The pack has been accused of seven attacks on livestock in less than three weeks
Left: A remote camera captured this photo of OR-7 on May 3 in eastern Jackson County. Right: This blurry image shows a second wolf, determined to be female, in the same area as OR-7.
The gray wolf pack is in the midst of a record series of livestock attacks, the likes of which would possibly lead to government culls of wolf packs if they weren’t protected by federal law.
Thursday’s confirmation of a 700-pound yearling steer injured by wolf attacks on a private pasture in the Fort Klamath area brings to seven the number of confirmed cattle attacks attributed to the Rogue in just over two weeks Pack, which includes the offspring of the famous wolf OR -7.
It dwarfs the killing days of the Rogue Pack, which set records for killing or injuring livestock (called predation) during the final years of the OR-7 at the end of the last decade.
The extent of this livestock predation also dwarfs that of Northeast Oregon’s Lookout Mountain Pack, which is accused of killing or injuring a dozen cattle between July and October 2021, records show.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife killed eight of those wolves under the protocols of the state plan that governs wolf management in most of eastern Oregon.
In the case of Lookout Mountain, state kills reduced that pack to just two wolves, and predation stopped, ODFW reports.
However, wolves in western Oregon are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, which sets very strict standards for “lethal removal,” and federal biologists have not ordered a kill federally protected Oregon wolves.
The current number of depredations is very concerning, said Susan Sawyer, the Klamath Basin spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees wolf management in the Wood River Valley, which is part of the historical range of the Rogue Pack.
“Nocturnal human presence has historically been an effective non-lethal approach to minimizing wolf predation in the Klamath Basin area,” Sawyer said in an email Friday to the Mail Tribune.
“The grasslands in the Wood River Valley are quite expansive, which makes it a challenge to effectively implement these measures, including night hazing,” he said. “We will continue to work with ranchers and wildlife services to implement and evaluate the use of night baiting along with other non-lethal measures.”
ODFW and federal biologists are still trying to trap and fit a GPS-transmitting collar to a member of the Rogue Pack to better monitor the animals, he said.
The latest incident occurred Wednesday when a rancher found an injured 700-pound yearling steer in a private 200-acre pasture, according to ODFW.
It followed a similar discovery Tuesday of a dead 725-pound steer in a nearby private pasture, which also had telltale scratches and bite marks from a wolf attack, the agency reported.
Similar livestock deaths were reported in the Fort Klamath area Saturday and Sunday morning. Three individual murders were also reported during the week of July 12.
All the reports were of dead yearling cows or bulls in which the offending wolves left the prey mostly intact, and all with multiple bite scratches common between wolf attacks, according to ODFW.
They were all attributed to the Rogue Pack, because they are areas the pack is known to frequent.
The pack typically alternates between western Klamath County and northeastern Jackson County, where it has historically been defined, according to records.
The pack’s alpha female is an uncollared 4-year-old from the 2018 litter of OR-7 and OR-94, two animals known for their collar numbers, but infamous for their locations is Oregon wolf history .
OR-7 was known around the world as the wolf whose search for a mate sent him from northeastern Oregon to southwestern Oregon and even California before he finally found a mate and settled in the east of Jackson County.
OR-7 was at one time a model citizen and bulwark of the wolf for those who defend these apex predators, until he turned his pack to livestock predation at the end of his life.
OR-7 disappeared and has been presumed dead since 2019. OR-94 was found dead of apparent natural causes in 2021 in the Sky Lakes Wilderness Area near Prospect, northeast of jackson county
The pack remained under the radar of biologists until last summer, when trail cameras captured images of the new Rogue Pack 2.0 and up to four cubs.
According to Oregon’s wolf plan, packs are defined as four wolves that travel together in the winter.
Mark Freeman covers the environment for the Mail Tribune. Contact him at 541-776-4470 or email him at mfreeman@rosebudmedia.com.
