Cattle killing wolves euthanized in California

After more than six months of regular wolf kills on their cattle herds, the Sierra Valley, California, ranchers were elated to hear the news that the three offending wolves were removed.

Wildlife officials euthanized the wolves, said Paul Roen, a Sierra County supervisor (akin to a county commissioner) and rancher.

The Sacramento Bee reported that this was the first time in more than a century that California officials killed wolves which remain protected under state and federal endangered species laws.

The gray wolf is on the federal endangered species list except in the Northern Rocky Mountain region consisting of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming; eastern one-third of Oregon, Washington; north-central Utah and in Minnesota where it is considered threatened.

WOLF KILLS

A pair of wolves followed cattle from the mountains in Plumas County to the Sierra Valley area in the fall of 2024. In April of 2025, after the pair established a den within a mile of Roen’s home, they began killing cattle in earnest. Roen reports that from April to September, over 90 head of cattle were confirmed by state wildlife officials as wolf kills. However, he believes the wolves killed many more that couldn’t be confirmed because the corpses were near totally consumed. The state rules require “bite marks” or “hemorrhaging” in order to confirm wolf kills. Neither of those pieces of evidence exist when only blood and a couple of broken bones remain at a kill site, he said.

Based on the radio collar “pings,” wildlife officials and ranchers determined that the three recently euthanized wolves committed 98 percent of the confirmed kills.

Roen said that the wolves had become so brazen that they didn’t respond to any hazing methods. He believes the state’s wildlife officials had come to the realization that when the cattle were taken out of the valley for the winter, the wolves would continue killing, but with cattle gone, they would “be right in the communities, killing in people’s backyards… and then they would have a real tough story to tell,” he said. “I think that is why it (the euthanization) happened. They were going to cause him a lot more grief if it didn’t, he said.

After sharing his community’s story with every government official who would listen, Roen is now committed to helping others who are dealing with wolf depredation on their ranches and in their communities.

“Everyone’s wanting to know how we did this and how we can help them,” he said. “So we are creating an after-action report. We are working on a roadmap of ‘how we got here’ and people can plagiarize the forms we’ve created, to document everything that’s happened here and hopefully help them document things other places where they are having the same kinds of issues,” he said.