Wolves Expanding in California
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Everything is terrible, so occasionally it’s worth noting something that is not terrible. One of those things is the expansion of wolves in California.
Earlier this month, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed there is a pack of gray wolves roaming within Lassen Volcanic National Park. Though gray wolves are known in nearby Lassen National Forest, with a group called the Lassen Pack being the best-known and most established wolf pack in California, this is the first time wolves have been recorded within the boundaries of the national park itself.
The pack is yet unnamed, and though some reports suggest these wolves are composed of individuals birthed into the Lassen Pack, that’s yet to be confirmed. It’s thought to be a breeding pair and two pups, and the wolves were filmed on a wildlife camera.
There are now about nine known wolf packs in California, spread throughout the Lassen area, the Lake Tahoe Basin, Siskiyou County near Mt. Shasta, and a southern pack in eastern Tulare County.
It’s thought there are somewhre between 60 and 100 wolves roaming the state at this point. Northern California alone has 23,000 square miles of suitable wolf habitat, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, an amount of territory that could support 500 gray wolves.
The development of entire packs is great news. Wolf conservation has been an unexpectedly successful program. Unexpected because lots of people figured they’d all just be shot. But while that has happened more or less in Arizona and New Mexico, the northern Rockies reintroductions have expanded west into states that are more legally tolerant of wolves and that just makes a huge difference. Super cool stuff.