The famed wandering wolf of the west has died. But OR7’s memory lives on in our hearts

A few times in your life, an animal captures your heart.

I’ve never owned a dog, personally, but I grew up with them. They were black Labrador retrievers, both named “Bum,” and they lived almost exclusively in kennels.

Wolves, in stark contrast, know not from kennels, fences, roads or jurisdictional boundaries. They roam over thousands of miles in their lifetimes in search of a mate and the chance to reproduce.

Perhaps the best-known wolf – besides the Big Bad Wolf, Wolf Blitzer and the Werewolves of London – is OR7. Also known as “Journey” (but no one really called him that), OR7 was a media sensation eight years ago in Oregon and Northern California.

Wildlife biologists now say they believe OR7 is probably dead, so the journey may well be over. OR7 was 11, and that’s on the outer edge of the canid’s actuarial table.

Roblyn Brown, Oregon’s wolf coordinator, told The Oregonian that “We don’t know if OR7 has died, but it would be reasonable to assume considering his age, which is old for a wolf in the wild. It is natural for packs to change over time as individual wolves are born, disperse or die.”

The Sacramento Bee’s Ryan Sabalow wrote that “The arrival of the wolf known as OR7 (in 2011) and his months of wanderings through the state’s rugged northeastern corner captivated the world and set off a fearsome debate between environmentalists and ranchers over whether wolves warranted protections under California’s Endangered Species Act.”

Let me be clear: With his one small pawprint for wolfkind, OR7 was the Neil Armstrong of wolves in California. Before 2011, it had been decades before there were any wolves in the Golden State.

Wolves are indeed controversial creatures. Ranchers hate them because they eat their livestock, and The Bee reported that ranchers fought efforts “in 2014 to list gray wolves as endangered under the state’s Endangered Species Act, arguing at the time a single wolf’s forays into the state weren’t enough to warrant the protections.”

“I don’t think our general population, especially in urban areas, understands the challenge that wolves have on livestock operations,” Rancher Veril Nelson told The Bee.

Probably not.

In contrast, urban types romanticize their beauty and their peripatetic spirit.

OR7 also became a regular feature of my Sunday cartoon panel at The Oregonian, and the newspaper sold uncounted numbers of “OR7 for President” bumper stickers and posters. Like my relationship with Gov. Jerry Brown’s corgi, Sutter, I was the guy who drew OR7. I follow closely in Charles Schulz’s inky Snoopy pawprints.

OR7 became a thing because we need “A Thing” from time to time. OR7 was an unwitting, wandering rock star looking for love. It’s a common human/wolf story that anyone can relate to.

In fact, since the wolf re-introduction in 2009, OR7 was a primary reason why the wolf population grew in the northwest, and contributed to a steady rise in their numbers from his genetic material. Indeed, there are now 158 wolves in Oregon alone.

According to The Oregonian, “one of (OR7’s) offspring would go on to become the breeding male of the only known wolf pack in California and two of his female pups have also migrated south, one reportedly traveling as far south as Lake Tahoe.”

That’s the quintessential California story: come in anonymously from somewhere else, retool and remake yourself, and eventually run the table. Maybe get a place in Tahoe.

Rest in peace from your long, long travels, OR7. When you hear howling at the moon sometime, it’s just your fans letting you know we are now wandering.

We will find our way home, too.

This story was originally published April 20, 2020 at 5:00 AM.