and this is the first time we've detected them. That defines how difficult they are to find."

The biologists who located a wolfpack last week were calling for wolves, and got replies from two distinguishable adults and two distinguishable pups.

"It's rare to see one unless it's in a tame-like area like a park where they're somewhat habituated to humans," Morgan said. "Yellowstone has a healthy wolf population and they tend to be a bit more habituated, just like the bears and bison and moose that are there. If someone truly wants to observe a wolf, national parks are the best opportunity."

Although the more time spent in the wild enhances the opportunity of seeing a wild wolf in Oregon, the odds still are astronomically against it.

"The odds of going out for a day to a particular area to see a wolf in Oregon, I couldn't speculate what they'd be, but I wouldn't expect to see one," Morgan said.

Even if biologists were publishing the global-positioning coordinates of this wolfpack, chances of someone finding it would be slim.

"It would be irrelevant for us to put out specifics because, more than likely, they're not where they were," Morgan said. "The nature of the animal itself dictates that. Wolves are widely traveled and any given pack may travel 200 square miles within its territory. Wolves can travel 100 miles a day. They're built for that.

"There's an old saying that wolves live by their feet, and they do it regularly. Some days they may walk or lope all day. So a wolf that was in a particular place yesterday or today might be 60 miles away tomorrow."

He acknowledges that the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have received plenty of unconfirmed reports of wolf sightings in the past three years.

"We responded to 42 reports of sightings in 2006, and by 2007, it was more than 120," Morgan said. "We're already over 70 reports this year, so the number is increasing. Not all those reports turn out to be wolves, of course, but we are starting to find more evidence in that area — tracks and scat and, in this case, hearing them howling."

He prefers that the area not be overrun by citizens eager to see a wolf, because biologists are hopeful of trapping and fitting a member of the pack with a radio-transmitting collar.

Although cattlemen and ranchers aren't eager for the return of the wolf to Oregon, Morgan says its an animal that will be less problematic for campers, hikers and backpackers than, say, the grizzly bear.

"That's a can of worms, but the way I answer it is, on this continent, there are no known human deaths that have been attributed to wild and healthy wolves," he said. "They're a large carnivore, so I don't want to mislead anyone by saying they'll never attack somebody, but the incident of attack on humans by wild and healthy wolves is nearly none. When you consider how many people are in the outback of Alaska and Canada where there are large numbers of wolves, that's a pretty remarkable fact."

He won't say that wolves pose no danger to people who venture into their territory.

"You take any large carnivore or predatory animal, even a coyote, or even a non-predatory animal like a deer or elk or moose, and they have been known to threaten or attack humans infrequently," Morgan said. "That's just part of the wildlife world."

He said he's heard reports of adult wolves sometimes barking at humans.

"People usually take that as a threat, but what it often means is that there's a den nearby," he said. "Coyotes will do exactly the same thing."

He said the goals of the Oregon Wolf Plan — the document that sets criteria that would remove wolves from any state endangered species list — are to maintain four breeding pair of wolves in an area for three consecutive years. He said it could take a long time to accomplish that.

"One of the goals of the Oregon Wolf Plan is not to maintain wolves in a listed or endangered status forever," he said. "Part of responsible and successful management is about taking them from a low number to a delisted state.

"There are concerns, and I'll tell you very clearly we share those concerns. I'm in the field a lot with livestock people who may or may not have strong thoughts one way or another about wolves, but what they don't want is, they don't want to see their livestock — their livelihood — diminished by wolves."

Asked the upside and the downside of having wolves roaming free, Morgan said:

"The upside is that wolves are coming back — a part of our native fauna — and one of our tasks is conservation of native wildlife.

"I'm not sure there is a downside because we live in different environments today, the way our landscapes are settled and developed. Make no mistake, there will be some challenges, but we're working pretty hard with stock growers to be proactive and prevent problems before they occur, then to quickly address them when they do."

rgault@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6723