Until their reintroduction in the 1990s wolves were all but wiped out in the Northern Rocky Mountains. No wolves had been spotted in Eastern Oregon since 1946, and further west, the last sighting of a wolf in California was in 1924.

The formation and spread of the Imnaha wolfpack in Eastern Oregon, however, has returned the apex predators’ howls to the Northwest. Following the birth of wolfpups in 2010 in the Imnaha region of Oregon, a lone wolf, tagged as OR-7 by Oregon Fish and Wildlife, and Journey, by Oregon school children, wandered over a thousand miles into Northern California in late 2011 with the hope of a wilder future for us all.

But starting in 2012 wolves have been delisted in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming and are well on their way to being legally hunted in the Great Lakes Region further East. The demonization of wolves by ranchers and other interests has already lead to the murder of at least one wolf in Oregon. In California, anti-wolf alliances are already forming should a pack form there.

for more information and analysis on the Imnaha wolfpack and the wolf wars in Oregon read The Howls of Reprisal: Wolf Defense in Oregon by Portland Animal Defense League, printed in the Brigid 2012 issue of the Earth First! Journal.