Are wolves finally migrating to Fresno County from Northern California? Here’s what experts say

Mike Lindgren is fairly certain there is a wolf, multiple wolves perhaps, wandering around Huntington Lake.

He’s seen tracks in the snow, even spotted one across the lake last year. He has no doubt it was a gray wolf, and not some other animal.

“I know what a coyote looks like,” Lindgren says.

So when his neighbor said he saw a gray wolf earlier this month, Lindgren posted about it on the Mountain Mouths Facebook group.

“Big wolfe sighted at Huntington Lake last night. Laskeshore side,” he wrote in the post, which drew quick skepticism from commenters.

The skepticism is shared by California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, which is tasked with investigating such sightings around the state.

“I would guess it was probably a misidentified coyote, which happens much more often than one might think,” says Peter Tira, a spokesman with the department. There was a report of a wolf sighting, but a field biologist found no evidence to support the claim.

“He did note that there were a number of wolf-dog hybrids up there,” Tira says.

Wolves in California

It’s not unreasonable to question whether there could be a wolf in the central regions of California.

The animals are known to walk incredible distances in search of new packs and mates.

While the average dispersal distance for wolves is around 60 miles, an individual wolf can travel much further, up to 680 miles, according to DFW reports. Actual travel distances, documented through global positioning, exceed 6,000 miles, according to a 2011 report.

And there are wolves already in the state.

In 2011, a radio-collared wolf — known as OR-7 — traveled close to 1,000 miles across Oregon and into California. It was the first confirmed wolf seen in the state since 1924 and led to the creation of of the California’s wolf conservation and management plan.

Lassen and Shasta packs

Since then, the population of wolves living and passing through the northern part of California has continued to grow and two packs have been observed in the state.

The so-called Shasta Pack consisted of a minimum of six wolves and was regularly detected from August 2015 through November 2015. In fact, several wolf pups — the first offsprings born in California in close to a century — were caught frolicking in camera footage released by state wildlife officials that year.

That pack has since vanished, according to officials, though they still don’t know quite why.

A second pack, dubbed the Lassen Pack, is still active.

The pack has been producing offspring since 2017 and as of October had two adults wolves, one yearling and four pups.

The farthest south

Of the non-pack wolves that are being tracked, one — known as OR-54 — spent much of the summers of 2018 and 2019 in Plumas and Sierra counties and was documented traveling as far as Nevada County.

That is the farthest south a wolf has been seen, according to the information released by the state in October.

Of course, predicting any migration patterns for wolves is difficult at best and compounded by a lack of historical information, Tira says. He won’t speculate on possible timelines for when the animals might be seen in other parts of the state.

“Past migration patterns in the state would have to date before 1924, when the last known wolf was extirpated,” he says.

“You can imagine all that has changed in that time (cities, freeways, developments, etc.) that would disrupt those patterns.”

This story was originally published January 22, 2020 at 7:30 AM.