Last summer, gray wolves of the Beyem Seyo Pack attacked livestock in unprecedented numbers in Sierra Valley, where ranching has shaped the landscape for generations.
“[A tracking] ping [from a GPS collar] would come in about seven in the morning [on our phones], and then the rancher would go to wherever the pin drop was and usually find a carcass,” recalled Rick Roberti, the fourth generation of Robertis to run the family ranch, established in 1922. “Only a few times were the wolves still there when they got there. Usually, they’d kill around three to four or five in the morning, and then they would leave it.
“Everybody was checking their cows almost daily. The way we could usually tell there was a kill is that we have a lot of ravens. The ravens, as soon as something dies, they instantly know it, so we could just look for the birds. If that calf had been dead for half an hour or more, the ravens were on it.”
As ranchers lost cattle in record-breaking numbers, Roberti said they were told by California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) officials to use only non-lethal deterrents against the wolves, including bean bags, all-terrain vehicles, diversionary feeding, fladry installation, and field presence 24 hours a day. The gray wolf is both a California and federally endangered species, and lethal action against one is a federal crime.
“People were literally making themselves sick, trying to protect their animals during the day and all night,” said Kirk Wilbur, president of government affairs for the California Cattlemen’s Association, about the Sierra Valley situation. “They were not sleeping. They were constantly on the move.”
Both the Sierra and Plumas counties’ boards of supervisors declared local states of emergency in response to the attacks.
“The stress was terrible, but it did bring us together as a community,” Roberti said. He lost three head of cattle to wolves last summer, though that was never verified by CDFW because there was nothing left of the carcasses when officials arrived. One calf in 2024 on his ranch was verified as killed by a wolf.
From March to October 2025, wolves were confirmed to have killed 127 cattle statewide — more than 90 in Sierra Valley alone. A UC Cooperative Extension study estimated the economic toll for ranchers during this time around at least $2.6 million.
Yet wildlife biologists caution that the Sierra Valley conflict does not diminish the ecological role wolves play. As apex predators, wolves help regulate deer and elk populations, influence where those animals feed, and contribute to healthier forests and riparian areas. California’s recovering wolf population — absent from the state for nearly a century before naturally returning from Oregon in the early 2010s — remains both federally and state protected as it slowly reestablishes itself.
The Sierra Valley attacks centered on a handful of wolves from the Beyem Seyo Pack, which formed in Plumas County three years ago, and had become habituated to cattle. After months of escalating conflict, wildlife officials killed four wolves (one mistakenly) from the pack in October. Livestock losses dropped dramatically afterward, offering one possible model for balancing wolf recovery with ranching.
“Several things can be true simultaneously,” said then-CDFW Director Charlton H. Bonham in a press release after the wolves were killed. “Wolves are here in California and that is an amazing ecological return. Yet, their reemergence is a significant, disruptive change for rural communities. Wolves are one of the state’s most iconic species and coexistence is our collective future, but that comes with tremendous responsibility and sometimes hard decisions. 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 released its 2026 Wolf-Livestock Depredation Report on April 13, 2026, noting three confirmed/probable dead or injured livestock in Plumas County, where Sierra Valley is partly located (it also lies in Sierra County, which has had no reported incidents so far this year).
As large carnivores recover and California’s human population continues expanding into wildlife habitat, conflicts are becoming more common. Since 2021, wildlife incident reports logged by CDFW have increased by 31% across the state; overall contacts with humans, 58%.
Across the state during the past few months, mountain lions were relocated from Santa Monica and Pasadena, cougars and bears were spotted on or near the UC Davis campus, a black bear swiped an individual at Fallen Leaf Lake and eventually was euthanized as it was considered a public safety threat.
SB 1135, currently moving through the State Assembly, proposes to reestablish and strengthen the Wildlife Coexistence Program under CDFW, which was discontinued in 2024 after a three-year funding period ended. In part, the program funded the deployment of trained human-wildlife conflict staff across California. Non-lethal strategies are emphasized in the bill to reduce human/wildlife conflict. Passing through legislative stages at the same time is SB 1305, which asks to assess the feasibility of reintroducing the grizzly bear to California lands. Read about that effort in the sidebar at the bottom of this story.
As human/wildlife overlap increases, rural residents are usually the first to face impacts from predators — and many of them are concerned that their livelihoods are a cost not fully being taken into consideration by a majority-urban state.
