Baker County wolf was only passing through

A gray wolf that migrated into Baker County from Wallowa County last month was just passing through.

The 2 1/2-year-old male wolf, which entered Baker County about Sept. 12, has since traversed Grant, Harney, Crook, Deschutes and, most recently, northern Lake County, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW).

ODFW has designated the wolf as “OR-7” — meaning it’s the seventh Oregon wolf to be fitted with a tracking collar.

OR-7 was originally part of the Imnaha pack in Wallowa County.

ODFW biologists attached the GPS collar to the wolf on Feb. 25, 2011.

The collar records its location every six hours, and ODFW officials can get the information through the Internet (the data are not available to the general public).

OR-7 entered Baker County after crossing the Wallowa Mountains. The wolf went through the Keating Valley, crossed Ore. Highway 86 and stayed for several days in the Little Lookout Mountain area.

From there the wolf continued south, crossing Interstate 84 and moving into the Dooley Mountain area, said Russ Morgan, ODFW’s wolf program coordinator.

OR-7 then traveled west and south to the Monument Rock Wilderness southwest of Unity. After staying in that area for about a week, the wolf crossed into Grant County on either Oct. 3 or 4, Morgan said.

The wolf has covered more than 150 miles in the ensuing three weeks. Its most recent location, earlier this week, was in northern Lake County.

“He’s on a six-county tour,” Morgan said. “That’s classic dispersing behavior. You can never tell when that will stop. Some wolves will go thousands of miles.”

Because OR-7 is west of a line formed by Highways 95, 78 and 395, the animal is protected by the federal Endangered Species Act, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is responsible for managing the wolf.

Wolves east of that line are not federally protected. They are managed by ODFW under the state’s wolf management plan, and protected by Oregon’s endangered species law.

OR-7 isn’t the only wolf that has migrated from Eastern Oregon to the central part of the state.

OR-3, a 3-year-old male that also dispersed from the Imnaha pack, was photographed in Wheeler County in July. On Sept. 29 officials confirmed the wolf’s location, in the Ochoco Mountains, by the radio transmitter on its collar.

(Radio transmitters, unlike GPS collars, don’t upload locations to the Internet. Instead, officials usually have to take an airplane flight to pick up the radio signal with an antenna.)

Although the GPS collar enables ODFW to track OR-7, that ability isn’t as precise as some people might think, Morgan said.

The collar is programmed to record its location every six hours, but it sends the information to ODFW only once per day.

But if the transmitter doesn’t have an adequate fix on GPS satellites at the time it’s supposed to upload the locations for the previous 24 hours — which can happen if the wolf is in a deep canyon or dense forest — then a day or more can elapse during ODFW doesn’t know where the wolf is.

“You can find out where he was, not where he is,” Morgan said. “It’s not real time.”

GPS collars can be set to record their location more often — every hour, for instance — but the more frequent the reports, the sooner the collar’s battery dies.

“Once the battery’s gone, so is your information,” Morgan said. “The tricky thing is trying to balance battery life with the need for location reports.”

ODFW sometimes reprograms a wolf’s GPS collar to update more often — when, for instance, the wolf is suspected of attacking livestock and ODFW wants to prevent such problems, Morgan said.

The company that makes the collars estimates the battery will last three years if the location is updated every three hours, although battery life varies depending on weather and other factors.

OR-7’s travels aren’t the only wolf-related issues on ODFW’s agenda.

The agency also this week confirmed Oregon’s fourth wolf pack, this one in the Snake River unit in Hells Canyon.

After hearing from hunters who reported seeing wolves there, or photographing wolves with trail cameras, ODFW biologists surveyed part of the Snake River unit last week and found tracks from at least five different wolves, Morgan said.

“That’s not our estimate of the pack size,” he said. “There could be more.”

ODFW’s goal now is to confirm the actual size of the pack and to determine whether it includes a breeding pair.

One photograph taken by a hunter shows a wolf pup, but ODFW does not consider a pack to have a breeding pair unless the agency can confirm at least two pups in December.

Morgan encourages hunters and others to report wolf sightings online (www.dfw.state.or.us) or by calling a local ODFW office.

“These public wolf reports from Oregon’s outdoor enthusiasts really help us target our survey efforts and make the best use of limited resources,” he said.

Morgan said ODFW doesn’t know whether wolves in the Snake River pack were originally part of the Imnaha pack, which roams nearby in Wallowa County, or whether some, or all, of the Snake River wolves crossed the river from Idaho.

“It could be either, or both,” Morgan said. “We know there are wolves on the Idaho side.”

Last week ODFW officials also fitted a radio-tracking collar for the first time to a wolf from the Walla Walla pack in Umatilla County. The wolf, OR-10, is a female pup that weighed 48 pounds and was in excellent health.

The Walla Walla pack was the third confirmed in Oregon, following the Imnaha and Wenaha packs.

For more information on wolves, visit http://www.dfw.state.or.us/wolves/