August 21, 2015: The gray wolf returns to California

[Undertoad]

The gray wolf is not an endangered species, globally speaking; there are a lot of them, there generally always has been a lot of them, all over the world. But they don't actually get along with humans like their canus family member Dog does.

So once humanity came on the scene, we reduced their number by 2/3rds. By the 1950s there were none left in western Europe, none in Mexico and almost none in the US. Typically there were actual government programs to kill the beasts and they can tell you the exact year the last wolf was killed in various countries.

But humanity has come around, and now the government programs protect the wolves, and they are coming back.

This May and again in July, folks in northern California noticed something on a trail camera. Hey, they said, was that a wolf?



So officials did what officials do, they collected some turds and measured some tracks, and said yeah maybe this is a gray wolf.

But they also put out a bunch more cameras, and last week...



A mating pair and five cubs.



The state of California now has gray wolves.