This comes after a drop the prior year, which saw 230 wolves<\/a>, 18 breeding pairs and 43 packs, per the report from WDFW, tribal partners and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.<\/p>\n Wolves are counted each year by WDFW via track, aerial and camera surveys, according to WDFW. Because it\u2019s hard to tally every animal, the results feature minimum wolf counts linked to packs plus 12.5% for lone wolves and dispersers, which are wolves that leave to find a mate or form new packs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kristin Botzet with the Defenders of Wildlife advocacy organization said that annual reports help monitor the animals\u2019 progress in recovery.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s always exciting to see when you have growth,\u201d she said in a Monday call.<\/p>\n Washington isn\u2019t the only state with optimistic new wolf-population numbers.<\/a> Oregon\u2019s fish and wildlife department late last week also published a report showing that that state saw a wolf-count bump of 13%<\/a> in 2025 over the previous year.<\/p>\n Wolves are a native species to Washington, Botzet said, but by the mid-1930s, they\u2019d been wiped out. Reasons included overhunting and certain programs to eliminate them.<\/p>\n In 1980, wolves were classified as endangered<\/a> under state law.<\/p>\n Then in the late 20th century, following better wildlife-management practices across the U.S., wolves began making a return, Botzet said. Starting in 2008, Washington saw its first established pack.<\/p>\n Gray wolves\u2019 population is mainly concentrated today in the eastern part of Washington<\/a>, per the Defenders of Wildlife. Despite the state\u2019s progress, there\u2019s still work to do in reaching the recovery aims in the state\u2019s conservation and management plan<\/a> from 2011, which, in part, set targeted population numbers.<\/p>\n While two of the plan\u2019s recovery zones, the Northern Cascades and Eastern Washington regions, have achieved their recovery objectives, the third \u2014 called the Southern Cascades and Northwest Coast region \u2014 has not, Botzet said.<\/p>\n She explained that the last region, which includes the Tacoma and Olympia areas, logged at least one wolf-dispersal event last year. To her that was good news: Even though the wolf didn\u2019t stick around, it showed that the animals can make it to that region, which is the remaining area in the state still needing to meet full recovery.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been difficult for wolves to get established in the Southern Cascades and Northwest Coast region, she said, adding that poaching is a pretty major problem.<\/p>\n Botzet also takes the recent increase in the Northern Cascades region\u2019s breeding pairs as a sign of hope for the southern zone. Young wolves in the north will likely hit the point that they\u2019ll begin to scope for new territory to establish, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo that means that we\u2019re probably going to see more dispersal events in the future to that southern region,\u201d Botzet said.<\/p>\n Washington has also witnessed a decline in reports of wolf-livestock depredation: just 17 last year compared with 54 in 2024, the Defenders of Wildlife said in a news release. Depredation means when predators, including wolves, injure or kill domestic animals.<\/p>\n In 2025, WDFW logged 14 collared wolves that dispersed from their pack territories and 17 depredation events, which involved five of 49 packs.<\/p>\n \u201cThat leaves 90% of known packs that were not involved in any known depredations in 2025 (including probable depredations) despite most pack territories overlapping livestock operations on both public and private lands,\u201d WDFW wolf biologist Trent Roussin said in an April 17 news release.<\/p>\n Related Stories from The Olympian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Washington\u2019s gray wolf population is making a comeback, according to a new state report. On Friday the Washington…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-597993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/889028916.jpg\" "\\"889028916.jpg\\"")
A gray wolf walks through falling snow at the Smithsonian\u2019s National Zoo in Washington, D.C., in 2017. Eric Baradat AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n