By Dylan J. Darling / The Bulletin
Wolf status report
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission,
which oversees the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, is to meet at
8 a.m. Friday in the Ponderosa Room at the Deschutes National Forest
Headquarters at 63095 Deschutes Market Road in Bend. The agenda includes
a presentation about the protection status of the gray wolf in Oregon, a
sage grouse update and potential ocean fishing rule adoption. For more
information go to j.mp/BendWolfMtg.
As their population grows and their territory expands, wolves might be coming off the list of protected animals in Oregon.
The state’s wolf program coordinator, Russ Morgan
with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, plans to present the
findings of a status review for the gray wolf at a Friday meeting in
Bend. In the status review, posted online last week, the department recommends the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission delist the wolf.
“Factors related to wolf health, habitat, dispersal,
habitat connectivity, and wolf survival all indicate a healthy and
growing population that is unlikely to decline in the near-term,” reads
the status review.
Because of overlapping jurisdictions of federal and
state wildlife oversight, however, even if the state commission delists
the wolf, it would have minimal impact in Central Oregon, where the
species would still be under federal protection.
“Even if the state delisted (the gray wolf) it
would still be federally protected,” said John Stephenson, Oregon wolf
coordinator for the federal U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Bend. “It
wouldn’t be that much of a change” for Central Oregon.
If the commission moves to delist, the department
would likely come back in June with a draft proposal and then the
commission would make a final decision in August, wrote Michelle
Dennehy, spokeswoman for the department, in an email.
The commission sets policy for ODFW, which manages wildlife in Oregon. The wolf has been on the state’s protected species list since 1987, the year the Oregon Endangered Species Act was enacted.
In the past decade, wolves have returned to
Oregon. The first traveled into the state from the east, coming from
wolves released in 1995 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Idaho
and Yellowstone National Park. Now there are at least 77 wolves in the
state, according to the status review, with nine known packs.
While conservation groups have cheered the wolf
revival, ranchers and others in the livestock industry have raised
concerns about wolf attacks on their animals and what the state is
doing about them.
The potential change to wolf status would have the
biggest impact where wolves are found the most in Oregon, the state’s
northeast corner. There, wolves are off the federal endangered species
list, and the state is in complete control of managing the animals,
Stephenson said.
In Central Oregon and the western two-thirds of
Oregon, it is a different story. Although wolves have wandered into this
part of the state, no packs have established territory here, and they
remain on the federal endangered species list and the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service guides wolf management.
A change in status for the wolf by the state would not change that.
OR-7, perhaps Oregon’s most famous wolf, would
still be protected due to where his Rogue Pack roams. Born into the
Imnaha Pack in northeast Oregon in 2009, OR-7 left as a lone wolf in
2011 and crossed over hundreds of miles as he passed through Central
Oregon and ventured into Northern California. Along the way, the wolf —
called OR-7 because of his GPS collar — drew national media attention.
Since May 2013, OR-7 has prowled the woods between
Klamath Falls and Medford, has found a mate and has fathered at least
three pups. Trail camera photos of the wolves taken late last spring
proved OR-7 and his mate were the first breeding pair since the
mid-1940s in Oregon’s Cascades.
The battery on OR-7’s collar isrunning low, and
efforts to recapture him to replace it, or capture another member of his
pack, have been unsuccessful. Stephenson said he plans to try to
re-collar OR-7 or collar another member of the pack this spring or early
this summer.
He said there have not been other wolves tracked into Central Oregon since OR-7, but there could be more. “It is very possible that there are other lone
dispersers in Central Oregon …,” Stephenson said. “But we don’t have
anything confirmed.”
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