How Many Wolves Is Enough?

"The wolves arrived in May of last year, just days after Paul Roen had driven his cattle back up to their summer pasture in Northern California's Sierra Valley. He started finding the bleeding bodies of calves-some still alive, so badly paralyzed that they'd need to be shot. After weeks of this, Roen finally saw a kill himself. "One wolf grabbed a cow and spun her around, while another grabbed a calf," he told me. "He tore it into three pieces in 30 seconds.""

"Every night, Roen would go out in his pickup truck and try to keep the wolves away from his animals, until exhaustion drove him to bed in the hours before dawn. He came to dread the sound of his cows bawling for their lost calves. By June, Roen, who is also a Sierra County supervisor, and his fellow ranchers had persuaded the state to intervene: A team started to patrol the Sierra Valley rangeland, harassing wolves with rubber bullets, sirens, and eventually drones."

"At one point, Roen said, officials even tried piling frozen beavers outside the wolves' den to sate their hunger. But still, the kills continued. What Roen and other ranchers wanted, really, was for the state to kill the wolves. But gray wolves, which were exterminated from California roughly a century ago, are still listed as endangered there, making it illegal to kill, harm, or harass them."

Wolves returned to Sierra Valley in May, and a pack began killing calves and cattle, leaving some animals paralyzed and requiring euthanasia. Paul Roen patrolled nightly in a pickup to deter wolves but endured exhaustion and persistent losses while hearing cows bawl for missing calves. State teams deployed harassment measures—rubber bullets, sirens, drones—and even tried piling frozen beavers near the den, yet predation continued. Ranchers sought lethal removal, but gray wolves remain listed as endangered in California, making killing illegal. By fall the pack had taken roughly 50 of Roen’s cattle, prompting officials to tranquilize and euthanize multiple wolves and shoot a young animal.

Read at The Atlantic