Video shows 10 wolves - Footage was taken of Wallowa County wolf pack last week
By Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald November 20, 2009 [here]
An Oregon state wildlife biologist videotaped a pack of at least 10 gray wolves last week on Forest Service land in Wallowa County east of Joseph.
The pack is the largest yet confirmed in Oregon since wolves began returning to the state in the late 1990s, said Russ Morgan, wolf coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“ODFW has been regularly monitoring this pack, but until this video was taken, we only had evidence of a minimum of three adults and three pups making up this pack,” Morgan said. “Pups can be difficult to distinguish at this distance, but it appears there may be as many as six pups in the video.”
Pat Matthews, an ODFW biologist in Enterprise, videotaped the wolf pack on November 12.
Matthews saw the wolves across a canyon at a distance of at least several hundred yards, Morgan said.
The 1-minute, 32-second video is available on the ODFW Web site [here]. …
Biologists also saw three pups, and three adults, in the area this past summer.
Matthews’ video showing at least 10 wolves is “not a surprise,” Morgan said.
Female wolves usually birth about five pups, but larger litters are not uncommon, he said.
Although Morgan said he has heard that cattle ranchers in the Imnaha country were missing calves this fall when they gathered their herds from summer pasture, he said he’s not yet seen evidence that wolves have killed any livestock in the area.
A pair of wolves killed two dozen sheep this past spring and summer on Curt Jacobs’ ranch in Keating Valley in Baker County.
Federal officials shot and killed those two wolves in early September. … [more]