Wednesday, November 9, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
5
Biologists hope to capture, re-collar wolf
By Mark Freeman
Mail Tribune
MEDFORD (AP) — State
and federal biologists are set-
ting out traps nightly in hopes
of catching and collaring gray
wolf OR-7 or his mate so they
can regain the tracking capa-
bilities that allowed the world
to watch his long journey for
a mate.
Biologists are using pad-
ded foot-hold traps and bait-
ing them with a foul-smelling
concoction to capture one of
the wolves so they can attach
a GPS-emitting radio collar
before heavy cold sets in.
John Stephenson from the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
says he sets four traps daily
in areas of western Klam-
ath County where OR-7 and
his Rogue Pack were photo-
graphed by a trail camera as
recently as Oct. 23.
“It’s not really the num-
ber of traps that matter,” Ste-
phenson says. “It’s finding
out where they’re going to be
and getting the traps out there
before they get there.
“It’s a waiting game,” he
says.
Once a collar has been reat-
tached, Stephenson can regu-
larly check their whereabouts,
enabling biologists to alert
ranchers when the pack nears
their field stock.
The pack last month
attacked and killed four steers
in Klamath County’s Wood
River Valley.
The traps are checked each
morning. If captured, the wolf
will be tranquilized, fitted with
the new collar and released,
Stephenson said. When tem-
peratures dip low enough to
put a trapped wolf at risk, he
will stop for the season, he
says.
“If we’re unsuccess-
ful, we’ll have to wait until
spring,” Stephenson says.
Stephenson says he would
prefer to collar OR-7 or his
mate, because they are more
likely to remain with the
Rogue Pack, while pups could
leave to find territory of their
own.
The trapping effort coin-
cides with the five-year
anniversary of OR-7’s trek
from northeastern Oregon to
Northern California before he
returned to Southern Oregon
and settled in eastern Jackson
and western Klamath counties
to start his pack.
OR-7 was a young member
of Oregon’s Imnaha pack in
the far northeast corner of the
state when he was collared in
February 2011, eight months
before he left the pack in a
“dispersal” trek in search of a
mate and new territory.
He traveled south and west
until he crossed the Cascade
crest in late October, becom-
ing the first wolf in western
Oregon since 1937. On Nov.
13, 2011, he crossed into Jack-
son County for the first time
from Klamath County, then
ventured to Northern Califor-
nia, where he was the state’s
first known wolf since 1924.
OR-7 eventually found his
mate, and in 2014 fathered the
first wolf pack in southwestern
Oregon in over 60 years.
He and his mate have had
seven pups, and one was dis-
covered last week to have left
Oregon and found a mate in
Northern California’s Lassen
County.
A second pup that had an
injured front right paw has
not been seen of late and is
believed to be dead.
That would put the Rogue
Pack at up to seven wolves.
Even though OR-7’s GPS
collar has not worked since
summer 2015, the wolf’s
whereabouts continue to draw
interest from around the world.
“That first story went all
over the place, and people are
still interested in him,” says
Michelle Dennehy, spokes-
woman for the Oregon Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife’s
Wolf Program. “He’s the most
well-known wolf in Oregon.”