A Wolf Roams into the Golden State…With Controversy Hot on His Tail
By Michael Frank, Adventure Journal on January 3rd, 2012
For the first time since the late 1920s there’s a wolf in California. The two-and-a-half year-old gray male crossed into the state from Oregon and was tracked by a GPS collar. Conservationists are happy; ranchers are horrified. Officially, wolves are endangered in California and are registered that way federally, and a Lassen County rancher said that if that were not the case that he’d shoot them on sight. But Mike Fris, the assistant regional director of ecological services for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Pacific Southwest region, said wolves are a concern to livestock only when they are in packs. But wolf packs in Oregon are believed responsible for killing 20 cows and two calves over the past two years, and if a pack is eventually established in California it’s inevitable to cause controversy.
20 cows and 2 calves over a 2-year time period is a low cost to pay to restore the environment. It would be interesting to see other sources of predation compared to these numbers - why don’t they provide them?
Keeping track of that would cost money. And nobody who may be hurt by more data wants to pay for that.
Fish & Wildlife don’t care about cattle killed by cars or cattle that fall into ditches or get stuck in fences, but it sure would be interesting to compare to the wolf kills.