- California’s wildlife department killed four gray wolves in the Sierra Valley in late October, in a dramatic escalation of tactics to address growing predation of cattle by the canids and despite protection under state and federal endangered species laws.
- The department says the wolves killed at least 88 cattle in Sierra and Plumas counties and continued to target livestock despite months of nonlethal deterrents deployed to drive them away.
- The state employed lethal action despite its compensation program, which pays ranchers for cattle killed by wolves, and additional federal subsidies paid to the livestock industry at large.
- The state wildlife agency confirmed a new pack –– the Grizzly pack–– earlier this week with two adults and a pup. Though the state’s wolf population remains small and vulnerable, ranchers are increasingly concerned about livestock deaths.
This is the third part of Mongabay’s series on the expanding wolf population in California. Read the first and the second parts.
In late October, wildlife authorities in the U.S. state of California announced they captured and euthanized three adult gray wolves and shot a juvenile dead, all from the Beyem Seyo pack in the Sierra Valley. Wardens killed them, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) said, because the wolves (Canis lupus) had become “habituated to preying on cattle” rather than hunting elk, deer and other wild prey.
The wolves killed were a breeding pair, an adult female, and a juvenile male “mistaken” for the adult male. Officers also found the remains of two other juveniles from the same pack that were severely decomposed. The cause of death remains unknown, and authorities are investigating.
This pack took down at least 88 head of cattle between January and October 2025 according to a new CDFW report — about half of the 175 livestock deaths statewide and one of the highest rates in any western U.S. state where wolves live.
The killings follow months of using nonlethal deterrents to keep wolves away, including drones, all-terrain vehicles, flapping strips of bright-colored “fladry” strung along fences, and round-the-clock human presence. CDFW deployed a strike team in June, where officers spent more than 18,000 staff hours using these methods, also called hazing, but the wolves continued killing cattle.
“The Beyem Seyo pack became so reliant on cattle at an unprecedented level, and we could not break the cycle, which ultimately is not good for the long-term recovery of wolves or for people,” CDFW director Charlton H. Bonham said in a press release. So far, the state’s nine other wolf packs haven’t targeted livestock in this way, and the department continues to monitor them.
It’s the first state-authorized killing of gray wolves in California since they moved south across the border from the state of Oregon in 2015 and established their first packs, resuming residence after nearly a century’s absence. It comes at a time when the canids, protected at both the federal and state levels, are expanding their territory and fueling ranchers’ fears about wolves preying on cattle — though the population remains relatively small and vulnerable.
On November 17, wildlife officials confirmed a new wolf pack in southern Plumas County, the Grizzly pack, after they captured trail camera images of a wolf pup. CDFW designates pack status when a group has a litter. This pack is the fourth the agency confirmed this year, bringing the state’s total back up to 10 after the elimination of Beyem Seyo.
A member of the former Beyem Seyo pack being released after biologists with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife officers fitted it with a GPS tracking collar in early 2025. Two adults and a young wolf from this pack were shot by the agency in October.
The decision to eliminate ‘problem’ wolves
The decision to remove these wolves, Bonham said in the press release, was “not made lightly,” and the department said that nonlethal means remain the ongoing management strategy for these canids.
“The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is deeply committed to ensuring positive outcomes for all species of plants and animals across California,” said spokesperson Katie Talbot in a statement to Mongabay. “As the gray wolf population in California continues to grow, CDFW staff will focus on utilizing the best available science, a strong understanding of wolf biology, and successful adaptive wildlife management practices to ensure both gray wolves and California’s communities can thrive together.”
But conservationists say these killings may mark a deeply concerning turning point in wolf conservation measures in a state where wolves enjoy overwhelming public support.
“The action sets a distressingly challenging precedent,” said Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, a U.S.-based nonprofit. Weiss has more than three decades’ experience working with these canids across the U.S. “When agencies allow wolves to be killed legally, it seems to send an implicit message that wolves aren’t so valuable after all, and so folks think they should just kill wolves whenever they see them.”
Susan Davur, founder of the California Wolf Foundation, which helps ranchers reduce and mitigate conflicts with wolves, also said she was disappointed at the killings. She said the situation was “difficult and heartbreaking,” and she’d hoped nonlethal interventions would work. “This is a sad ending to a difficult situation for those involved,” Davur said.
Mistakes made, lessons to be learned
After a century’s absence, the state is now home to 50-70 wolves belonging to 10 packs, most of them concentrated in California’s northeast. As numbers grow, livestock deaths are rising. Wolves killed 18 head of cattle in 2022, 32 in 2023, 52 in 2024, and at least 175 between January and October 2025. Between 2015 and 2024, at least 142 head of cattle — about 0.002% of California’s nearly 7-million-strong herd — have been lost to wolves.
Compared with other states, those numbers are high. In 2024, Oregon’s 200 wolves were responsible for 69 recorded livestock deaths. Washington state’s 230 wolves killed 40. However, these two states have just over a million head of cattle each, far fewer than California.
To foster coexistence, California launched a compensation pilot program in 2021 that paid for the losses caused by wolves. It also reimbursed ranchers for installing nonlethal deterrents to keep wolves away and covered indirect costs from the wolves’ presence. About two-thirds of the $3 million allocated for compensation under the pilot covered deterrents.
It was a voluntary program, and participating ranchers in Siskiyou, Lassen, Plumas and Tulare counties — where wolf-livestock conflicts were the highest in the state — were awarded grants on a first-come basis, CDFW said. A total of 109 grants were disbursed under the program.
According to the department’s 2024 report, ranchers affected by the Beyem Seyo pack in Plumas County received the lowest grant amount for losses, $910.50. No grants were awarded there for nonlethal deterrents.