“I literally get calls about coexistence every day,” said Assemblymember Heather Hadwick during a June 30 meeting in response to the proposed Wildlife Coexistence bill. Hadwick represents District 1, the entire northeast portion of California, which is overwhelmingly rural. “My phone is full of dead cow pictures and sheep and pets and things that I don’t want to look at either. But the rural sheriffs are the ones that are answering this call … We’re laying all of that responsibility on the counties who are already struggling … CDFW is running on 30% of their law enforcement right now. They don’t have people to respond to this.”
“Obviously this is a problem for the folks that are suffering depredation [predator attacks on domestic animals], right?” Wilbur told Moonshine Ink. “But even the folks that are in the community, the neighbors that are trying to help prevent depredations on their ranch or end depredations on their neighbor’s ranch, even the folks that are in adjacent counties where there aren’t known wolves yet, but they know wolves are coming — there’s just an increasing sense of fear and to some extent, helplessness among ranchers in the state of California.”
The year 1924 marked an end for two native predators in California: the state’s last gray wolf was killed in Lassen County, and the last known grizzly bear was seen in Sequoia National Park.
While grizzlies remain absent from the state, the gray wolf returned on its own in 2011: a lone male wolf, known as OR7 or sometimes Journey, from Oregon passed the state line on Dec. 28 that year into Siskiyou County.
“He comes into California, he stays for about a year, and then he goes back up to Oregon. He was looking for a mate,” explained Jacob Keeton, director of education and engagement for the California Wolf Center. “You get a lot of different dispersals between December and March, and that’s what he did. He eventually did go back up to Oregon … and he found the mate and they made the Rogue Pack. And then in 2014, puppies from the Rogue Pack came into California. They settled on the northern slopes of Mount Shasta, and they formed the first permanent residence of wolves in California.”
Since then, the wolf population has slowly but surely grown. As of March 2026, there are 12 packs of wolves across the state (see map above). The red circle with slashes indicates wolf activity of two or more in the Tahoe National Forest area. In January/February of this year, a male wolf from the Harvey Pack in Lassen County briefly visited Truckee. The total in these packs, including possible dispersers (wolves separated from their pack to seek a mate or food), is at least 55 wolves as of the end of 2025. Nine of those currently have functioning collars. CDFW told the Ink it’s unaware of any permanent wolf presence in Truckee/Tahoe.
“When you think about what is the future of the wolf, there’s still not very many,” Keeton said. “That’s why it’s still protected, right? There’s not 60,000 of them roaming the [California] landscape like there are bears, or even 3,000 of them [like mountain lions]. There are only about 7,000 wolves in the lower 48.”
The Beyem Seyo Pack experienced significant changes just a year after forming. During summer 2024, the breeding male of the pack is assumed to have died, and the breeding female began shifting southward into Sierra County that fall. In December 2024, her pack was joined by a Siskiyou County-based Whaleback Pack disperser male, who is thought to have become her breeding partner and the pack’s alpha male. Published literature on the pack theorizes that this change in leadership coincides with the surge in wolf depredation in the valley.
“LAST YEAR, [THERE WERE] HUNDREDS OF LOSSES OF LIVESTOCK TO GRAY WOLVES. [BUT] GRAY WOLVES REMAIN FULLY PROTECTED. I THINK MAYBE RELATIONSHIPS ARE IMPROVING, BUT THE BASELINE IS NOT IMPROVING. WE HAVE AN INCREASING WOLF POPULATION; WE HAVE INCREASING DEPREDATIONS. THAT’S ALWAYS GOING TO RUB RANCHERS THE WRONG WAY.”
~ KIRK WILBUR, PRESIDENT OF GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS FOR THE CALIFORNIA CATTLEMEN’S ASSOCIATION
“Whenever the pack structure gets disrupted, I think the research is there, then a disrupted pack is probably more likely to go after livestock just because it’s a little bit easier,” Keeton said. “They’re out of their natural rhythm.”
While Sierra Valley ranchers have seen their cattle loss rate drop significantly since last October, it’s a different story farther north. During the first four and a half months of the year, there have been 26 confirmed or probable dead or injured livestock by wolves across the state — 13 in Siskiyou County alone. Of those incidents, 14 were by wolves from the Whaleback Pack.
When lone wolf OR7 first hit the Golden State 15 years ago, CDFW convened a stakeholder working group that ended up advising on what became the 2016 Conservation Plan for Gray Wolves in California. Its blueprint included options to address inevitable conflicts between wolves and livestock.
