A few days ago the Wall Street Journal published a charming and amusing story in which the narrator is a wolf. A four-year-old, gray male wolf, to be exact.
Fitted with a GPS tracking collar while still a pup, this wolf is known to the wildlife authorities who monitor his movements as OR7.
Everyone agrees it had been more than 80 years since any confirmed sighting of a gray wolf in California. Thus, when this particular wolf crossed the Oregon border into the Golden State in late December 2011, he became a minor celebrity.
OR7 has since returned to Oregon, but his visit served as a catalyst. It caused four environmental organizations to take leave of their senses.
In February 2012, a mere nine weeks after OR7 wandered into California, the Center for Biological Diversity, Big Wildlife, the Environmental Protection Information Center, and the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center jointly petitioned to have the gray wolf declared an endangered species under California’s Endangered Species Act.
The 36-page petition appears here – and is backed up here.
Despite the fact that only a single such wolf existed in the entire state, the petition wanted this species to be declared “endangered throughout its range in California.” The italics here and below are mine.
The petition says that
There can be no doubt that human-caused mortality in the form of…vehicle strikes is a primary threat to gray wolves in California…This threat is likely to increase in California as human development continues to fragment wolf habitat…
Except that there are no gray wolves – plural – in California to be hit by automobiles. Thus there can be no established gray wolf habitat.
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The Tale of the Non-Endangered Gray Wolf | NoFrakkingConsensus