Following severe winter weather, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is assessing the health of the state’s nascent wolf population.
Kent Laudon, wolf specialist and senior environmental scientist with the CDFW, said the three known California wolf packs are holding their own despite probable losses over the winter. All three California wolf packs are here in the North State.
“About this time of year, the packs are at their lowest numbers. We would be at about fourteen, a known minimum population,” Laudon said. “They’ll have their pups this time of year and then so there’s a temporary flush in numbers.”
The number could be higher, as a few wolves may have left the packs and dispersed elsewhere. It’s natural, Laudon said, for wolf populations to decline over the winter due to seasonal mortality, especially among young wolves.
He said later in the year, he’ll have a reasonable estimate of how well the wolf population has rebounded.
According to Laudon, approximately thirty wolves were known to be in Northern California last fall. Right now, at least one female is thought to be pregnant and expected to deliver pups soon.
The reappearance of wolves concerns local ranchers. The CDFW has a new program to compensate ranchers for livestock taken by wolves, but Laudon said covering financial costs only gets at part of the problem.
“You know ranchers like to take care of their own problems, and you know, protect those calves,” Laudon said. “Compensation programs can never really get at that part of it. The monetary part bridges the economic part well. It’s a complicated thing and there are a lot of elements to it.”
Grey wolves are protected under California law. They are native to California and once roamed throughout the state, but by the 1920s, wolves had been hunted to extinction here.
It wasn’t until 2011 that a grey wolf was again spotted in the state. Since then, small numbers have drifted in from Oregon.
