Siskiyou County is in extreme northern California, right up against the Oregon border. Recently a group of humans went to the county Board of Supervisors with a petition requesting that the Board forbid wolves to live in Siskiyou County. I’m not making this up. Here’s the article.
My inner bureaucrat had a lot of fun with this idea. Do you post this on the county limit signs? “Welcome to Siskiyou County– Except for you, Mr. Wolf!” Does the wolf get a citation if it moves into the county? Does it get a first warning? All silliness aside, of course that’s not the intent at all. These people want permission to shoot wolves.
Before we write them off completely as cranks or entitled hunters who can’t stand the competition, let’s analyse the problem. The concern is that wolves are predators. They eat things. The eat elk, which humans hunt for sport, and they also eat sheep, which humans raise for profit. The sheep thing could be pretty serious. And the California gray wolf population is exploding. I mean it. In the last two years the population has grown from zero wolves in the wild to… one. One. And he only lives here part-time. His designation is OR7 and he is a lone wolf — no pun intended –who wanders across the California-Oregon boarder from time to time. One part time wolf. Lock up your daughters.
Of course, he’ll probably bring some friends and family, so those Siskiyou folks are worried. Is OR7 eating a lot of sheep? It seems unlikely, because wolves hunt in packs. OR7 doesn’t have a pack. He may pull down the occasional lamb, but it’s more probably that he is eating mice, voles, rabbits and gophers. In fact, I think the Siskiyou organic farmers should put together a petition to hire wolves as their organic pest control solution. Of course the wolves would have to rent apartments in a neighboring county.