California wildlife officials said Tuesday they have stopped actively searching for two juvenile gray wolves from the Beyem Seyo pack, which killed or injured at least 92 calves and cows in Northern California’s Sierra Valley over a seven-month period in 2025. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife said its expert biologists and law enforcement officers had been unable to locate or approach the animals closely enough to safely capture them.

The decision ends an intensive pursuit that followed the department’s October 2025 euthanization of four other Beyem Seyo wolves — a step officials called unprecedented — and underscores the deepening conflict between California’s growing, protected wolf population and the ranching communities where the pack learned to prey on livestock.

Search Scaled Back After Weeks of Failure

“Despite best efforts from CDFW’s expert wolf biologists and law enforcement officers, we have not been able to find or get close enough to these young wolves to safely capture them,” Katie Talbot, CDFW deputy director of public affairs, said in a statement.

Talbot said officials remain hopeful that continued remote monitoring will produce sightings leading to the animals’ safe capture. She said CDFW crews would continue working this week on capturing and collaring wolves throughout the state, including in the Sierra Valley.

The department had planned to relocate the two juveniles to wildlife facilities to prevent their learned behavior from spreading to other wolves. Officials said the pack had become habituated to killing cattle — a feeding pattern being passed to its offspring.

“These wolves had become habituated to preying on cattle, a feeding pattern that persisted and was being taught to their offspring which would leave to form their own packs and could teach them the same cattle-preying behavior,” the department said in October.

Before authorizing euthanizations, officials spent months trying to deter the pack through drones, nonlethal bean bags, flag-and-rope barriers, and officers stationed in the field around the clock. Those measures failed.

Scale of Losses Exceeded Other States’ Entire Wolf Populations

Economist Tina Saitone and researcher Tracy Schohr of the University of California, Davis, said in a report released Friday that the Beyem Seyo pack killed more livestock than the entire wolf population of Montana killed in 2024 and the entire wolf population of Wyoming killed in 2023. Montana’s approximately 1,100 wolves killed 54 domestic animals in 2024, and Wyoming’s approximately 352 wolves killed 49 livestock in 2023, the researchers said.

California’s roughly 70 gray wolves were responsible for 175 livestock kills between January and October 2025, according to CDFW data. The Beyem Seyo pack accounted for roughly half of those kills.

Rick Roberti, a cattle rancher in Plumas County who lost several animals and serves as president of the California Cattlemen’s Association, said the season left area ranchers shaken emotionally as much as financially.

“It was a horrible summer here for everybody and the emotional strain was probably worse than the financial strain for most people. They did the right thing. We couldn’t go on living the way we were living,” Roberti said.

Roberti said he would like to see certain areas of the state designated as “special zones” where ranchers are permitted to hunt wolves that have become habituated to attacking livestock.

Advocates: Prevention Measures Were Available and Overdue

Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the deterrence effort came too late and that ranchers had ample warning to take preventive action.

“Ranchers in California have been on notice that wolves were coming since late December 2011, when we got our first wolf. They have been on notice they would establish packs since 2015,” Weiss said, referring to the year the first confirmed pack was documented in Siskiyou County.

Weiss said that measures such as increased human presence around cattle, keeping livestock bunched rather than spread across large pastures, and timing calving to coincide with deer and elk births could reduce the likelihood of wolves targeting livestock.

She said research does not support lethal removal as a durable solution.

“The scientific literature is pretty conclusory that killing wolves to resolve conflicts with livestock is not a solution. It can actually be counterproductive. It can result in there being more conflicts with livestock,” Weiss said.

Weiss described the deterrence effort itself as substantial. “The efforts that the (CDFW) made were tremendous and heroic but it was too late,” she said.

Federal Policy Shift

Wolves in California are protected under state law and the federal Endangered Species Act. The Biden administration had announced plans for a first-ever national wolf recovery plan. The Trump administration ended that initiative in November 2025, according to the Associated Press.

Background

Gray wolves were eradicated across California early in the last century because of their perceived threat to livestock. The last known native wolf in the state was killed in 1924 in Lassen County. After wolves were reintroduced in Idaho and at Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s, the recovering population spread throughout the West, generating rising conflict with ranchers across the region.