Protect The Wolves® will be in contact with Oregon FG later today to discuss removing their targeted wolves to a Sanctuary. We dont believe though that they could order OR 7 lethally removed without having collars in his pack.
OR-7’s pack suspected in livestock attacks
After a quiet residency over the past few years, the pack that includes Oregon’s famous wolf, OR-7, may be responsible for three attacks early this month on cattle in Klamath County.
“It was pretty surprising,” said John Stephenson, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist and the agency’s wolf coordinator for Oregon. “It’s definitely a wolf attack.”
Stephenson noted that none of the Rogue Pack wolves has collars, so officials can’t be sure any of them — rather than some visiting wolves — did the attacks. The Rogue Pack could possibly have up to nine members, although some may have dispersed.
“That’s kind of a priority now,” Stephenson said of getting a collar onto at least one of the pack’s members.
The attacks include two calves killed and one calf injured, all on private land, according to an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife investigation report. A ranch employee saw three wolves feeding on one of the carcasses. Bite wounds and tissue damage, along with wolf tracks near the carcasses and the site of the injured calf, also indicate a wolf attack.
OR-7 arrived in the region in 2011, to much fanfare as the first to reach the western part of Oregon in decades and the first in California in about a century after he crossed the border for a bit. He then paired with a female in 2014 and they have since had three rounds of pups.
“They’ve been behaving well,” Stephenson said, noting no livestock attacks from the pack. He called the three attacks within a few days “a big surprise.”
The agency aims to prevent further attacks over the next month or so. That’s when the cows will get moved for the winter. Until then, deterrence tactics include setting up colored lights that flash at night in a random pattern, activated by a sensor, and moving them around so that wolves don’t get used to them. People — including Stephenson — are spending more time in the area at night. Stephenson has been camping out in the area a couple of nights. A big fire and a shotgun blast in the air overhead can scare any visiting wolves away, he said. Ranchers have also been doing night patrols with a spotlight.
“They do shy away from people,” he said of wolves, adding that he’s optimistic about stopping the attacks. It doesn’t take much to make wolves “think twice about coming around,” he said.
Over the next month or so, he aims to make the wolves change their pattern so they go into other parts of their large territory that exceeds 100 square miles, away from the cattle.
State and federal officials and livestock producers are working to create a plan to reduce the risk of conflict between wolves and livestock in the area, according to Michelle Dennehy, the ODFW’s spokeswoman. The department creates such plans within two weeks after confirming an attack to give livestock owners options. Deterrence tools include increasing human presence in an area to scare wolves away, for instance, or installing fences lined with fluttering red flags or electrified to give a nonlethal shock. Until now, there had been no confirmed depredations for the Rogue Pack area so that area did not yet have a conflict management plan. A confirmed livestock attack triggers creating one.
Wolves in another area have also attacked livestock recently. A department investigation report noted that a wolf attack injured a calf, found Sept. 28 on public land in Lake County.
The attack occurred in the area of the Silver Lake wolves, a newly forming pack that had a pup in May. The cattle at this site have since been moved to a lower elevation for the winter, so there are no longer any cows there.