It is a gray wolf – an animal listed as endangered in many US states. According to the Washington Post, in October 2017, a group of zoologists in Oregon first encountered it, which weighed about 40kg at the time, and tagged it to track its movements in the wild.
The group gave it the number OR-54, the offspring of a previously tagged wolf, OR-7. Due to the small number of gray wolves, OR-54 and OR-7 had to travel a very long distance to find a mate.
In particular, with OR-54, the research team recorded that since January 2018, it traveled 14,000km, about 12 times the distance from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, to find a mate but was unsuccessful.
However, OR-54 did not find a mate. The research team recently discovered that it had died in California at the age of about 4. The cause of death is being further investigated.
Ms. Amaroq Weiss, a wolf protection campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that like her father OR-7, OR-54 was a ray of hope for the gray wolf pack to recover but ultimately failed.
Black is the current main habitat of gray wolves in the US, while blue is the previous travel distance of OR-7, OR-54’s father – Photo: Flickr
“Although it sounds strange, wolves today usually only live for 4-5 years, often dying from conflicts within the pack, while foraging or being shot by humans,” Weiss explained.
Ms. Weiss said OR-54’s death also showed that the number of gray wolves in the US is too small for them to be able to mate and maintain the breed.
The GPS system shows that California is large but usually has only about 10 gray wolves living. At times, GPS only detected exactly one gray wolf in this state.
Previously, the federal government wanted to lift the protection regulations for gray wolves because the wolf population was gradually recovering. However, zoologists still want to keep wolves on the protected list for a long time. “We want each wolf to have a long life, thereby contributing to the development of the ecosystem.”
