Little by little, California is on the way to regaining it's legacy as a Wolf State(last wild wolf killed over 100 years ago in Calif)............It was truly heartening this Summer to see that Northern California's Lassen County had a pair of male/female wolves inhabiting its woodlands.............As of yet, there is no sign of the pair having raised a family of pups........State Game biologists seek to collar the pair so that their whereabouts and habits can be monitored, hopefully with the intent of seeing them be the "Adam and Eve" of a sustaining lobo population

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/northstate/two-gray-wolves-have-been-spotted-in-lassen-county/140656864&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoUMTI3MTIwOTQyOTAwNjI5MjAxOTQyGmRhOTdjZjk0NzgwNDY5OWE6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AFQjCNFZADWjiFnh6Y1VKFmx1KdY3LveYw

Two gray wolves have been spotted in Lassen County

By: Josh Copitch 

Posted: Nov 02, 2016 10:40 PM PDT

Updated: Nov 02, 2016 10:46 PM PDT

 
 
 

Calif. - The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has confirmed the presence of two gray wolves in western Lassen County.

New trail cameras across Lassen County helped to locate these two wolves after photographs, tracks and eyewitnesses said they saw two wolves during the summer of 2016. Numerous scat samples were collected by CDFW scientists and submitted to the University of Idaho's Laboratory for Ecological, Evolutionary and Conservation Genetics. Genetic analysis of the samples confirmed the presence of a male and a female gray wolf. There is no evidence - such as images, tracks, scat or reported observations - suggesting the wolves had pups this year.

Lassen County(red)

Analysis of scat indicates that the male wolf was born into the Rogue Pack in 2014, and most likely dispersed to Lassen County in late 2015 or 2016. The founder of the Rogue Pack is the well-known gray wolf OR7 (collared in Oregon by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife) who dispersed from northeast Oregon and traveled around northern California in 2011 and 2012 before eventually finding a mate and establishing a territory in southern Oregon in 2013. The DNA of the female wolf does not match any known individual wolves from Oregon, or even a close relative of the Oregon wolves.

Beautiful Lassen County just begging for the trophic Wolf to start raising pups here

Gray wolves were eliminated from California more than 100 years ago, until the return of OR7 in 2011.

CDFW will continue to assess and monitor gray wolves in California. If the pair documented in Lassen County continues to stay in the region, monitoring may include capturing at least one of the two and fitting it with a satellite-based GPS transmitter.

"Due to concerns for the welfare of wolves, capturing them is generally not feasible in cold weather. Therefore, we would not attempt to capture and collar the wolves until late spring at the earliest," said Karen Kovacs, a CDFW Wildlife Program Manager.