Wolves on the West Coast
Wolves were once common along the West Coast, from the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state through Oregon to the far reaches of Southern California. As keystone predators, wolves are vital for regulating prey populations like deer and elk, helping their whole ecosystem. Scientists believe that wolves’ natural hunting practices may also help stop the spread of disease in these wild ungulates.
Decades of extermination programs to appease the livestock industry drove wolves out of West Coast states in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The last wild wolf was documented in California in 1924, when he was trapped and then shot in Lassen County. The last breeding wolves in Washington were eliminated in the 1930s, and in Oregon the last wolf was killed for a bounty in 1947.
Today the West Coast is a region crucial to wolf recovery. As wolf populations have expanded in the northern Rocky Mountains, the animals have moved west. As these populations reach new areas, they need state and federal protection so they aren't exterminated again. In fact when a wild wolf called OR-7, nicknamed Journey, reached California in late 2011, some county commissioners said wolves should be shot on sight — even vowing to do it themselves.
That's why the Center and allies petitioned California to protect wolves under the state Endangered Species Act, and in 2014 the California Fish and Game Commission voted to grant our petition. That win was extremely timely: Just one year later, California's first known wolf family, the Shasta pack, was confirmed in the state, with more packs forming in the following years.
But there’s still so much work to do for West Coast wolves, and their comeback in the region is crucial to wolf recovery nationwide. Although recovery efforts in the northern Rockies and Great Lakes have met with success, wolves in the lower 48 states still occupy less than 15% of their historic habitat — and the West Coast is one of the best places for wolf recovery, with plenty of suitable habitat and a largely supportive human population. A laser focus on protecting wolves here is especially important considering that the species’ federal Endangered Species Act protection is perpetually challenged — though the Center and allies are perpetually prepared to defend it, as we have successfully many times.
As a founding member of the Pacific Wolf Coalition, among other wolf-related West Coast alliances, the Center is working with conservation groups across the region to make sure wolves have needed protections at the state and federal level.
WASHINGTON
It was in 2008 that Washington’s first known wolf packs in decades were confirmed. By the end of 2024, Washington had 230 confirmed wolves in 43 packs, 18 of which had successful breeding pairs. Nearly all of Washington’s wolves live in the eastern and central parts of the state. Wolves in the eastern third of the state are managed by the state wildlife agency, while the rest are comanaged by the state and federal wildlife agencies. Wolves on Tribal lands are managed by the pertinent Tribe.
To date no wolf packs occupy western Washington. Scientists have identified several other wild areas in the state where they could live, including the Olympic Peninsula.
In 2011 Congress stripped federal Endangered Species Act protection from wolves in the eastern third of the state. In 2021 wolves lost federal protection everywhere else in the state — until a successful court challenge by the Center and allies saw that protection restored the next year. All Washington’s wolves remain protected under the Washington Endangered Species Act; unfortunately the state Act isn’t nearly as protective as the federal law and allows wolves to be killed for conflicts with livestock. The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission approved a wolf-management plan in 2011, and even though wolf recovery is still in its infancy, the state wildlife agency in 2024 proposed reducing state wolf protections from endangered to sensitive. Fortunately, the Commission denied the proposal, since it recognized that wolves in the state still face threats and need ongoing strong protections.
The Center has taken action in state court to block attempts by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to kill wolves in response to conflicts with livestock, as well as to shine a light on “management” actions that don’t follow the best available science — which shows that killing wolves to stop conflicts doesn’t work. With help from allies, we’ve also defeated bills introduced in the state legislature aimed at reducing wolf protections and allowing more wolf-killing. Repeated wolf-killing by the state wildlife agency is costly and out of step with the wishes of most residents, who favor coexisting with wolves and have expressed their outrage over the agency’s regressive wolf-management policies and actions.
We continue to push the state to adopt enforceable, transparent regulations for wolf recovery and conservation. In 2020 and again in 2023, we petitioned the state Fish and Wildlife Commission to adopt such regulations. Both times the commission denied our petitions, but the governor granted our appeals, overturning the denials and directing the commission to commence rulemaking. While no rulemaking has happened yet, we’ve seen a noticeable decline in the number and frequency of wolf-kill orders authorized by the state wildlife agency, and we believe that strong public support for wolves — and all the legal and administrative challenges — has helped bring about this shift.
The Center and allies continue to engage the public to help bring accountability and transparency to wolf management in Washington. We’re also still monitoring and challenging agency actions that are based on politics rather than on science and what’s best for wolves.
OREGON
Wolves started returning to Oregon in 1999, with its first pack established in 2008. By the end of 2024, a total of 204 wolves in 25 packs with 17 breeding pairs were confirmed. There are also 18 small groups — with two to three wolves each — that don’t yet qualify as packs. All but seven of the packs are in Oregon’s eastern wolf management zone.
In 2014 the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that the wolf known as OR-7 — who made California part of his range for more than two years but then returned to Oregon — had found a mate and sired pups in southwestern Oregon, starting the Rogue pack: the first known wolf family in western Oregon in more than 70 years. OR-7 and his mate OR-94 had pups each year from 2014 to 2018, and at least four of those pups made their way into California too. OR-7 hasn’t been seen since fall 2019 and is presumed dead, and in early 2021 his longtime mate was found dead of natural causes. In recent years, other wolf families have been confirmed in western Oregon in several counties. But wolves are still at very low numbers in the state and remain absent from much of its identified suitable wolf habitat.
