The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, or CDFW, this week published a report summarizing its management and conservation activities for gray wolves (Canis lupus) over the past 10 years.  

“Ten Years of Gray Wolf Conservation and Management in California: 2015-2024” details CDFW’s wolf conservation and management efforts, including wolf monitoring techniques, wolf-livestock depredation investigations, wolf captures and population data for the state’s wolf packs known through 2024, including the minimum number of individuals, breeding pairs and litters produced. 

Wolves were extirpated in California by 1924 and naturally returned to the state in 2011. The first pups born in California were documented in 2015. 

At the end of 2024, CDFW wildlife biologists documented at least 50 wolves in the state. 

Wolves are listed as endangered species under the California Endangered Species Act and the federal Endangered Species Act.  

“Since the wolves’ return CDFW has been monitoring the growing wolf population, working to mitigate wolf-livestock conflict and conducting significant outreach to livestock producers and the public,” said CDFW Director Charlton H. Bonham. “Through these monitoring efforts, studies and outreach, CDFW and partners are building a toolkit that will offer solutions and resources for livestock producers while also allowing a native species to successfully come home.” 

“The return of wolves to California is an epic tale and this report marks an important milestone in that story,” said Amaroq Weiss, a senior wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “California’s decade of the wolf demonstrates that when essential legal protections are in place, there can be comeback stories for desperately imperiled animals.”

Starting in 2026, CDFW plans to produce an annual report about its wolf management and conservation activities. Wolf management and conservation is guided by CDFW’s 2016 Conservation Plan for Gray Wolves in California. 

This first report describes 10 years of work by CDFW, such as community engagement efforts, non-lethal deterrent use and the creation of the Wolf-Livestock Compensation Program. 

Maps included in the report show wolf activity in California as well as migration of collared wolves. While the Yowlumni pack has established in Tulare County, all other known packs have home ranges in northeastern California.  

The report highlights include a summary of past and ongoing research that will inform CDFW’s future management of wolves. 

Wolves return after a century

The first wolf in nearly a century to make California part of his range was OR-7, a radio-collared wolf from Oregon that entered California in late 2011. OR-7 traveled across seven northeastern counties in California before returning to southwestern Oregon, where he found a mate and settled down, forming the Rogue pack.

Several of OR-7’s offspring have since come to California and established packs. Those include the original breeding male of the Lassen pack and the breeding female of the Yowlumni pack residing in Tulare County. The Shasta pack, California’s first confirmed wolf pack in nearly 100 years, was discovered in 2015 but disappeared a few months later.

The gray wolf is native to California but was driven to extinction in the state by the mid-1920s. After OR-7 left Oregon for California, the Center and allies successfully petitioned the state to fully protect wolves under California’s endangered species act. Wolves are also federally protected in California under the federal Endangered Species Act. It is illegal to intentionally kill any wolves in the state except in defense of human life.

While California’s first known wolf in modern times entered the state in late 2011, it was not until summer 2015 that the first wolf family here in 100 years, the Shasta pack, was confirmed. At the end of 2024, seven known packs composed of around 50 to 70 wolves ranged across multiple counties in California.

According to the report, between 2015 and 2024, the agency was able to collar 12 wolves across five packs, a known 21 litters of wolf pups were born, and there have been at least nine known wolf deaths.

Of these mortalities, cause of death could not be determined in four instances, three wolves died after being struck by vehicles, one wolf was killed illegally and one wolf’s death is still under investigation.

This spring, the agency confirmed the existence of an additional three packs, bringing the current tally to 10 known wolf families in the state. Nine of those packs are in northeastern California and one pack is 200 miles further south, near Sequoia National Forest.

Months after the first wolf arrived in California, CDFW formed a stakeholder working group that was divided into three subgroups: A wolf-livestock subgroup focused on wolf impacts on livestock and agriculture, a wolf-ungulates subgroup focused on wolf impacts on deer and elk populations, and a wolf conservation subgroup focused on wolf sustainability and health issues. The outcomes of 44 meetings were analyzed. 

Most prevalent were topics relating to the importance of and need for data on wolves in California, including their impact on livestock, wild prey and natural ecological communities; identifying wolf population recovery goals and whether a sustainable population can be maintained over time; how the California Endangered Species Act affects wolf management options; and where lethal controls would fit into wolf management. 

The report also includes an analysis of the Lassen pack’s diet and notes the work of CDFW’s Wildlife Forensics Lab to create a reference library of wolf genetic samples. 

The genetic samples are used to determine the origins and relatedness of California’s wolves, differentiate scats and depredations by coyotes and dogs, identify the genetic “fingerprints” of individual wolves and even determine the coat color of wolves detected only by their DNA. 

“California’s wolves are still in the infancy of their recovery, and ongoing legal protections are essential to keep their small population growing,” said Weiss. “This 10-year report is worth celebrating but California gets this opportunity to celebrate only because we’ve decided wolves are worth protecting.”

The University of California, Davis, Wildlife Health Center initiated The Wolf Project in 2022, with research funded by the Wildlife Conservation Network. In 2023 CDFW began collaborating with researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, on the California Wolf Project. More information about the The Wolf Project and California Wolf Project are available online. 

For more information about wolf conservation in California, CDFW Wolf Livestock Compensation Grants or to view the CDFW Wolf Tracker wolf location map go to CDFW's gray wolf web page. 

The Ten Years of Gray Wolf Conservation and Management in California: 2015-2024 report is now available online.