Old Reelfoot was reputedly a fearless and ferocious bear. His bad temper was no doubt due in part to his crippled foot and the many bullets he carried from encounters with ranchers: it is said that when he died, he had nearly a quart of lead in his body. Old Reelfoot was hunted by the region’s white settlers for over 40 years until he was finally killed on April 10, 1890, in what is today the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument on the Oregon-California border. His body reportedly measured twelve feet long, and weighed over 2000 pounds. Old Reelfoot was not the last grizzly from our region, however: one was reported as still surviving in the Siskiyou National Forest as late as 1925.

The edges of the Klamath-Siskiyou were also home to one of the last, and most famous, of Oregon’s wolves. This animal, an almost white old male called the Sycan Wolf, was trapped east of Fort Klamath in 1927. The trapper was an agent for the Biological Survey, carrying out the government policy of exterminating large predators that could pose a threat to livestock.

Why Did These Species Go Extinct? All the lost species of the Klamath-Siskiyou quickly disappeared following the arrival of white settlers, so quickly that we know little about the process. The isolated population of pronghorns in the Rogue Valley were probably quickly hunted out. Demand for sea otter pelts led to intense hunting along the Oregon coast through the mid-1800’s, with Cape Blanco and Port Orford singled out as especially productive areas. By 1880, sea otters was probably exterminated in the state. It is doubtful that any bighorn sheep survived in the Klamath-Siskiyou by the late 1800’s, and indeed bighorn sheep throughout Oregon were completely wiped out by the 1940’s. All bighorn sheep in Oregon today are descended from reintroduced populations.

The occurrence of California Condors in the region is particularly poorly known. Most Oregon records of this gigantic vulture come from along the Columbia River, where they gathered in the fall to feed on the enormous numbers of spawned-out salmon. By the late 1820’s, they were already scarce, and none were reported from the Columbia after 1854. There is a tantalizing observation of two condors seen near Roseburg in 1903-1904, which may represent birds that wandered north out of California. By then, condors were already retreating to their last sanctuary in southern California. The inexorable decline of California Condors toward extinction is a well-known story. By 1987, the last survivors, a mere 14 birds, had all been taken out of the wild. Today, after over a decade of captive breeding and carefully-planned releases, more than 60 California Condors are again flying free in southern California and northern Arizona, but the long-term survival of the species still hangs in the balance.