During California Cattlemen’s Association meetings in 2015/16, Wilbur said there were heated debates over whether the association should support some sort of compensation program for ranchers for cattle losses by gray wolves.
In 2021, CDFW was appropriated $3 million to develop a Wolf-Livestock Compensation Pilot Program. The program allowed livestock producers to receive money for direct loss (death or injury) by wolves (starting in February 2022), deterrent methods (May 2022), or pay for presence, which compensated ranchers who grazed livestock in known wolf territory, regardless of depredation (June 2023).
“The rationale for opposing it makes some sense even today,” Wilbur said. “Which is … what they’re hearing in the media from communications folks at CDFW or what they’re hearing [from] the public … about wolves and about depredations of livestock by wolves is, Hey, why are you concerned? You’re getting compensated for these losses.
“And that misses several points, one of them being the emotional impacts of those ranchers. Another being the stress impacts to surviving cattle … And just the fact that you’re not really being compensated for all of your losses. You may never discover some of those losses. The department may not be able to confirm the losses you do discover.”
There’s a “bad taste” in ranchers’ mouths, Wilbur said, because the gray wolf was listed as an endangered species in the state in 2014. The decision came from the Fish and Game Commission, which is the legal authority for the designation, but CDFW actually advised against it. But, Wilbur said, “on the ground in wolf country, it’s not the commission, it’s not the legislature. You’re dealing with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.”
The debate about compensation for wolf depredation slowly changed as ranchers recognized they’d be losing livestock to wolves regardless.
Deterrent methods for ranchers included human presence among cattle, fladry (bright red flags hanging on a fence line), foxlights (flashing LED devices designed to scare nocturnal predators), and removal of attractants like carcasses. Such methods are often seen as short-term because wolves are quite smart and adaptable.
Funding for the pilot program was fully exhausted by March 8, 2024. A total of 109 grants was awarded through the pilot program to 36 producers. Grantees affected by the Whaleback Pack in Siskiyou County received 67.3% of all funds.
Some stopgap state funding has been released since: $600,000 in July 2024 for direct loss compensation only — which was exhausted earlier this year, then $2 million in 2025 through the state budget.
“One wolf can cause between $69,000 and $162,000 in direct and indirect losses from lower pregnancy rates in cows and decreased weight gain in calves,” an April 2025 UC Davis study found. “Total indirect losses are estimated to range from $1.4 million to $3.4 million depending on moderate or severe impacts from wolves across [pack interaction with cattle in northeastern California from June to October of 2022 to 2024].”
Livestock was Plumas County’s leading commodity per its 2021 Agricultural Production Report (the most recent available) at $11.5 million. Sierra Valley lies mostly in Plumas County, though its bottom quarter, roughly, is in Sierra County (which also has livestock as its top commodity, at $5.6 million in 2021).
This year, UC Berkeley and UC Cooperative Extension conducted a survey on behalf of CDFW, which closed on June 11, asking California-based livestock producers and interested parties about the future of wolf-livestock compensation. The survey is part of a broader evaluation of the compensation program, which includes workshops and public meetings. CDFW has not yet received a summary of those results.
Despite compensation efforts and the state taking action against the Beyem Seyo Pack, the offical ongoing approach to gray wolves “rubs ranchers the wrong way,” Wilbur said. “They’re suffering. Last year, [there were] hundreds of losses of livestock to gray wolves. [But] gray wolves remain fully protected. I think maybe relationships are improving, but the baseline is not improving. We have an increasing wolf population; we have increasing depredations. That’s always going to rub ranchers the wrong way.”
The California Cattlemen’s Association’s preferred policy approach to the gray wolf is establishing the species as a non-game mammal. Compared to endangered species, which are not allowed to be pursued, harmed, captured, or killed, California Fish and Game Code states non-game animals (such as coyotes, opossums, and raccoons) can be taken (or captured/killed) on grounds of depredation.
“It wouldn’t be a silver bullet,” Wilbur said. “You would still see some depredation, but I think it would be helpful from our perspective to have gray wolves removed from the state and federal endangered species acts.” That said, he added he doesn’t see such a move happening any time soon: “I don’t want to get too gloomy about the political prospects because we are able to work within California’s political landscape, but specifically on the issue of delisting, I’m not particularly optimistic about it.”
