Why the wolf OR7 is a celebrity
By Emma Marris, High Country News
Night is falling in the Wood River Valley, a broad, flat expanse of southern Oregon, just south of Crater Lake National Park. John Stephenson, a gray-haired, lantern-jawed U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, is building a campfire on this chilly late October evening. He is here to be a human — to move around and make noise and generally discourage a nearby wolf pack from coming out of the dark timbered hills.
These wolves have killed four yearling cattle in this particular pasture already. And this isn’t any old wolf pack; it was the first to settle in southern Oregon, and the family of a legendary lupine wanderer known as OR7.
This is Stephenson’s fourth night in this field. In a few days, the cows will be rounded up and shipped to California for the winter. Once they’re gone, he’ll be able to more or less relax until the cattle return in the spring.