He was trying to decide whether to give the calf another day to see if it could recover enough to keep up with its mother \u2014 or put it out of its misery before the wolves returned to finish the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I can just walk up and grab him, then so can the wolf,\u201d Greenwood said with a pained look on his face. \u201cThat\u2019s not a challenge for them at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
What is a challenge in the rugged expanse of the Sierra Valley right now is keeping up with all the calls coming in from ranchers whose cattle have been mauled by wolves. Across the valley, which straddles Sierra and Plumas counties, there have been 30 confirmed wolf attacks since March, 18 of them fatal, said Sierra County Sheriff Mike Fisher.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t include a deer that was attacked in a subdivision just outside the small town of Loyalton as stunned residents looked on in disbelief, or the massive, frenzied elk that was chased onto a front porch in the middle of an April night and slaughtered by two wolves. A terrified 21-year-old stood on the other side of the front door, clutching a pistol and wondering if someone was trying to break in.<\/p>\n
Once the \u201cruckus\u201d died down enough for him to open the door and peek outside, Connor Kilmurray said, he saw \u201cblood everywhere, it was smeared on the walls and the door. \u2026 It was definitely a massacre.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Fisher arrived to investigate, he was relieved that the desperate elk, which weighed hundreds of pounds, hadn\u2019t crashed straight through the front door and into the living room with two snarling wolves on its heels.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it had just been a foot over, two feet over, that would have been quite an awakening,\u201d Fisher said.<\/p>\n
For ranchers, the solution to the growing problem in California\u2019s rural northern counties seems obvious: They want to shoot the wolves preying on their cattle.<\/p>\n
But while wolf populations are large enough that hunting them is allowed in much of the American West \u2014 in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming \u2014 they are still listed as an endangered species in California. Killing a wolf here is a crime punishable by a fine of up to $100,000 and up to a year in prison.<\/p>\n
Whether Sierra Valley ranchers would face such consequences is another question. The wolf attacks feel so out of control, said Sierra County Dist. Atty. Sandra Groven, that she would not pursue charges against a rancher who kills a wolf caught preying on cattle.<\/p>\n
Groven cautioned that she was not giving carte blanche to poachers to engage in \u201coutrageous conduct,\u201d or issuing a license for anyone to \u201cgo on a killing spree.\u201d But given the frequency of wolf attacks in the valley recently, she said, she doesn\u2019t see how she could bring charges against one of her neighbors for defending themselves or their property.<\/p>\n
\u201cBottom line, I would not prosecute,\u201d Groven said. \u201cWhat are they supposed to do? Run up and wave their arms and say, \u2018Go away\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n
The struggle between ranchers and wolves is as old as herding itself, and nobody interviewed for this article wanted to repeat the sins of the past: By the early 20th century, wolves in the United States had been hunted to near extinction. Only a small pack remained in northern Minnesota when then-President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act in 1973 and wolves were added to a list of protected animals.<\/p>\n
With their numbers still low two decades later, government biologists reintroduced wolves from Canada to central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. In the years since, they have prospered and slowly migrated across the West.<\/p>\n
The first wild wolf monitored by scientists via an electronic collar crossed from Oregon into California in 2011. Today, there are seven established packs in the Golden State, with an estimated population of about 70 wild wolves.<\/p>\n
State wildlife biologists and other conservationists excited at the prospect of a wolf comeback assumed the predators would target their natural prey, mostly deer and elk. But decades of logging and climate change have vastly altered the forests and terrain in much of Northern California, leaving deer and elk in short supply. Instead, many of the wolves have taken to hunting the lumbering, docile, domesticated cattle grazing in plain sight on wide-open pastures.<\/p>\n
When that happens, ranchers say, it\u2019s like someone coming into your store and stealing from the shelves. Nobody pretends cattle are pets \u2014 they\u2019re bred and raised to be slaughtered. But no business can survive for long without some way to protect the merchandise.<\/p>\n
To defend the livestock, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife promotes non-lethal \u201chazing\u201d of the predators, which can include firing guns toward the sky, driving trucks and ATVs toward wolves to try to shoo them away and harassing them with noise from drones. But according to local ranchers, none of that seems to work, at least not for long.<\/p>\n
And that has led to near rebellion in California\u2019s northeastern counties, including Sierra, where local authorities have declared a state of emergency and are begging state officials for permission to more aggressively \u201cremove\u201d problem wolves.<\/p>\n
The reason hazing doesn\u2019t seem to work, according to ranchers, is that the wolves appear to have no fear of humans. And the cattle, which have gone generations without having to deal with these apex predators, seem to have forgotten how to defend themselves by sticking together in herds.<\/p>\n
