For Russ Morgan and Chase Brown, it started out as just another night roaming the wilderness.

The two men set off Thursday night for a remote area of northern Union County.

Every so often, they would stop their truck, step out, and howl. The technique, known as a howling survey, is one way for wildlife officials to make contact with and count the number of wolves in an area.

Morgan, with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in La Grande, had been conducting howling surveys for a couple of years. Brown, a Wildlife Science student from OSU, had joined him for the summer.

They’d been on the road for a few hours, stopping about a dozen times to howl and listen.

It was shortly after midnight Friday, with a full moon high in the sky, that the wolves broke their silence.

Morgan said the first reply came from a male.

Then about a minute of silence before they heard the higher pitched howls of at least two cubs. Another minute, then a female replied. More time passed, and then Morgan says all the wolves howled together in a brief chorus.

ODFW said the encounter with the wolves is the first confirmation in 60 years that a wolf pack is living, and breeding, in the state.

KTVB photo

A pack of gray wolves.

While they don’t know exactly how many wolves are in the pack, Morgan said he heard at least two adults and two cubs. But, he added, there could be more members.

The next step is to return to the area during the day and look for other evidence of the pack. Morgan said, ideally, they want to capture one of the adults and attach a radio collar. ODFW is already tracking a radio collared wolf who roams the Eagle Cap Wilderness in northern Baker County.

With wolf populations rebounding in Idaho, experts said it was only a matter of time before they re-established themselves in northeast Oregon.

In the past few years, there were infrequent sightings and evidence of individuals. ODFW says wolves remain under the protection of the Endangered Species Act for now.

They were de-listed in March, but environmental groups sued to block that and a federal judge ordered them to stay on the list until the matter is settled in court.