Weiss said the state could have avoided much of the conflict and resulting escalation if ranchers had been proactive in implementing deterrents much earlier. By 2021, when the state’s compensation program was launched, ranchers in Plumas County were aware of their new wolf neighbors, she said, as at least two packs in the area had taken up residence there.
“The time to start instituting proactive, nonlethal conflict-deterrent measures was then — not waiting until spring of 2025,” she said.
The pilot funding ran out in March 2024, and the department downsized the program, only covering direct losses, not deterrents. The Beyem Seyo pack’s first confirmed livestock predation took place in January 2024, when ranchers and CDFW weren’t prepared for it.
Davur called this a mistake and a missed opportunity, because conflicts soon escalated. Ranchers and department staff had to react quickly, without carefully evaluating which deterrent method worked best for a particular ranch.
Most deterrents, including those used by the department as part of the summer strike team’s efforts, work for a few months before wolves become accustomed to them and they stop working. Davur said that’s what seems to have happened with the Beyem Seyo pack. “Human presence and hazing … was potentially ineffective when the strike team was eventually deployed [in summer 2025].”
The only effective long-term strategy is changing how cattle are managed, including having range riders go out with the herd, using livestock guardian dogs, and training cattle to group together when a predator approaches.
More than 20,000 head of cattle grazed in the Sierra Valley during the summer of 2025, according to CDFW, and only 18 ranches participated in the strike team’s efforts. Without nonlethal deterrents in place, conflicts inevitably followed.
Davur said the killings should be an opportunity to correct these mistakes in the future. “I’m hoping that this can be a lesson learned and not a precedent-setting situation,” she said.
Given the wolves’ dependence on cattle as food by the time interventions were in place, Weiss said the situation with the Beyem Seyo pack “had no resolution that would be a good answer.” But she said California must rethink a “permanent, well-funded coexistence program” that ensures ranchers take proactive measures before conflicts emerge. She also said the state must only compensate “responsible livestock operators” who are well-prepared to manage wolf-livestock conflicts.
Killing not a solution
Wolves are a protected species, and killing them is only permitted when they pose a demonstrable threat to human safety, according to federal regulations. Even then, the killing can only be done by wildlife agency officials.
Under California’s Endangered Species Act, they can’t be killed as part of “management” efforts unless the killing can be “fully mitigated” and doesn’t “jeopardize the continued existence of the species.”
When asked about what “threat to human safety” the Beyem Seyo wolves posed, CDFW directed the question to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. A spokesperson from USFWS said the decision to kill the wolves was “a last resort.”
The federal agency echoed the state authorities’ response that it came after “numerous unsuccessful attempts at non-lethal deterrence and increasing concerns about public safety.” USFWS didn’t answer the question of what specific threats to public safety these wolves had posed.
Weiss said the killings violate the stipulations on when wolves may be killed. In late 2024, the state’s wolf numbers had grown steadily to 70 — the highest since recolonization. But that number fell to around 50 in early 2025 due to natural deaths.
Nearly half of all newborn pups die before they’re a year old, and many 1-year-olds don’t survive the following year. According to CDFW, only three of the 10 packs birthed litters in 2025. The new Grizzly pack was first seen in late summer 2025, and formally recognized in November.
“California’s wolf population and pack numbers have been sufficiently low,” Weiss said. “Any killing of any wolves as a ‘management’ tool could not be fully mitigated and could potentially jeopardize the continued existence of the species.”
Some states have tried relocating “problem wolves” that killed livestock, but those efforts have ended with the wolves dying. CDFW ruled out relocations, saying it only shifts the problem to another place.
Studies show that instead of killing predators, chasing them away from cattle works best over the long term. Given that wolf-livestock conflicts are relatively rare compared to coyotes or other predators in California, killing these canids could exacerbate the problem, experts say.
“Killing wolves, especially removing an entire pack from their territory, simply creates a vacuum in good wolf habitat which will be filled by other wolves as they find the area,” Weiss said.
Meanwhile, losses are likely inevitable unless the factors leading to such conflicts are addressed and ranchers change practices: supervising cattle, installing deterrents and properly disposing of dead animals so not to attract carnivores.
The risk of conflict increases when only part of a pack is removed. With the recent killings of the four Beyem Seyo wolves, only two or three juveniles from the pack may have survived, according to CDFW.
That’s a concern, Weiss said. When experienced adults die, the young wolves left behind may not yet know how to effectively hunt deer and elk and may go after easy-to-catch livestock. Killing breeding pairs can also split the existing pack into smaller ones, Weiss said, and they, too, go after easily available prey.
The killings mark a turning point in California’s management of wolves and raise questions about the predators’ place in the state’s future. But conservationists say they hope the state can make amends.
“California is a state where its residents’ overwhelming support for animal welfare — for both domestic animals and wildlife — is reflected by state policies, legislation and regulations which are some of the most progressive in the nation,” Weiss said, adding that there’s still a lot of room for improvement.
“That progress always is in tension with old myths, culture and belief systems, which, across our nation, have been the dominant narrative against wolves for 400 years.”
Banner image: A gray wolf in Minnesota. Image by W Eugene Slowik Jr/dalliedee via Center for Biological Diversity (CC-BY 2.0).
Spoorthy Raman is a staff writer at Mongabay, covering all things wild with a special focus on lesser-known wildlife, the wildlife trade, and environmental crime.
As wolves roam California, livestock losses remain low, yet ranchers’ fears grow
Wolves’ continued spread in California brings joy, controversy & conflicts
Citation:
Lorand, C., Robert, A., Gastineau, A., Mihoub, J., & Bessa-Gomes, C. (2022). Effectiveness of interventions for managing human-large carnivore conflicts worldwide: Scare them off, don’t remove them. Science of The Total Environment, 838, 156195. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.156195
FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.
Credits
