san francisco — Wildlife crews are no longer actively searching for two young gray wolves that were part of a pack that killed dozens of cows and calves last summer in Northern California’s Sierra Valley, an official said Tuesday.
The two wolves were members of a Beyem Seyo pack that in 2025 killed or injured at least 92 calves and cows in a seven-month period, according to a report released last week by researchers from the University of California, Davis.
Wolves in the state are protected under California law and the federal Endangered Species Act. Under former President Joe Biden, officials said they planned for the first time ever National recovery plan To the wolves, but rather to the administration of President Donald Trump He ended that initiative In November.
In October, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced it had euthanized four gray wolves — three adults and one pup — from the Piem Sioux pack after an “unprecedented level of attacks on livestock across the Sierra Valley” by a single wolf pack since the dogs returned to the state. She also said she plans to capture the two remaining wolves and move them to wildlife facilities to prevent their behavior from spreading to other wolves in California.
Gray wolves primarily prey on wildlife such as deer and elk, not livestock, but the pack has become accustomed to killing cows and calves, the department said.
“These wolves have become accustomed to preying on livestock, a feeding pattern that has continued and been taught to their offspring who will be left to form packs of their own and can teach them the same behavior as preying on livestock,” the department said at the time.
But after weeks of searching for the two remaining wolves, officials “scaled back efforts to capture them,” Katie Talbot, CDFW’s deputy director of public affairs, said in a statement.
“Despite the best efforts of expert wolf biologists and CDFW law enforcement officials, we were unable to find these young wolves or get close enough to safely capture them,” Talbot said.
“We remain hopeful that our continued remote monitoring will allow us to see what will lead to the safe arrest of these juveniles,” she added.
This week, CDFW crews will be working to trap and collar wolves throughout the state, including the Sierra Valley, Talbot said.
Wildlife officials tried for months To block the package From attacking farm animals using drones, non-lethal bean bags, installing flags or ropes to deter them, and having officers on the ground 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but their efforts have failed.
“CDFW’s efforts were tremendous and heroic, but it was too late,” said Amaruk Weiss, senior wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.
She said ranchers in the area should have been taking proactive protective measures for years, including increasing human presence around livestock, keeping livestock corralled rather than letting them loose in large grazing pastures, and calving at the same time of year as deer and elk, so that wolves have a source of wild prey.
“California ranchers have noticed the wolves coming since late December 2011, when we got our first wolf. They’ve known they were going to form packs since 2015,” when we got our first wolf. The package has been confirmed in Siskiyou County, Weiss said.
Gray wolves were extirpated in California early in the last century due to their perceived threat to livestock, with the last known native wolf being killed in 1924 in Lassen County. Since being reintroduced in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s, they have spread throughout the West. A recovering population means increased conflict with livestock farmers.
“It’s been a terrible summer here for everyone, and the emotional stress was probably worse than the financial stress for most people,” said Rick Roberti, a Plumas County rancher and president of the California Cattlemen’s Association, who lost several of his animals. “We couldn’t continue to live the way we were living.”
The Beyem Seyo pack killed more livestock than the total number of wolves in Montana killed in 2024 and farm animals killed by wolves in Wyoming in 2023, economist Tina Seaton and researcher Tracy Schohr said in UC Davis’ Quarterly Agricultural Economics Update on Friday.
In Montana, 1,100 wolves in the state killed 54 domestic animals in 2024, and 352 wolves in Wyoming killed 49 livestock in 2023, scientists said.
In California, about 70 gray wolves were responsible for the deaths of 175 livestock between January and October of last year, and the Beyem Seyo pack was responsible for half of the kills, according to CDFW data.
Roberti said attacks on livestock in Plumas and Sierra counties have angered many ranchers. He said he would like to see certain areas of the state declared “special areas” where people would be allowed to hunt wolves that attack livestock.
“We are pretty much in agreement in thinking that it would be beneficial to start eliminating animals that kill livestock that are habituated to humans or that are not afraid of us,” he said.
The predators are still far from recovering, Weiss said, adding that killing them is not a long-term solution.
“The scientific literature has concluded that killing wolves to resolve conflicts with livestock is not a solution. It can actually be counterproductive. It can lead to more conflicts with livestock,” she said.