Wolf Hazing in Sierra Valley: CDFW’s Pilot Program and Local Criticisms

SIERRA VALLEY — Last week, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) announced some details of the actions taken by its wolf hazing strike team pilot program. The program aims to reduce wolf-livestock conflict in the Sierra Valley. The strike team employs hazing techniques, including bean bag and rubber bullet ammunition rounds, as well as the pursuit of wolves on all-terrain vehicles. CDFW staff members have contributed more than 6,000 combined hours of hazing and enforcement efforts since the program began on June 9. The organization reports that its hazing efforts led to 21 incidents in which wolves were successfully deterred from livestock, and that ranches not directly participating in the program have seen reduced response times for depredation investigations and reimbursements through the Wolf-Livestock Compensation Program.

In a response posted the next day, the Sierra County Sheriff’s Office presented a contrasting view. Sheriff Mike Fisher states that during the same period in which the 21 successful hazing incidents occurred, an equal or greater number of confirmed wolf attacks or kills took place. He indicates that the hazing techniques being utilized are ultimately ineffective against intelligent wolf predators, which have simply shifted their hunting activity to neighboring ranches not being actively patrolled by CDFW.

Fisher argues that lethal removal of habituated wolves—those that primarily subsist on livestock depredations—represents the most effective way to allow wild wolves to thrive and dampen conflict with livestock. “Until the targeted removal of problem wolves occurs, we will remain in a vicious and costly cycle with no end in sight,” reads his press release. Fisher urges the CDFW to immediately reassess its approach and work with local stakeholders to develop a management plan that allows for the targeted removal of habituated wolves.

The Sheriff also criticizes CDFW for excluding local law enforcement and ranchers from daily strike team operations. He states that information about wolf whereabouts is often withheld or delayed until hours after CDFW collects GPS tracking collar information. The delays deny ranchers the ability to take adequate preventative measures or find remains from wolf depredations before scavengers deface the carcasses.

Rick Roberti, President of the California Cattlemen’s Association and a rancher himself, backs up several of the points made by Sheriff Fisher. He says that CDFW’s strike team came as a result of complaints about daily wolf conflicts in the Sierra Valley, which ranchers felt they were powerless to prevent. While the team has hazed wolves from properties, Roberti says that “once a wolf starts getting a taste for cattle, he’s not going to go back to deer,” a sentiment he says is backed by CDFW Director Chuck Bonham, with whom he has been in contact.

Roberti believes that ranchers have a constitutional right to protect their property—livestock—from wolves. He also believes that circumstances will reach a boiling point if ranchers aren’t given a pathway to remove habituated wolves lethally. “I think [the CDFW understands] that this thing is about ready to blow up. People can’t take this anymore, we’re tired of it,” he says. Both Roberti and Sheriff Fisher agree that without such a pathway, ranchers with “nothing to lose” could take matters into their own hands and start shooting wolves, a situation neither hopes to see.

Notably, Roberti claims that 80-90% of wolf attacks and depredations on ranches in his area come from a single male wolf and the wolf’s offspring, who have been roaming the Sierraville-Calpine-Sattley region and are well known to ranchers. Sheriff Fisher could not confirm the statistic, emphasizing that the results of DNA testing performed by CDFW were considered sensitive and not released to him. However, Fisher could confirm that a majority of attacks had been linked to a cluster containing three collared wolves. Roberti says that of the likely nearly 100 wolves in California now, most do not primarily feed on livestock. If California maintained a population of “good wolves” with only occasional livestock takes, Roberti says ranchers “could live with that.”

Ultimately, however, Roberti believes California has too many predators and too few prey, and a growing wolf population only exacerbates the dynamic. “Anybody that’s lived around here long enough knows that there’s not a lot of deer left, and most of those deer are living in our small towns to protect themselves from the mountain lions and the bears that are so thick in the woods,” he says, adding, “even though lots of people would love to see the wolves survive, they can’t survive in California on the deer population we have now. So, they’re going to have to eat livestock to stay here.”

While lethal action is a proven method of wildlife conflict resolution and prevention, notably utilized with California’s black bear population in habituation circumstances, critics argue that non-lethal methods can be made effective. Organizations, including Defenders of Wildlife, promote the use of guard animals, electric fencing, and range riders. Although ranchers are currently restricted in the types of hazing they can perform due to the gray wolf’s endangered status, the use of livestock guardian dogs is strongly promoted by CDFW. A resource linked by CDFW from the UC Cooperative Extension classifies them as the most effective non-lethal livestock protection tool across all operation sizes, based on a 2010 study. Roberti acknowledges that livestock guardian animals have been proven effective at a small scale, even citing a specific case in which donkeys prevented wolf attacks on a flock of sheep. Still, he pushes back on their feasibility in larger operations, saying, “There’s guardian dogs, but it would take hundreds of dogs, and we just can’t have dogs everywhere. [...] We’ve got 120,000 acres just in Sierra Valley, and we’ve got thousands of cows in different fields.”