Heart Breaking Story- Endangered wolf dies alone after traveling almost 9000 miles to find a mate

Living with Spain’s growing wolf population

The number of wolves in Spain is increasing.

A Wolf known as OR-54 left home in Oregon in search of a mate, and scientists tracked her progress – until she sadly died last week.

According to the tracker, the journey took her further south in California than any other wolf since 1924. The young female gray wolf bid goodbye to her family left home and crossed the state line into California to find love.

That was in January 2018. For the next two years, the wolf known by scientists OR-54 wandered through mountains and pastures, occasionally killing livestock for food.

Twice she went home to her parents in Oregon, perhaps complaining of the lack of dates. She even crossed the state line into Nevada last fall. All the while, she kept walking – an average of 13 miles each day – in search of a mate.

Leaving home is a normal thing for a young wolf, says Amaroq Weiss, a biologist at the environmental non-profit Center for Biological Diversity. Weiss says: “When wolves get to one and a half or two years old, they are striking out from their birth pack, they are out there looking for mates and territory of their own.”

Even within her family, this was a common thing: OR-54’s father, OR-7, had looked for a mate in California for years before returning to Oregon to have pups.

OR-54’s story sadly came to a close this week when she was found dead in Shasta county. California’s fish and wildlife department are doing a necropsy to determine the cause of her death; she was only three years old. OR-54’s journey took her further south in California than any other wolf since 1924.

Her radio collar linked her with the death of livestock killed in areas she was passing through.

Last Autumn, the battery on her collar began to die, and the transmissions became more scarce. The data that did come in showed her collar in one spot this winter, not moving. Wildlife officials tracked her to the spot and found her body.

Aw, sad…

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Written by

Tony Winterburn

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