ODFW Authorizes Killing of 3 Wolves After Keating Valley Cattle Attacks

A week-old calf attacked in the Keating Valley late on March 8 became the final trigger for state wildlife officials to authorize the killing of the three remaining wolves from a pack that had spent months picking off cattle east of Baker City.

Brian Ratliff, district wildlife biologist at ODFW's Baker City office, said the March 8-9 attack on the injured calf prompted the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to authorize state and federal agents to kill the three wolves still alive from the Black Pines Pack. The three are the breeding female and two pups born in the spring of 2025; one of them carries a tracking collar.

The authorization caps a months-long removal effort that had already cut the pack from an estimated seven to nine wolves down to three. In late January and early February, U.S. Wildlife Services trapped and killed three pups from the 2025 litter. A fourth wolf, a federal Wildlife Services employee killed on Jan. 28 in Keating Valley, was caught in a trap near the site of a recent calf attack. Then on Feb. 19, Ratliff himself shot and killed the pack's breeding male about 15 miles east of Baker City, bringing the total removed in that stretch to four.

After shooting the breeding male, Ratliff said ODFW would monitor the survivors and "act accordingly" if the attacks continued. For a stretch, it looked as if the strategy might hold. Ratliff said that on 15 of the 18 days following Feb. 19, the three wolves followed a rigid daily routine: sheltering in the forest north of Keating Valley during daylight hours and returning to the valley floor at night. Dozens of newborn calves were in the valley during that period, yet the wolves apparently left them alone.

"They've been very, very consistent," Ratliff said. "We're trying to break that pattern."

The wolves briefly shifted west into the Medical Springs area, but ranchers there hazed them repeatedly and drove them back toward the forest. Ratliff said the ranchers "worked very, very hard" during that stretch. The wolves returned to Keating Valley and, on the night of March 8, attacked and injured the week-old calf.

The affected rancher had not been passive during the conflict. ODFW spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy said the producer has used nonlethal deterrents for years and since January had increased human presence in the area, checked cows at night, moved calving cows to safer locations, and deployed radio-activated guard boxes that sound an alarm when a collared wolf is nearby.

State rules permit lethal removal when repeated attacks present a significant risk to livestock and nonlethal methods have failed to stop them. ODFW had already authorized killing up to four wolves from the pack before the March calf attack; the new authorization covers the three that remain.

Dennehy said lethal removal has been approved roughly half a dozen times in Oregon since wolves were re-established in the state in 2009. The most recent state-authorized removal before this year was in June 2018, when the Pine Creek pack killed two calves and injured four more in Baker County. The Black Pines Pack itself was the subject of a November 2023 authorization to remove up to six wolves after ten confirmed depredation events in Baker and Union counties.

As of the authorization, Dennehy said she did not yet know whether ODFW would directly assist in carrying out the current removal, which can also be executed by the livestock producer or their agents, or by federal Wildlife Services personnel. Trapping, ground shooting, and aerial operations using a Piper Super Cub have all been part of the removal effort since January.