Packs Under Attack and the Crisis Facing Wolves This Winter

A Mexican Gray Wolf at the California Wolf Center, located just south of Julian.

By Tommy Hough

We hope you can join us this Tuesday, Dec. 8, at 6:30 p.m. for Packs Under Attack, the first of our new "Dems. Gone Wild" Environmental Report webinars dedicated to topics of wildlife conservation.

Facilitated by club member and wildlife advocate Brandon Coopersmith, and featuring guests from the California Wolf Center in Julian and my former Oregon Wild colleague Rob Klavins, Packs Under Attack will focus on the ongoing plight of American Gray Wolves and Mexican Wolves in the U.S.

Brandon and myself, along with many of our club members and those active in environmental and conservation spaces, have grave concerns about what could be a bloody, calamitous winter for wolves given the Trump administration's needlessly cruel order to remove wolves from the protections they've had under the auspices of the Endangered Species Act for the last 45 years.

In what was essentially a desperate, last-ditch political Hail Mary to win over voters in the Great Lakes states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, the legacy of wolves in the Lower 48 states were subjugated into becoming a sacrificial lamb to preserve the legacy of Donald J. Trump. And while Trump may have lost the election, wolves have more to lose.

Fueled by bloodlust and old European superstitions, wolves were nearly hunted to extinction in the early 20th century from California to the Pacific Northwest to the Great Lakes. Wolf populations were further reduced due to development, agricultural expansion, and the destruction of habitat and the killing of the wolf's main prey species, like the American bison.

Beginning in 1995 in Yellowstone National Park, gray wolves were reintroduced into the wild in the contiguous U.S., and over the last 25 years have started to return to many of their historic habitats, most notably crossing to the west side of the Cascade Range with the arrival of Oregon wolf OR-7 ("Journey") in California in 2012. Only later did we learn OR-7 wasn't the only wolf to make the "journey" beyond the Cascade passes into northernmost California.

Register now via Zoom for this special "Dems. Gone Wild" Environmental Report.

Our January edition of Dems. Gone Wild will be a Zoom presentation titled Monarchs: A Royal Crisis, featuring Monarch butterfly advocate Victoria Abrenica of The Water Conservation Garden in El Cajon, and formerly with Ocean Connectors. In February we'll focus on the perilous future of bats in Flying Under the Radar. Details on both environmental reports will be posted soon.

​In the meantime, we'll see you this Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. for Packs Under Attack.

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Each wolf in a pack has a specific role and duty, and packs function akin to a family unit.