As in Washington, in Oregon Congress stripped wolves of their federal protection in the eastern third of the state in 2011, and in 2021 wolves lost that protection throughout the state — until our legal work saw it restored the next year. In 2015 the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission prematurely stripped wolves of state Endangered Species Act protection, and in 2019 the commission approved state wolf-plan revisions that set the bar low for when wolves can be killed over livestock conflicts and opened the door to potential wolf hunting and trapping.
Over the years the Center and allies have defeated anti-wolf bills in the state legislature and have sued the state for improper actions. A 2011 lawsuit we filed with allies challenged Oregon for rushing to kill wolves in violation of the state’s wolf plan, winning a court injunction blocking the killing of wolves for livestock conflicts. During the several years that lawsuit was pending, though the wolf population nearly doubled the number of livestock–wolf conflicts did not increase because the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and ranchers were forced to use nonlethal — and much more effective — conflict-deterrence measures. Following settlement of the lawsuit in summer of 2013, wolves had stronger protections in Oregon.
The state’s delisting of wolves and revisions to its wolf plan are unfortunate steps backward — attempts to appease ranching and hunting groups that would prefer to stop Oregon's wolf recovery in its tracks. In 2021 the state took the extreme step of killing eight of the 11-member Lookout Mountain pack (and several months-old pups who were too young to hunt) for livestock conflicts — despite the lack of evidence that killing wolves stops conflicts.
Science shows that when agencies kill wolves or let the public hunt or trap wolves, illegal killing of wolves increases.
As long as the state’s wildlife agency kills wolves for livestock conflicts — signaling it believes wolves aren’t worthy of protection — we fear more illegal killings and are urging Oregon to improve its anti-poaching efforts. The Center and allies continue to push back against agency wolf-killing to resolve conflicts, and we won’t stop fighting for wolves’ full recovery in the state and regionwide.
CALIFORNIA
Gray wolves started their return to California in December 2011, when wolf OR-7 — a 2 ½-year-old radio-collared wolf from Oregon — crossed into California. He became the first confirmed wild wolf in the Golden State in 87 years. After nearly 15 months exploring seven different Northern California counties, he traveled back to Oregon in March 2013 but returned to California several more times that year and the next, clearly including California in his range. Overall, he traveled 4,000-plus miles, earning the nickname “Journey.”
To protect OR-7 and any wolves who might follow him, two months after he entered California the Center and allies petitioned to grant wolves state Endangered Species Act safeguards — which we won in 2014 after an extensive public process. That same day the California Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed that OR-7 and a mate had denned in southern Oregon and produced puppies. Though OR-7 and his mate stayed in Oregon, where they became known as the Rogue pack, at least five of the pups they had in the next four years entered California.
The next step for wolf recovery in California came in 2015 when, for the first time in at least 100 years, biologists documented a wolf family in Siskiyou County. Named the Shasta pack by state wildlife agency staff, the all-black wolf family consisted of one breeding pair and their five pups. Unfortunately, implicated in livestock conflicts, just months later the pack disappeared.
Between 2015 and 2024, multiple other Oregon wolves entered California. Some returned home to Oregon, while others remained in California, and some disappeared or were found dead. Spring 2021 brought the arrival of OR-93, a young male wolf from Oregon’s White River pack, who crossed the central valley to become the first wolf documented on California’s south-central coast in 200 or even 300 years — but a vehicle struck and killed him near Interstate 5 in November of that year. OR-93’s story enthralled people around the globe, and his death highlights the necessity of wildlife crossings.
In 2016 the California Department of Fish and Wildlife released its Wolf Conservation and Management Plan — some parts of which provide strong wolf protections, while others fall far short.
In 2021, after the Center participated in stakeholder group discussions, the state legislature allocated $3 million for a three-year pilot project to compensate livestock operators for wolf-livestock conflicts. The program was highly successful, and after the funds were used, the legislature appropriated more in 2024. We hope the state will keep funding this valuable program.
As of May 2025, California had 10 confirmed wolf packs, plus two known small groups in Northern California, each with two to three wolves. One pack, the Yowlumni pack, lives as far south as Tulare County. That pack’s breeding female, a direct descendant of OR-7, traveled nearly 300 miles south of any other California packs to establish territory near Giant Sequoia National Monument and the Tule River Tribe’s lands. OR-7’s California legacy lives on.
In 2025 the state wildlife agency announced that, under the state wolf plan, California has enough packs with successful breeding pairs that ranchers and county officials — if both state and federal law allow — may adopt more aggressive measures to haze wolves away from livestock. Fortunately, killing wolves for livestock conflicts is still prohibited.
But in Northern California, sheriffs and county boards of supervisors have been writing to the state wildlife agency’s director and passing resolutions declaring “a wolf emergency.” They’re seeking state and federal authorization for sheriffs to investigate suspected livestock predations and kill wolves they deem a threat to human safety or property. Misinformation and exaggerated claims seem to follow wolves wherever they go.
As in Washington and Oregon, in California we continue to advocate for wolves’ full protection, recovery, and peaceful coexistence with humans.
