With tiny howls, gray wolf pups are back in Oregon

The discovery of wolf family coincides with court decision to restore protections.

For two years, Russ Morgan and other biologists have howled across hundreds of miles in northeastern Oregon.

But they had never gotten a response to their howls, one method biologists use to survey for gray wolves in dense forests and remote terrain in Oregon.

Early Friday morning, though, wolves answered.

“After howling for two years into the dark, to get a response was pretty surprising,” said Morgan, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife wolf coordinator.

And it wasn’t just one response — joining in the chorus of two adult wolves were the distinctive yaps and howls of wolf pups. It’s the first evidence of pups in Oregon since the animals were killed off in the state in the early 1940s.

Wolves are polarizing animals across the West, often stirring up strong emotions. Many conservationists welcome back the predators and say they will balance ecosystems; many ranchers fear the wild carnivores will turn to livestock herds as a food source. Since the reintroduction of wolves in 1995, packs have thrived in places like Idaho, but only a few wolves had made the trip across the Snake River into Oregon.

In the past nine years, biologists have counted a number of single wolves in Oregon, Morgan said. And a lone wolf doesn’t represent a sustainable population of the predator in the state. But having a breeding pair in the state would be a step toward an established wolf population here, he said.

“Reproduction of wolves within Oregon represents a change. I think it takes us to the next level,” Morgan said. “I still think it’ll be a while, it’ll be some time before we see four breeding pairs and established wolves.”

Oregon has a plan in place for how to deal with the wolves, and the first objective is to get at least four breeding pairs in either Eastern or Western Oregon. And a breeding pair needs to be together for three consecutive years to count toward that, Morgan said, so keeping track of the animals is key.

Once that four-pair threshold is reached, the state will consider delisting the animals, he said. And once there are seven breeding pairs, the state might consider other options, such as limited hunts to keep the population at a set level or reducing the number of wolf-related livestock deaths. And for the adult wolves that were howling Friday to be considered a breeding pair, the pups have to survive into the winter, he said.

The wolves were heard in the Wenaha Wildlife Management Unit in north Union County, managed by ODFW, which is a good habitat for the animals, Morgan said. It’s remote and heavily timbered, and while people don’t visit much, potential prey lives there.

“It’s one of the areas I expected to see wolves established,” Morgan said. “The remoteness and the prey availability and topography.”

The main goal now, he said, is to put a radio collar on at least one of the adults, so biologists can track the pack to see where they are, how many are in the pack and whether the young survive.

Biologists will also continue to survey areas like the Hells Canyon Wilderness, across the Snake River from Idaho, and likely wolf habitat in Wallowa County.

“Wolves live by their feet” and travel wide distances, so it’s hard to say where individual animals will go, Morgan said. One could go through Bend or any other part of Oregon, he said, and biologists don’t know where they will settle in the future.

The wolf howls came on the same day that a Montana judge ruled that the Northern Rockies population of gray wolves, which had been taken off the federal endangered species list in March, should be temporarily given protection again as the judge considers a lawsuit challenging their removal from the list.

While the news of wolf pups is exciting, it’s not a sure thing yet, said Ed Bangs, a wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service out of Helena, Mont. While it makes sense for the wolves to be wild and to have crossed into Oregon from Idaho, they could also have been captive wolves that people released. It takes a DNA sample to know for sure, he said. And only about half of the wolf pairs that start out together end up with pups that live until the following winter, he said.

“We get lots of pairs that try to establish in an area where they simply can’t make it,” Bangs said.

In the summer and fall, people come out into the woods, livestock graze in areas that were empty in the winter, and hunters start looking for deer and elk, possibly displacing the wolves, he said.

But with the suitable habitat in the rugged areas of northeast Oregon, it’s not a surprise that two wolves have formed a pack.

“I’m kind of surprised it’s taken this long,” Bangs said.

It can take awhile for individual wolves to find each other and survive well enough to reproduce, said Gary Miller, field supervisor for the La Grande office of the federal Fish and Wildlife Service.

There are some concerns that, because northeast Oregon doesn’t have the large wilderness areas that Idaho and other states do, there might be more conflicts between wolves and livestock, he said. “Because of the high potential for conflict with humans, it’s probably not considered as good an area as some of the other places where we have wolves,” Miller said.

But Tim Lillebo, Eastern Oregon wildlands advocate with Oregon Wild, said that there are still lots of roadless, wild lands that can support wolf populations, and the species is just another reason that people need to work to protect that habitat.

“Our whole wildlife ecosystem has been missing these large carnivores for years and years,” Lillebo said. “What it’s going to do, I think, is make the whole habitat and wildlife ecosystem healthier.”

Wolves can reduce the number of coyotes in an area, he said. And studies have even found that having wolves can improve stream-side habitats, since the predators keep deer and elk herds from loitering by the waterways, trampling vegetation.

“It puts the ecosystem back together,” he said.

Kate Ramsayer can be reached at 541-617-7811 or kramsayer@bendbulletin.com.