2015 was a big year for wolves in California. As wolf advocates celebrated the 20th anniversary of the reintroduction of the gray wolf to Yellowstone and Central Idaho, two black wolves were quietly making their way down from Oregon. These two animals, a male and a female, paired, mated and settled down in Northern California. They denned on the eastern slopes of Mount Shasta and quietly began raising five pups.

Two wolves documented in Oregon’s Keno Unit, just north of California, January, 2015.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife had been receiving reports of wolf sightings in the region since August of 2014. In early 2015, citizens of southeastern Siskiyou county began seeing a large black wolf, about the time the new wolf pair was settling down to raise their pups. In May, a trail camera in eastern Siskiyou County caught what appeared to be a large, dark colored canid…