Just love seeing this Wolf Pack wandering south into California..................And so truly excellent that California Fish & Wildlife has extended Endangered protected status for the Wolves..............Hopefully, the first of many Packs to recolonize and call California home!

Rare sighting of wolf adults, 5 pups in Northern California
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Rare-sighting-of-wolf-adults-5-pups-in-Northern-6456128.php?cmpid=email-tablet

Rare sighting of wolf adults, 5 pups in Northern California

By Victoria Colliver

Updated 6:45 pm, Thursday, August 20, 2015

“This news is exciting for California,” said Charlton Bonham, the department’s director, in a statement. “We knew wolves would eventually return home to the state and it appears now is the time.”

The photos come more than a year after a lonely lobo known as OR-7 was last tracked in California. The animal, who in 2011 became the first gray wolf to enter California in almost 90 years, has skirted the border for years.

Now it appears that lone wolf may be lucky in love. Last spring, a remote camera in southwestern Oregon’s Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest detected at least two puppies suspected to be fathered by OR-7, who got his moniker for being the seventh wolf collared with a tracking device in Oregon.

Unlike OR-7, the most recently detected wolves don’t have tracking devices.

“This is an entirely new wolf pack. Nobody even knew it existed,” said Andrew Wetzler, director of wildlife program for theNatural Resources Defense Council.

Wetzler called the California pack, which includes a breeding pair of adults, “incredibly big news,” even bigger than when OR-7 first entered California. “It means the wolves have officially recolonized the Golden State,” he said, noting that wolf parents tend not to stray far once they begin to breed

Not everyone welcomes the return of the wolf. Ranchers, particularly, are concerned wolves could endanger their livestock.

Kirk Wilbur, government affairs director for the California Cattlemen’s Association in Sacramento, called wolves “beautiful creatures” and said he was pleased to hear no reports of livestock attacks that could possibly be related to the Shasta Pack.

“But what we’re concerned about is the potential for future wolf-livestock conflict,” he said.

Carter Niemeyer, a wolf expert who is retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, estimated 60,00 to 65,000 gray wolves live in Canada and Alaska, and the lower 48 states are home to about 6,000 to 8,000.

The wolves could thrive in California if protected from human persecution, Niemeyer said. “They’re a pretty tough critter if people don’t kill them,” he said.

In June, the California Fish and Game Commission voted to list the predator under the California Endangered Species Act, a decision that went against the recommendation of state wildlife officials. That designation limits what ranchers can do to protect their animals from wolves, Wilbur said. That includes prohibiting the cattlemen from injuring the wolves or even harassing them by chasing them in vehicles off their property.

Wilbur said ranchers and farmers can use other methods such as flashing lights and flags, but those aren’t always effective and the wolves typically learn to ignore those tactics. The state is expected to release a draft form of its long-awaited Wolf Management Plan soon, and Wilbur said he hopes it will be more specific in what ranchers can do.

To confirm that the Shasta Pack is indeed made up of gray wolves, state officials have collected scat, which will also tell them whether they originate from a specific Oregon pack or elsewhere, said Jordan Traverso, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife department. She said the analysis could take several months.

The state has yet to decide whether to collar and track these wolves, as officials do in Oregon, she said.

The gray wolf was once common throughout the West Coast, including in most of California as evidenced by the fact that the last two known wolves were killed in San Bernardino County and Lassen County in 1922 and 1924 respectively, said Matt Baun, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. But their numbers diminished and they were included on the Federal Endangered Species Act.

Now they show signs of making a comeback. Wolves have been reestablished in parts of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Washington and Oregon both found evidence of breeding wolves in 2008. However, there was no sign of them as permanent residents of California.

When Fish and Wildlife officials opposed including gray wolves on the state Endangered Species list, they contended that scientific evidence supported some protections for the wolf, but not a full listing. The agency’s recommendation also said there was no reason to list them because there weren’t any wolves in California to protect.

That doesn’t appear to be the case anymore.

Amaroq Weiss, West Coast wolf organizer for the Center for Biological Diversity, she’s not surprised a wolf family has been discovered in California because wolves in Oregon have been increasing in number in recent years. “The tracks were making their way southwest, so the writing was on the wall,” she said.

Weiss said wolves are very adaptable and will live in both forested and non-forested areas, as long as there’s elk and deer, a good water source and not too many roads. She said the most likely areas for them to settle in California are northeastern, northwestern and the Sierra mountain range.

“They’re very shy. If you see a wolf, consider yourself fortunate,” she said, adding there have been very few incidences of wolf aggression toward people. “Wolves don’t really want to have too much to do with people.”