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When gray wolves returned to California after hunters wiped out the population a century ago, conservationists and state officials were delighted. But as the state’s wolf numbers have grown, so has desperation among ranchers in rural northeastern counties whose livestock has increasingly come under attack.
In Sierra County, where Supervisor Paul Roen told KQED that 95% of cattle ranchers in his district have lost cattle to attacks, state wildlife officials have taken an unprecedented step to deal with the problem.
“We feed all predators to a certain extent, but we can not be the steakhouse, open every night for them to come and consume. It is just not sustainable,” said Roen, who is also a rancher…