Long before our landscape was sliced up and dotted with human homes, cars and trains, people and wildlife shared the connected land. Wolves, coyotes, fox and native tribes coexisted for untold generations according to Ken Hall, member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and of Oregon’s 2004 Wolf Advisory Committee. They did not compete but complemented one another and adapted together to an ever-changing, circular, seasonal system of events. No one – human or animal – was of greater importance than another.
There are fewer wolves today, and those that are roaming the Northwest live in a very different world. So, what happened to the wolves of the Northwest and is there a chance we can ever more peacefully share the landscape again? Read on to gain a greater understanding of the history of wolves in the Northwest.
Wolves are Abundant… Until They’re Not
In the early and mid-1800s, settler and Native Tribal accounts alike note how numerous wolves were throughout the Northwest. European immigrants, however, arrived with a preconceived aversion for wolves. Many had eradicated the animals in their homelands, and it did not take much for them to see wolves as threats to their livelihoods.
Although wolves were largely the target of persecution among the Northwest’s first settlers, they also played a pivotal role in the formation of the first territorial government in the Northwest. In 1843 residents of “Oregon country” – a region that included present day Oregon, Washington, Idaho and parts of Montana, Wyoming and British Columbia – held their first “Wolf Meeting.” These meetings established bounties, and while they were intended to discuss eradication, they also allowed the significant number of settlers to discuss the formation of civil government in the region.
Wolf bounties continued for the next several decades. By 1900, due to sustained poisoning, trapping and shooting, wolves were eliminated from most of the Northwest.
In the early 20th Century, some remnant populations remained, but those were soon eliminated. For example, an estimated 130 wolves remained on national forest lands in the Oregon Cascades in 1939, but the population was gone by the 1940s. On the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, there was an estimated 115 wolves in 1910 and 40-60 wolves in 1919. This population, however, continued to decline rapidly and was nearly gone by the late 1930s. Elsewhere in Washington, wolves were a rare occurrence but a few persisted through the first half of the 1900s.
Thankfully, this is not the end of the story.
A Timeline of Wolves Returning to the Northwest
On a national level, wolves were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 1974. At the state level, Washington listed wolves as endangered in 1980 and Oregon did the same in 1987. In 1987, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service completed their Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Plan and in 1995 and 1996, wolves were reintroduced to Central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. (Read more about the history of gray wolf protections in the Lower 48 here.)
Then, starting in the 1990s, wolves begin to return to the Northwest, and Defenders of Wildlife was there, the whole time, working to help their recovery.
1987: Defenders established a wolf-livestock conflict compensation fund in western states to support producers before states develop their own compensation programs.
Early 1990s: Washington experienced a flurry of wolf activity, with wolves primarily coming down into the North Cascades from southern British Columbia.
1999: A lone gray wolf, female B-45, entered Oregon from the Idaho population. Two more were documented between January 1999 and October 2000.
2002 – 2007: Wolf reports began coming in from Northeast Washington’s Pend Oreille and Stevens counties.
2008: The first pack with pups was confirmed in Washington in western Okanogan and northern Chelan counties, representing the first fully documented breeding pair in the state since the 1930s.
The first pack with pups was also confirmed in Oregon in northern Union County, also representing the first fully documented breeding pair since the mid-1940s.
2011: Defenders was one of the stakeholder groups in developing legislation which establishes a state-level compensation program in Oregon.
Wolves were federally delisted in the eastern third of Oregon and Washington. Wolves remain federally listed, to this day, in the western 2/3 of both states.
2015: The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission delisted wolves from the state ESA because wolves reached a “minimum conservation threshold.” Wolves remain protected, however, by Oregon’s Wolf Plan and its associated rules.
2024: After considering a petition to lessen protections, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission maintained state endangered status for wolves.
A Near Present Day Look
Despite the mix of protections, both Washington and Oregon saw a minimum wolf count of over 200 individuals in 2024. Defenders continues to work closely with a wide variety of partners – state fish and wildlife agencies and commissions, elected officials, ranchers, recreationists, activists, and other conservation organizations – to advocate for policies and practices to ensure continued wolf recovery in the Northwest.
Stay tuned for the states’ 2025 counts, which should come out in April, and keep your eyes on our blogs for a follow up later this spring about the future of wolves in this region.
Author
Colin Reynolds
