It’s been nearly a year since five counties in northeastern California – Sierra, Plumas, Shasta, Lassen and Modoc – declared public safety emergencies because of wolves, which have devastated cattle ranches throughout the region and come perilously close to people.
State lawmakers have begun discussions on how to better manage impacts from the state’s growing populations of wolves, mountain lions and other predators, as rural residents and university scientists agree that a dearth of natural prey has caused an exploding population of wolves to turn to livestock as nourishment.
University of California Cooperative Extension researchers in the past year have published two studies that have opened the eyes of legislators – one last spring suggesting that cattle are a major component of wolf diet, and a more recent one that found the costs of livestock losses and interventions aimed at deterring further depredations by a pack in the Sierra Valley reached at least $2.6 million over a seven-month period in 2025…