Howling with Wolves
Students journey to the California Wolf Center
For the environmental journalism students who assembled at the Shannon Center at 10 a.m. on a hot Saturday in mid-April, the long drive to Julian, California passed in relative quiet save for the sound of heavy traffic heading east on Route 60 and the brief conversations flaring up between groggy students. An hour or so into the trip, cities gave way to suburbs and then suburbs gave way to edge-of-the-desert casino towns such as Temecula and then for miles and miles there was nothing but green pastures, mountain passes and the ocassional herd of cows. “Anybody wondering where the heck we are?” journalism professor Joe Donnelly asked the class.
After months of planning and numerous logistical challenges, they were finally on a 15-passenger van bound for the California Wolf Center. The center is about ten winding, mountainous-road miles south of Julian, a quaint, Old-West-style tourist town known for its apples that sits just south of Palomar Mountain on the edge of the Anzo-Borrego Desert State Park.
More than two hours after the van departed Whittier College it finally came to a sign in the shape of an arrow that read “California Wolf Center.” Students eager to stetch their legs after the long drive let out a sigh of relief when the van parked to wait for its escort up the steep, dirt road. After about half an hour, during which other visitors, some arriving from as far away as Las Vegas, lined up their cars behind the van, Wolf Center administrator Douglas Cook finally gave the van driver the okay to follow him up the hill. The drive was rocky and the road was small.
An Indiana Jones Adventure-style ride up the mountainside brought us to our final destination, which looked like a small cabin in a high-desert wilderness. Inside the center, wolves were were painted on the walls, carved as statues, framed in photographs, and still more wolf paraphernalia could be found and bought at the gift store. In the bathroom, paintings of wolves glared at you while you while you did your business.
About 50 people signed up for The Wolf Recovery Tour, some of them loud toddlers who seemed like they’d rather be at Disneyland. Wolf Center program coordinator John Murtaugh kicked off the tour with a presentation on the center’s mission and the importance of wolves to ecosystems. The two types of wolves Murtaugh focused on were the Mexican gray wolf and the gray wolf. The Center hosts packs of both animals. Murtaugh gave special attention to the Mexican Gray Wolf, a subspecies of its larger, gray wolf cousins and one of the rarest mammals alive today.
Mexican gray wolves once thrived throughout the Southwest and in Mexico, but like all wolves, they were extirpated to the brink of extinction. In 1997, only 11 survived in the wild. That year, the California Wolf Center joined the Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Program and breeds wolves for potentional reintroduction to their primary recovery areas in the Apache and Gila National forests in Eastern Arizona and Western New Mexico. Now, according to Murtaugh, there are approximately 113 Mexican gray Wolves alive in the wild which shows progress.
Murtaugh went on to explain how wolves are the “engineers of biodiversity.” Without wolves, their prey — which are typically ungulates such as elk, deer and even moose — would overgraze grasses and leaves, which leads to a variety of problems from riparian degradation to scarcity of resources.
“Our main mission is wolf recovery in the wild,” said Murtaugh, describing how the center’s program collaborates with universities across the United States to help the wolf population and release more wolves in the wild. Prior to releasing wolves, the center fits them with radio collars so they can studied.
The most recent milestone for the center took place back in August 2015 when the California Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed that California had its first native wolf pack in about 90 years. The Shasta pack consists of a breeding pair and five puppies. According to The Mercury News there have been no sightings of the pack since May 2016, though a member was confirmed to have been at least passing through Eastern Nevada, close to the California line. That’s not surprising, though, as it’s very rare to see a wolf in the wild.
Besides the the vital role wolves play in ecosystem health — wolves are a keystone species — Murtaugh explained that their ultimate goal is to save a species that deserves a chance at life. “The wolf has a right to exist and to exist in this world,” he said sternly, noting that man had put wolves on the brink of extinction and had a moral obligation to help them recover.
He then asked the crowd why they were there. Many audience members answered that they simply loved wolves for being mysterious and beautiful creatures. Murtaugh agreed with the audience’s answers and expressed that his love for wolves is the reason he does what he does.
After Murtaugh’s presentation, the group was led outside where they were met by Acting Animal Care Manager Caleb Carroll who would be the tour guide that afternoon. He warned the group that they might not be able to see the Mexican Gray Wolves because it was breeding season. The center doesn’t do check ups to see if females wolves are pregnant, instead it waits to see if puppies come out of the den which usually happens toward the end of May.
Carroll first led the group to the Arctic gray wolves. As people looked at the wolves in awe, Carroll shared information about the wolves and answered questions. According to Carroll, the average lifespan of a wolf is seven years in the wilderness and 12 to 15 years in captivity.
The center feeds the wolves fish from SeaWorld and is sometimes provided roadkill by the San Diego Police Department. Wolves are fed two to three times a week, a total of 25 to 35 pounds per meal. One woman asked how wolves are able to survive in the wild if they were not able to hunt in captivity. “We don’t have to teach them to hunt,” Carroll explained. “It’s a natural instinct. Sometimes they catch ravens that fly into their captivity.”
Currently there are a total of 23 wolves at the center. According to Carroll, a couple of the female Mexican gray wolves are on a waiting list to be released into the wild.
