#lassen pack

[sisterofthewolves]

Picture by Morgan Heim

THE WOLF THAT DISCOVERED CALIFORNIA

Nearly a century after the last wolf was eradicated in the state, a lone female arrived and established a pack. Not everyone is cheering.

At a steady trot, wolves can go 20 miles without breaking stride and cover 50 miles in a day. Their long thin legs move with the inevitability of bicycle wheels, with the rear foot landing in the exact spot just vacated by the front foot and the rest of the wolf flowing along. They travel with a look of intense purpose—ears pricked up, eyes keen, nostrils sifting the air for information—yet their movement over the land appears effortless.

The female gray wolf that biologists would call LAS01F was born somewhere in the Northern Rockies in 2014, possibly in Wyoming. In her second year of life, coursing with hormones, she left her natal pack to find a mate and a territory of her own, and kept going for another 800 miles or more.

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[sisterofthewolves]

Picture by Morgan Heim

A wolf shares a meadow with a herd in Lassen County (California). Ranchers say the mere presence of wolves stresses cattle, reducing their weight gain—and, thus, profits. (Source).

[rjzimmerman]

From Active NorCal:

California’s only known wolfpack, the Lassen Pack, more than doubled in size recently with a brand-new litter of eight pups. Those pups were recently caught on a trail cam (above) showing them in a playful jaunt as they move around Northern California’s Lassen County. The video shows two gray-colored pups and six dark-colored pups.

Wolf conservationists were elated when the news of the big litter of pups was announced by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. It’s the fourth consecutive year the Lassen Pack has had a new litter and is a monumental event for the rebounding of wolf populations in the state.

The original Lassen pack father, a gray-colored animal, has not been seen since June of last year. As of fall 2019, the pack consisted of the breeding female, a subadult wolf from the 2018 litter and the four pups from the 2019 litter. Earlier this year, the Lassen female was seen with a lone black male wolf.

This year’s new litter consists of eight pups, and genetic test results so far from their scat shows that at least four are male and two are female. DNA testing of scat collected from both the pups and the black adult male wolf also establish that he is the father of this new litter. His scat is also being tested to try to determine his pack of origin.

With these new pups, the Lassen pack now consists of at least 14 animals including the mother and father wolf, the new eight pups and four subadult wolves from the pack’s prior litters.