Since then, gray wolves have mounted a comeback in Oregon, with the state confirming its first pack in 60 years in 2009.
Instead, the roughly 170 wolves that call the state home are descendants of animals that naturally recolonized the state from Montana in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Unlike other western states, Oregon’s gray wolves were not reintroduced by humans. (Photo: Courtesy of Oregon Fish and Wildlife) She declined to share why police believed the poisonings were intentional or what types of poison the necropsies had detected, citing the ongoing investigation. “OSP believes wolves were the intended target,” Bigman wrote. In an email, Stephanie Bigman, a public information officer for the agency, said police did not believe the wolves had accidentally ingested the poison. In a press release on December 2, the Oregon State Police said their investigation had exhausted all possible leads and appealed to members of the public to share any information they might have about the poisonings. In both cases, toxicology found poison in the deceased wolves’ bodies, although investigators could not conclusively determine if it had killed them. In the following months, two more wolves would turn up dead in Union County, an adult male in April and a young female in July. Police transported all six of the corpses to the US Fish and Wildlife Service forensic lab in Ashland, Oregon, where necropsies confirmed that all six wolves, as well as the magpies and skunk, had died via poisoning. The body count grew in March, when officers investigating a mortality signal from a collared wolf discovered a female-a lone dispersed wolf from the Keating pack-dead in the same area, alongside a skunk and a magpie. A helicopter search uncovered a dead magpie in the same area. The dead animals comprised the entirety of the Catherine Pack, which had roamed the Eagle Cap wilderness since its original breeding pair joined in July 2014. When troopers arrived on the scene, they discovered five deceased wolves, three males and two females. On February 9, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife notified state police about a possibly dead collared wolf southeast of Mount Harris in Union County, located in the state’s northwest corner. Police in Oregon are asking for the public’s help in locating the person or people who poisoned eight wolves earlier this year, erasing an entire pack from the state’s recovering population.
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