Wolf moves into Baker County

A young male gray wolf — similar to this one photographed in 2009 in Wallowa County — moved into Baker County earlier this week.

By JAYSON JACOBY
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A male wolf from Oregon’s largest pack, the Imnaha pack in Wallowa County, migrated south into Baker County earlier this week.

The 2 1/2-year-old wolf was on Little Lookout Mountain, about nine miles southwest of Richland and 27 miles east of Baker City, Thursday morning, said Nick Myatt of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW).

This wolf should be easier to keep track of than wolves that came to Baker County in past years because this animal is wearing a collar equipped with a GPS transmitter, Myatt said.

Twice each day the transmitter records its location. ODFW officials can get the information through the Internet.

“It’s pretty neat technology that gives us another tool to use in wolf management,” said Myatt, who formerly worked as the district wildlife biologist in Baker City.

Myatt has been serving as the acting manager for ODFW’s Grande Ronde Watershed District, based in La Grande, since early June.

Russ Morgan, ODFW’s wolf coordinator, attached the GPS collar to the wolf on Feb. 26.

It was one of three wolves that ODFW, with help from employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, captured and released in Wallowa County this winter.

A yearling male was fitted with a GPS collar, and a yearling female was released with a radio collar.

Officials can track GPS collared wolves via the Internet, but they usually take an airplane flight to lock in to the signals from a radio collar.

Workers captured the wolves by firing tranquilizer darts from a helicopter.

ODFW officials noticed on Monday that the 2fi-year-old wolf had left the Imnaha pack and started moving south across the Wallowa Mountains, Myatt said.

The wolf passed through Sparta and Keating Valley, then crossed Highway 86 and continued south to Little Lookout Mountain.

Young wolves often break away from their pack, seeking new territory and a mate, Myatt said.

He said the Baker County wolf’s GPS collar failed to send a signal for almost two days earlier in the week. That sometimes happens if the wolf is in a deep canyon or heavy timber that prevents the collar’s signal from reaching the orbiting satellites that make up the GPS system.

As a backup, the wolf’s collar also contains a radio transmitter, Myatt said.

On Thursday morning he flew over Little Lookout Mountain, where he picked up the collar’s radio signal and confirmed the wolf was still in the area.

Myatt said the signal was coming from an area of dense timber on the upper slopes of the mountain, so he wasn’t able to see the wolf.

Because there’s not a great deal of thick forest in that area, Myatt said he expects to be able to monitor the wolf’s movements by the GPS signal.

Earlier this week, after he confirmed the wolf had crossed the Wallowas, Myatt said he called several ranchers in the Keating area as well as Fred Warner Jr., chairman of the Baker County Board of Commissioners.

“Our biggest thing is making sure people are aware there’s a wolf in the area,” Myatt said.

Keating livestock owners have some experience of wolves.

During the spring and summer of 2009, a pair of wolves killed two dozen sheep and one goat on Curt and Annie Jacobs’ ranch.

Federal officials shot and killed those wolves in September 2009 in the Wallowa Mountains.

Myatt said there’s no evidence that the wolf in Baker County now has attacked livestock.

Jacobs said Thursday that although the wolf is several miles from his home ranch, he has 250 head of cattle grazing near Little Lookout Mountain, not far from where Myatt tracked the radio signal Thursday.

“I have a little concern about where (the wolf) is at,” Jacobs said. “I’d just as soon he was gone.”

He said several people have told him they saw one or two wolves earlier this year in the Little and Big Lookout Mountain area. He said he doubts this newly arrived wolf is the only one in the area.

There are no other confirmed wolves in Baker County now, Myatt said.

Since the 2009 livestock attacks in Baker County, the focus on wolves and on livestock depredation has shifted to Wallowa County.

Wolves from the Imnaha pack killed several calves in the spring of 2010 and in 2011. In May of this year ODFW killed two wolves, one male and one female, from the Imnaha pack in an effort to prevent livestock attacks.

The last confirmed wolf attack on livestock happened June 4 in Wallowa County.

The wolf in Baker County is the fourth to disperse from the Imnaha pack this year.

Last winter a 1fi-year-old female wolf migrated to Washington.

In July a two-year-old male moved south into far eastern Baker County, then swam across Brownlee Reservoir to Idaho. That wolf is still in Idaho, Myatt said.

Also in July, ODFW confirmed that a three-year-old male wolf was living near Fossil in Wheeler County.