Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife via AP
A wolf pack is captured by a remote camera in Hells Canyon National Recreation Area in northeast Oregon near the Idaho border, February 1, 2017.
In the summer of 2014, two young gray wolves in eastern Oregon dispersed from their natal packs—one from the Snake River Pack and the other from the Minam Pack—and paired up. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) had already radio-collared both and tracked them as they traversed the Eagle Cap Wilderness in the northeastern corner of the state.
That year, Oregon had 81 known wolves. While the state was seeing the population rebound after being extirpated in the mid-1940s, that number was far less than the estimated 1,450 wolves that the mountain wilderness could support. The following year, the wolf pair produced two pups that survived. The Catherine Pack grew over the years as eight more pups survived—until last winter.
In early 2021, ODFW received a mortality signal from one of the collars. That meant that the wolf had stopped moving for eight hours, an unusual sign since wolves can travel dozens of miles in a 24-hour period and don’t typically lie completely still for so long. The department alerted wildlife troopers with the Oregon State Police. When troopers responded to the call, they found not just one dead wolf, but five.
The entire Catherine Pack had been killed.
By July, three other wolves had also been found dead in the eastern part of the state where wolves were removed from the federal and state endangered species acts. The troopers collected the carcasses and sent them to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s forensics laboratory in Ashland, Oregon. Toxicology reports confirmed that all eight wolves had been poisoned.
The wolf killings underline the ongoing confusion and tensions surrounding state and federal oversight of endangered species.
By 2015, wolves in eastern Oregon had lost both federal and state endangered species protections. Hunting wolves remains illegal, but under certain circumstances, ranchers in eastern Oregon can kill a wolf if the animal is caught wounding, killing, biting, or chasing livestock or working dogs. ODFW can also kill wolves that have been confirmed to cause a certain number of livestock fatalities. Of the 30 wolves killed illegally in Oregon over the last 20 years, a third of those deaths occurred in the past year alone.
The wolf killings underline the ongoing confusion and tensions surrounding state and federal oversight of endangered species. Some populations of gray wolves are protected by the federal Endangered Species Act, and others are protected—or hunted—in accordance with state regulations. Since gray wolves were reintroduced by the federal government after being hunted nearly to extinction, they have become a symbol of government intervention, particularly for ranchers. For many conservationists, scientists, and ecologists, however, the wolf recovery program once considered a triumph is now as threatened as the animals themselves.
About 7,500 wolves lived in the lower 48 states in 2020. When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) delisted wolves that year after the Trump administration claimed the population had recovered, some states rushed to allow wolf hunts. In a February 2021 Wisconsin wolf hunt, people killed more than 200 wolves, about 20 percent of the state’s 1,136 animals, in less than 72 hours.
Wolves have had a precarious existence since white settlers began moving west. In 1843, Oregon Territory settlers met to discuss “protection of our herds against the beasts of prey in the country.” (These “wolf meetings,” as they came to be known, also addressed the territory’s push toward statehood.) Communities paid bounties to settlers and Indigenous people—who were offered a fraction of what whites were—to bring in dead wolves.
By 1914, U.S. bounties totaled more than $1 million a year, about $28 million in 2022 dollars. The Oregon commission paid out the last wolf bounty in 1946 (the state bounty program continued for coyotes, bobcats, and cougars until 1961). In 1974, the gray wolves were listed as an endangered species under the new federal Endangered Species Act. The first wolf re-entered Oregon after more than a century in the late 1990s, after the USFWS captured wolves in Canada and brought them to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho.
Following the outcry over state hunts, a federal judge in California ruled earlier this year in favor of environmental groups that sued the government for “catastrophic flaws” in the USFWS decision to delist wolves. The judge ruled that USFWS didn’t “adequately consider threats to wolves” and restored federal protections in most of the U.S. But safeguards were not re-established for the Northern Rocky Mountain populations (which had been dropped during the Obama administration) whose range includes Idaho, Montana, and eastern Oregon—where wolves are being killed. Prior to the ruling, Earthjustice, an environmental advocacy group, called for an emergency re-listing of the Rocky Mountain population after “the worst persecution of the species the region has seen in a century.”
While outrage over Oregon’s increase in poaching has rippled through conservation organizations, Jim Akenson, a northeast director of the Oregon Hunters Association, says that people are “frustrated that wolf numbers are not being managed.” Todd Nash, the president of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, wants wolves gone. “Well straight up, if I had my way, they wouldn’t be here at all,” he said. Yet when asked if he thought the known wolf population in Oregon, 175 animals, was a lot, he said probably not. Despite Oregon ranchers’ claims that wolves threaten livestock, very few animals have been killed by wolves: In 2017, only 11 cattle were killed of the more than one million animals in the state.
A 2018 Mason-Dixon Polling statewide survey of Oregon voters found that 47 percent of rural residents strongly supported continued wolf protections with 54 percent of voters statewide strongly supporting those measures.
Wolves are essential to maintaining the delicate balance in mountain ecosystems, in part by controlling populations of elk and deer. Recent studies show that when an agency uses lethal controls on wolves, poaching still occurs. Delisting also increases poaching, according to Adrian Treves, a University of Wisconsin–Madison environmental studies professor who has published new research on Wisconsin’s wolf hunt. But the existence of a robust Endangered Species Act, which comes with a fine of $100,000 and a maximum one-year prison sentence, could act as a deterrent, he believes.
Cougars have had a similar trajectory after hunting and bounty programs in the 1800s almost eliminated the species. Some groups want all cougars to be listed under the Endangered Species Act, since their range has drastically declined. But, unlike wolves in Oregon, cougars fall under ODFW jurisdiction and can be hunted. “We see the role of wolves, cougars, and bears as integral to the predator annex since time immemorial,” says Scott Peckham, the big-game ecologist for Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in eastern Oregon, noting that wolves should be left alone at this time. “We’re focused on restoring the composition of species to the best of our ability—the density and distribution—prior to the treaty [of 1855].”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is currently reviewing the possibility of restoring protections for the Rocky Mountain gray wolves. Restoring federal Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in the lower 48 states would go a long way toward preserving an apex predator that plays a key role in balancing mammal populations in wilderness areas.
In early April, I received an email update from ODFW. Another wolf had been killed in March. A coalition of conservation groups, including Oregon Wild and Defenders of Wildlife, has offered an $11,500 reward for information that leads to an arrest or a citation.
