Document text
Rogue Pack 2.0 likes beef, too By Mark Freeman Jul 17, 2022 01:00 AM A A In this undated photo released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows OR-543, a dispersing wolf from the Oregon Pack OR-54. The Rogue Pack, once thought to have dispersed after the deaths of patriarch OR-7 and his mate, OR-94, have reconstituted, with the alpha female a daughter of OR-7. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP, File) This remote camera photo taken May 3, 2014, shows the wolf OR-7 on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. One of OR-7’s daughters is now alpha female of the Rogue Pack’s successor, and the pack is apparently following in OR-7’s footsteps. [ODFW via AP, File) The gray wolves of the reconstituted Rogue Pack have apparently rediscovered their taste for beef — a menu choice infamously once championed by their former patriarch, OR-7. The Rogue Pack is blamed for killing and partially eating a 775-pound calf Wednesday in the Fork Klamath area — the eastern range of the pack that has called eastern Jackson County home for more than a decade. The pack’s current alpha female is the 4-year-old daughter of OR-7 and fellow collared wolf OR-94. She was born during the Rogue Pack’s heyday, when it was known as the most notorious wolf pack in Oregon for feeding on livestock. This daughter apparently didn’t fall far from the trunk of the proverbial family tree. “It’s a learned behavior, no different than a cougar with kittens,” says Sam Dodenhoff, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s wildlife biologist assigned to the wolf program here. “Old habits die hard,” Dodenhoff says. This week’s deadly foray into the livestock world is the first attributed to the Rogue Pack since a spate of killings in January, including the killing of a guard dog and three calves in eastern Jackson County in a four-week span, according to ODFW records. In this most recent case, a 775-pound cow was found dead on a 400-acre private pasture. The cow was partially eaten and left, and the wounds were consistent with wolf predation, ODFW reports show. A trail camera photographed the Rogue Pack’s alpha male the evening of the attack, near the pasture where the dead calf was found, Dodenhoff says. The pack’s alpha female is an uncollared 4-year-old from the 2018 brood of OR-7 and OR-94, two animals known for their collar numbers but infamous for their places is Oregon wolf history. OR-7 was known worldwide as the wolf whose search for a mate sent him from northeast Oregon into southwest Oregon and even California before he finally found a mate and settled down in eastern Jackson County. OR-7 was at one time a model citizen and a bastion of wolfdom for those who champion these apex predators — until he turned his pack toward livestock predation late in his lifetime. “It kind of all started with OR-7 and OR-94,” Dodenhoff says. OR-7 disappeared and has been presumed dead since 2019. OR-94 was found dead of apparent natural causes in 2021 in the Sky Lakes Wilderness Area near Prospect in northeast Jackson County. The pack remained under biologists’ radar until last summer, when trail cameras captured images of the new Rogue Pack 2.0 and as many as four pups. Under Oregon’s wolf plan, packs are defined as four wolves traveling together in winter. So the new-look Rogue Pack won’t officially gain that designation until they qualify this winter. Wolves in southwest Oregon are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. Their brethren in northeast Oregon are not protected under federal laws and instead are subject to the state’s wolf plan, where wolves can be killed for preying on livestock under certain conditions. ODFW has approved the killing of two male wolves in the past two months in Wallowa County for similar livestock attacks. Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Reach him at 541-7765-4470 or at [email protected]