Pack status: No longer active. Designated in 2015.
The Shasta Pack was California’s first contemporary wild wolf pack in nearly 90 years, first discovered in 2015 following sightings of an individual adult black wolf in Siskiyou County. Subsequent observations of this pack included a sighting of two black wolves together and trail camera images of a family of black wolves: two adults and five pups.
DNA from scat collected from the breeding pair established that they both originated from Oregon’s Imnaha Pack in NE Oregon and were siblings to OR7 of the Rogue Pack in Southern Oregon. Scat tests collected from two of the pups indicated they were male and female.
After producing a litter of five pups in 2015, they stopped being regularly detected in November 2015, after the pack was implicated in livestock conflicts. Most of the Shasta Pack was presumed dead once sightings and detections stopped. However, one yearling was confirmed to have shown up at the pack’s rendezvous site in May 2016. This same yearling was detected and confirmed by DNA analysis in northwest Nevada in November 2016.
Photos & Video
Useful Links
California Department of Fish & Wildlife – Gray Wolf
