Apparent wolf photographed near Baker City

Dec. 21—Two photos and one video, both taken recently along Pocahontas Road about 2.7 miles west of 10th Street, appear to show a wolf crossing the two-lane road.

Brian Ratliff, district wildlife biologist at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's (ODFW) Baker City office, said the animal, so far as he can tell from the photos and video, is a wild wolf. Ratliff said it can be difficult, based solely on photos and a video, to distinguish between a wolf and a wolf-hybrid dog.

However, he said he's not aware of any such hybrids in the area.

If the animal is indeed a wild wolf, it wouldn't be the first to be confirmed in the general vicinity over the past decade or so, Ratliff said.

Individual wolves, likely dispersing from a pack elsewhere, have been confirmed on the east slopes of the Elkhorn Mountains through tracks, sightings and photos from ODFW game cameras, he said.

Ratliff also said there were reported wolf sightings in the Dooley Mountain area this summer and fall.

Wolves can travel long distances in a relatively short time, he said.

"Finding a wolf anywhere in Northeast Oregon would not surprise me," Ratliff said.

A majority of the state's known wolf packs and wolves are in the northeast corner of the state, according to ODFW data.

A dispersing wolf typically doesn't stay in an area unless it finds a mate, Ratliff said. As of Tuesday afternoon, he had received no further reports of a wolf sighting in the Baker Valley.

If a wolf did linger in the valley for an extended period, Ratliff said he would expect to hear about additional sightings and, potentially, photographs.

Although he acknowledged that the absence of such evidence doesn't mean a wolf isn't around.

"Just because you don't detect it doesn't mean it's not there," he said.

Ratliff said a herd of elk, a likely food source for a wolf, frequently crosses Pocahontas Road in that area. He said those sometimes end up moving to a state-run feeding site along Salmon Creek.

Ratliff said that based on the photos and video, he's confident that the animal that crossed Pocahontas Road, about half a mile east of the Washington Gulch Road, has not been fitted with a tracking collar. ODFW has collared many wolves so biologists can monitor the animals' movements.

He said two breeding females, one from the Keating pack east of Baker City, the other from the Cornucopia pack in eastern Baker County, dispersed from their packs around early November.

But both those wolves moved north, into the Snake River unit, based on data from their tracking collars, Ratliff said. He's confident that neither of those wolves is the animal photographed along Pocahontas Road.

There was previously a wolf pack in the Lookout Mountain area, east of Baker City, but based on ODFW definitions the pack no longer exists because there is neither a breeding male nor breeding female.

The pack's breeding female was illegally shot and killed in early October.

The breeding male was found dead in July, but there was no evidence of poaching in that case.

Ratliff said he believes there are four wolves in the Lookout Mountain area — one yearling, born in the spring of 2021, and three pups born in the spring of 2022.

None of the remaining wolves has a tracking collar.