July 1, 2021 — Earlier this week, Rep. Peter DeFazio sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland and Principal Deputy Director of the USFWS, Martha Williams urging emergency reinstatement of Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolves. With Idaho and Montana recently passing laws that will allow devastating … Continue reading DeFazio Letter Requests Immediate Protections for Gray Wolves
June 17, 2021 — Conservation groups announced today a combined $15,000 reward for information on the poaching of the breeding female of the Wedge wolf pack. The wolf was found dead of a gunshot wound May 26 in the Sheep Creek area of Stevens County in northeast Washington state.
April 21, 2021 — Today, gray wolf advocates are celebrating the positive trends for wolves in Oregon in 2020. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (ODFW) annual state wolf report shows Oregon’s wolf population increased by 9.5% to a minimum count of 173 wolves. While 22 packs were identified, just 17 met the criteria of breeding pairs (an adult female and adult male with at least two pups surviving to December 31st of their year of birth), two fewer than at the end of 2019. Seven additional small groups of two to three wolves were documented; these groups are not considered packs, as a pack is defined as four or more wolves traveling together in winter. Wolf activity was documented in 12 Oregon counties and 35 geographic areas.
January 14, 2021 — The most recent data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its state partners show an estimated 4,400 wolves inhabit the western Great Lakes states, but only 108 wolves in Washington state (with only 20 outside of eastern Washington), 158 in Oregon (with only 16 outside of northeastern Oregon), and a scant 15 exist in California. Nevada, Utah, and Colorado have had a few wolf sightings over the past three years, but wolves remain functionally absent from their historical habitat in these states.
May 11, 2020 — Conservation groups petitioned the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission today for rules limiting when the state can kill endangered wolves for conflicts with livestock. The state has killed 31 wolves since 2012, relying on a protocol that skews heavily toward lethal and ineffective outcomes.
April 20, 2020 — The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife released its annual wolf report today. The population posted meager overall growth resulting in a total count of 108 wolves up from 97 wolves last year. The number of packs decreased. Oregon posted large population gains this year, indicating that the stagnant growth in Washington was not a function of weather patterns but again a function of large amounts of lethal control of which Oregon had none.
June 13, 2019 — On June 7, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission, whose members are appointed by Governor Kate Brown, adopted revisions to the state’s Wolf Conservation and Management Plan. This plan is required to be updated every five years, but this latest update was over four years late given the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (ODFW) efforts to remove wolves from the state list of threatened and endangered species. Although wolves in Oregon are slowly recovering from their extirpation in the 1940s, the updates to the plan dramatically increase the situations in which wolves can be killed both by ODFW and members of the public.
Both Washington and Oregon have released their 2018 wolf numbers and the Pacific Northwest has demonstrated minor gains in the face of continued poaching and state-funded wolf killing (Oregon’s wolf population increased from 124 wolves to 137 wolves statewide and Washington’s wolf population increased from 122 to 126). California’s wolves continue to live on the … Continue reading Wolves Under Assault on Multiple Fronts, Your Help Needed!
March 21, 2019 — Today, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed gray wolf activity through track sightings and remote camera images in the Umpqua National Forest north of Highway 138. The Indigo wolves are using a large wild area that spans Lane and Douglas Counties and the Willamette and Umpqua watersheds.
