April 2021
A wolf roams the Central Coast of California, the first in almost two hundred years. Born three years ago near Oregon’s Mount Hood to the White River Pack, the young male left his family, as young wolves do, to look for a mate, heading south into California, passing through Modoc County, Mono County; Tuolumne, Mariposa, and Madera Counties; Fresno County, San Benito County, Monterey County; and now San Luis Obispo County. The gray wolf — traveling roughly sixteen miles a day, at a trot of roughly five miles per hour — has journeyed through Northern California lava beds, over snowy Sierra Nevada passes, near Yosemite, and across three major freeways, and now roams the mountains above San Luis Obispo. The wolf has traveled a thousand miles in two months. A director of a wolf-advocacy group said his arrival here is “something akin to the [first] moonwalk.” The last such wolf spotted on the Central Coast was in Monterey County — in 1826. For thousands of years the Chumash have called this once-abundant creature miy. We have dubbed this particular miy “OR-93.”