Roberti, who in addition to being a rancher in Sierra Valley is in his final six months of a two-year stint as president of the California Cattlemen’s Association, argued against what he hears in public discourse: that being able to shoot wolves equals shooting every wolf.
“No, we won’t,” he continues. “We don’t shoot every coyote. Coyote has depredated forever. I was told that seven or eight years ago from Montana people: If you have a pack of wolves living around you, and they don’t do too much damage, do not take them out. Leave ‘em alone. You can live with them. But if you take them out and you get this a pack that is vicious toward cattle, well, you’ve created a lot more problems than the wolves you had before.”
SB 1135, seeking to reestablish the Wildlife Coexistence Program under CDFW, moved from the Committee on Water, Parks, and Wildlife on June 30 with an 8-2 vote. The California Cattlemen’s Association was neutral on the bill, which will next go before the Committee on Appropriations, which reviews legislation with an eye to fiscal impact.
The bill proposes renaming the Wolf-Livestock Compensation Pilot Program to the Wolf-Livestock Coexistence and Compensation program.
“Gray wolves are native to California and belong here,” said Pamela Flick during the late-June committee hearing. Flick is the California program director for the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife. “It is remarkable that these ecologically important animals have naturally returned to our state under their own wolf power. However, wolves have returned to a very different landscape than that of the 1920s when they were driven to local extinction. But wolves are adaptive critters and can survive and thrive in challenging conditions as long as humans are willing to share the landscape with them. That social tolerance is key to successful coexistence, as is direct support to ranchers and information sharing about best practices to reduce wolf livestock interactions.”
“IT KIND OF COMES DOWN TO … WHO SHOULD HAVE A LOUDER VOICE: THE PEOPLE WHO BEAR MOST OF THE COST AND THE BURDEN, SHOULD THEY HAVE A GREATER VOICE IN WOLF RECOVERY, OR SHOULD IT BE KIND OF A CONCEPT OF WOLVES ARE CALIFORNIA’S NATURAL RESOURCES [AND] EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE A VOICE?”
~ JACOB KEETON, DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION AND ENGAGEMENT
FOR THE CALIFORNIA WOLF CENTER
The two nay votes came from Assemblymembers Hadwick and Juan Alanis (who represents District 22).
“I had three mountain lion [incidents] in one week that were in people’s houses, taking goats over a 6-foot fence with a roof,” Hadwick said. “And they’re not allowed to do anything because we’re told to coexist. Which is fine. We live where we live because we love wildlife. We want to coexist, and we are coexisting … Coexistence is both sides, and this bill is very, very one-sided. It has a lot of things that the ranchers have to do, a lot of things that the landowners have to do. It does not have a lot of things that the state has to do, and I just don’t think that’s fair.”
Keeton with the Wolf Center sees the conversation as a philosophical debate.
“It kind of comes down to … who should have a louder voice?” he posed. “The people who bear most of the cost and the burden, should they have a greater voice in wolf recovery, or should it be kind of a concept of ‘wolves are California’s natural resources’ [and] everyone should have a voice? I really think that’s the heart of it … that’s the heart of America, right? … What’s better: the people that are most impacted or the majority of the voters?”
Enter the Grizzly
A grizzly bear study bill, SB 1305, that would allow the state to determine whether bringing grizzly bears back to their natural habitat is feasible, advisable, and ecologically restorable, was also passed during the June 30 meeting of the Committee on Water, Parks, and Wildlife.
“[It] is not a bill to reintroduce grizzly bears,” said Sen. Laura Richardson, the bill’s author, during the hearing. “What it does is give us the opportunity to study, plan, and prepare for their potential reintroduction.” The bill advanced from the committee in an 8-2 vote.
“[This is] not the fight I thought I was coming here for,” District 1 Assemblywoman Heather Hadwick said during the hearing. “Truly, I did not think predators were going to be my everyday, all day. And it has become that because that’s what my district’s facing, and this is going to be in my district. They’re going to live there — that’s where the forest is and it’s cold. I don’t see them wanting to live where 37 million more people live than when they were here originally. We have a different California now, and I just don’t think that our California today is ready for a grizzly bear. I think it’s a very scary, scary option to even look into more than this.”
Grizzly bears once roamed almost the entirety of California, with approximately 10,000 bears in the state before the Gold Rush. The large ursus was extirpated by hunting, habitat loss, and predator-control campaigns following European settlement.
SB 1305 is expected to next go before the Committee on Appropriations.
Written for Moonshine Ink by Alex Hoeft
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