Turning such naive, docile cattle loose in sprawling pastures is a little like turning \u201cme loose in downtown L.A.,\u201d said Cameron Krebs, a fifth-generation rancher in eastern Oregon who has been dealing with aggressive wolves for years. \u201cI might get hurt, might run into the wrong person, might get run over by a car, just because I don\u2019t have the sense to look both ways,\u201d he said with a laugh.<\/p>\n
Krebs has become something of a hero in environmental circles for his dedication to finding non-lethal ways to co-exist with wolves, which boil down to making sure the animals in his herd stick together \u2014 the way wild buffalo and elk do \u2014 so it\u2019s harder for wolves to single out and separate one of them.<\/p>\n
But that takes a lot of time and manpower, and there are inevitably wolves that outwit even the most well-intentioned efforts. \u201cAt that point, you need to be able to shoot them,\u201d Krebs said. \u201cIt\u2019s just one of the tools in the toolbox.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back in the Sierra Valley, Greenwood said he saw his first wolf in 2018, from his living room window, standing over a calf it had just killed. \u201cIt was just taunting me,\u201d Greenwood said in disbelief.<\/p>\n
But things didn\u2019t get really bad until 2022, when he lost nearly two dozen animals to the increasingly brazen wolves. Since then, he said, he has been fighting an exhausting, losing battle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt really, really bad as we were shipping cows in here in May,\u201d Greenwood said, standing in an immense pasture on a portion of his ranch in nearby Red Clover Valley. \u201cIt\u2019s beautiful up here; there\u2019s plenty of grass growing. Everything\u2019s right for them, except there\u2019s wolves circling in the hills just waiting for those trucks to get here.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s versed in the non-lethal techniques promoted by environmental advocates and embraced by the Department of Fish and Wildlife, but his shoulders slumped and his eyes searched the horizon as he explained how impractical they seem to him now.<\/p>\n
\u201cProfit margins are so, so thin,\u201d he said, noting that some people seem to think all ranchers are as rich as Kevin Costner\u2019s character on \u201cYellowstone.\u201d But his reality is nothing like TV.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just me and another guy running 1,200 acres of irrigated hay and 600 cows,\u201d Greenwood said. \u201cI could maybe get all of these cows into a corral at night if I had six guys on horses helping me,\u201d but there\u2019s no money for that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel like our hands are tied. We\u2019re exhausted, and there\u2019s zero help,\u201d Greenwood said.<\/p>\n
In 2021, the state set up a $3-million pilot project to reimburse ranchers for cattle lost to wolves and help pay for non-lethal deterrents, such as flags tied to electrified fences and lights affixed to fence posts.<\/p>\n
But Greenwood said by the time he finished filling out all the paperwork for the cattle he lost in 2022, the state money had run out. \u201cI still haven\u2019t seen a dime,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Arthur Middleton, a professor of wildlife management working with UC Berkeley\u2019s California Wolf Project, said he\u2019s been taken aback by how bold the wolves are becoming in the Sierra Valley.<\/p>\n
In April, while a TV news crew from Sacramento was filming an interview with the sheriff in a cattle pasture, two gray wolves appeared in the background stalking the livestock, Middleton recounted. The sight of them so close to the road in broad daylight, with a noisy news crew filming nearby, was like nothing he has witnessed in many years of working on wolf recovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat just goes to show what an incredible challenge ranchers and wildlife managers have on their hands,\u201d Middleton said.<\/p>\n
For many Sierra Valley residents, the question is no longer whether problem wolves are going to be forcefully removed, it\u2019s who is going to do it. Pissed-off ranchers? Or environmental professionals working with an eye to eliminate the most prolific cattle killers while preserving the rest of the pack?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a joke circulating in the valley this spring: \u201cShoot, shovel and shut up,\u201d Groven said. She added that she doesn\u2019t think any of the ranchers have followed through on the implied threat, but said it would be hard to blame them if they did.<\/p>\n
Fisher, the sheriff, said he would like the authority to shoot a wolf he believes poses a risk to human safety \u2014 like the pair that chased the elk onto someone\u2019s front porch. But he thinks the Department of Fish and Wildlife should be responsible for \u201cremoving\u201d wolves that habitually attack cattle.<\/p>\n
Greenwood said he\u2019s not advocating for the elimination of the wolves. He just wants to be able to protect his livestock.<\/p>\n
He saw the wolves moving among his cattle the night the 3-month-old calf was mauled and another one was killed. Following the law, he kept his hands off his gun and revved up his ATV, chasing the predators more than a mile away, hoping that was far enough to keep the cattle safe.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t. \u201cThey\u2019re very patient,\u201d Greenwood said. \u201cThey just outlast you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 3-month-old calf? It died of its wounds before the wolves could return.<\/p>\n