California loses two wolf packs, gains one, latest state report shows
California appears to have lost two of its 10 gray wolf packs this year, including one whose adult members were euthanized after they killed nearly 100 calves in a six-month period, state wildlife conservation officials said this week.
The dismantling of the Beyem Seyo pack, whose unusually high reliance on livestock for food terrified ranchers and residents in the high rangelands of Sierra County north of Truckee, along with scientists’ inability to locate members of the Ishi pack in eastern Tehama County, highlight the difficulty of tracking and managing the return of the apex predators to California more than 100 years after they were hunted to local extinction.
The absence of the two packs was partially offset by the discovery of a new group, dubbed the Grizzly pack, which appears to have settled in southern Plumas County territory once occupied by the Beyem Seyo, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said in its latest wolf management update.
“This year has brought both joyful and tragic news about wolves’ homecoming to California,” said Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.
The new pack, spotted north of Sierra Valley, appears to have five members, the report said, including an unknown male wolf, a female originally from the Lassen Pack, two more adults and a pup. Though they range near Sierra Valley, where the Beyem Seyo pack likely killed 64 calves from July to October for a total of more than 90 since late May, no livestock attacks have yet been tied to the new group.
Gray wolves have been making a comeback in California over the past 14 years, ever since a wolf dubbed OR7 crossed into the state from Oregon. Their rapid recovery since then has been hailed as a conservation success story, but also has brought into high relief the difficult process of managing conservation for a decimated species while also acknowledging that as apex predators they can pose a danger to humans, pets and livestock.
Wolves are protected under both the California and federal endangered species acts, as well as regulations that ban killing them except by law enforcement in very limited circumstances, and limit the types of harassment that can be used to keep them away from human settlements.
But the protections have become the subject of controversy, as states have wrestled with how to manage the apex predators’ conflicts with humans and livestock. Wolves have already been removed from endangered species lists in parts of the northern Rockies and earlier this month, the Trump administration said it would not prepare an updated recovery plan for them, signaling a possible move to remove protections altogether.
In October, California euthanized three adult and one juvenile member of the Beyem Seyo pack after months of failed efforts to use nonlethal methods to drive them away from homes and ranches in Sierra Valley, the state’s first such action in more than a century.
The juvenile was killed in error, by a wildlife official who mistook it for an adult while shooting from a helicopter, CDFW said.
The bodies of two younger pups believed to have died from natural causes were also found, but three more older pups, or juveniles, remained missing despite intensive searching that has been ongoing since late September, the agency said.
It was not immediately clear whether the missing juveniles, three males who will be taken to a sanctuary if found, had joined one of the other packs. However, CDFW officials have said they are worried that if the juveniles join with a new pack, they may teach its members how to hunt livestock rather than wild prey.
A fourth Beyem Seyo wolf, who had dispersed from the pack and was seen in Lassen and Shasta Counties during the summer of 2025, was found dead in August. That death remains under investigation, the report said.
In addition to the Beyem Seyo pack, the state may also have either misidentified or lost the Ishi pack, which was identified earlier this year. Members of the pack have not been detected since spring, the CDFW report said.
Scientists continue to monitor for the pack’s members, using trail cameras and looking for paw prints and scat on the ground, the state said. However, surveys and monitoring of the area have been challenging, the report said.
It is also possible that the pack was incorrectly identified, and that the wolves scientists associated with it were actually members of another group, the Ice Cave pack, which ranges in western Plumas and Lassen Counties, and eastern Shasta County, the report said.
At least 26 pups were born in the state in 2025, to five of the packs, the report said. It was not immediately clear how many wolves in total there are in California, but a prior report set the population at about 50 after some of last year’s pups died. The new pups would bring the total back up to at least 76.
