As California's wolf population claws its way back, some ranchers are nervous

SAN FRANCISCO – The last wild wolf in California was shot in 1924. It wasn’t until 2011 that another padded across the Oregon border.

Today, gray wolves are making a major comeback in the Golden State. This year the state is home to nine packs containing an estimated 70 wolves, up from 44 last year. Most live in the northeastern part of the state, though there is one pack about 200 miles north of Los Angeles.

State wildlife staff believe at least 30 pups were born this year, meaning more packs are likely to form in the coming years.

As wolves return to their ancestral hunting grounds experts say it’s a win for natural ecosystems – but ranchers aren’t happy about the expansion of a species their great-grandfathers hunted to near extinction.

The Endangered Species Act allowed wolves to reemerge

Wolves once roamed across all of North America.

"Wolves were one of the most prevalent and widespread predators," said Axel Hunnicutt, the Gray Wolf coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

By some estimates there were between 250,000 and 2 million of the canines prior to western colonization.

As settlers moved in and began farming and ranching, concerns about their effects on livestock and safety increased. Many states offered bounties for killing them. In 1915, Congress passed a law requiring the eradication of wolves from federal land. Between that and habitat loss, the number of wolves plummeted.

The last known wolf in California was killed in 1924 in Lassen County in the northern part of the state. It's believed that by the 1930s all wolves in the Lower 48 were gone except for one remnant population in northern Minnesota.

That began to change in 1974 when wolves were added to the Endangered Species Act under President Richard Nixon. "It was no longer legal to kill wolves in the Lower 48," said Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity in Arizona.

That was all the wolves needed to begin reclaiming their historic hunting grounds. Wolves began to migrate from Minnesota and Canada. Small groups of wolves were also reintroduced from Canada: 31 to Yellowstone National Park and 35 to central Idaho's Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, she said.

From there wolves began a slow but steady migration from Idaho to Oregon and then southward, Hunnicutt said.

"We didn't reintroduce wolves into California," he said. "They came on their own."

The first wolf in California: OR7

The first wolf known to have entered California came down from Oregon in December of 2011, Hunnicutt said. The male wolf, called OR7 because he was the seventh wolf radio-collared in Oregon, became an instant celebrity. A children's storybook, a documentary and multiple books followed.

Over the next 13 years the population burgeoned as wolves did what wolves do – hunt, find mates, give birth to pups and create wolf packs.

"When you take the human element out of things, the system goes back to being a natural system," he said.

Now wolves are filling in spaces across the state. There are nine packs, eight in the northern part of the state and one, called the Yowlumni pack, in southern Tulare County less than 200 miles from Los Angeles.

"That was a shock," Hunnicutt said. "Nobody would have said, 'Yeah, they're going to jump 500 miles south.' But they did."

Wolves are also moving closer to cities. "We have detection of wolves 10 to 15 miles outside of Reno," he said.

Wolves remain controversial

The increasing presence of wolves in California, and across the United States, has created controversy and conflict. Wildlife groups and conservationists are pleased to see them return while many ranchers, farmers and hunters complain the wolves are preying on livestock and elk and deer herds.

Research at the University of California, Davis found that a significant part of wolves' diet is cattle. Study of wolf scat in 2022 found that 86% of the samples contained cow. In 2023 a smaller number of samples found 57% contained cow, said Tina Saitone, a professor of cooperative extension who studies livestock and ranchland economics.

It's only natural. Wolves are intelligent predators, Hunnicutt said. "If someone were to give you a knife and say you have to kill your next meal, would you go chase an 800-pound elk or walk up to one of those slow-moving cows?"

UC Davis research has also shown that in areas where wolves are active, calves gain less weight and cows have fewer births, possibly due to stress.

"There are direct and indirect economic impacts of living with wolves that the ranchers are experiencing," she said.

Wolves are controversial, especially in the West where they're seen as affecting livestock and hunting. There have been multiple attempts to remove the animals from the federal endangered species list since 2008, with various administrations attempting to delist them, saying the country's wolf population has recovered. Conservation groups then file lawsuits saying they have only recovered a tiny portion of their historic range. Protections have been imposed and then lifted multiple times.

Currently, three states, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, now allow at least some wolf hunting.

In California, wolves continue to be protected and continue to expand.

That's resulted in an increase in wolf-livestock interactions and a growing realization that wolves do come at a cost.

"The majority of Californians will never see or hear a wolf," Hunnicutt said, adding that wolves generally don't interact with people. "By and large it's the cattle ranchers in northeastern California who do. They wake up to wolves, they see wolves, they have to live with the consequences of wolves eating their livestock."

Support for rancher but less than before

To deal with the pressure wolves put on ranchers and cattlemen, California started a compensation program and initiated strategies to discourage wolves from attacking calves and cows. Called the Wolf-Livestock Compensation program, it offers cash payments for each animal confirmed killed by a wolf.

"The vast majority of depredations that have been confirmed are beef cattle. And a couple of sheep at and least one llama," said Kirk Wilbur, vice president of government affairs with the California Cattlemen’s Association.

There was also support to help ranchers add flags to fences to deter wolves and also to help fund monitoring of cattle, often on horseback. "We raise cattle not to feed wolves but Americans," he said. Wolves and ranchers can coexist, "but it costs money."

In 2021, the state allotted $3 million to the effort, the most comprehensive plan for wolves in the nation. But the money ran out in May. In the midst of a budget deficit, the state this year allocated $600,000. "That doesn't go real far," Wilbur said.

The return of wolves after a century's absence will require adjustments by both humans and animals, Hunnicutt said.

Wolves are changing the equilibrium of carnivores in the state, he said. "We expect to see a decrease in coyote and mountain lion populations, and then deer, elk and bears shifting."

But the land they're entering is very different from what it was in the late 1800s and early 1900s. "In 1924 there were only 3 million people in California," he said. Today the state's population is 39 million.

"Nothing’s the same," added UC Davis' Saitone. "We as a population have manipulated so many things, prey, predator, urbanization. There are so many things that we can’t unravel."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Wolves are making a big comeback in California