A wolf arrived in Los Angeles County on Saturday morning, marking the first time the apex predator has been documented in the area in at least a century, according to state wildlife officials.
Around 6 a.m., the 3-year-old female sporting a black coat reached the mountains north of Santa Clarita, according to Axel Hunnicutt, gray wolf coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Four hours earlier, she was traveling south through Kern County’s desert, he said.
He knows that because the wolf — known as BEY03F — is wearing a GPS collar. She was outfitted with one last May when she was spending time with the Yowlumni Pack in Tulare County. She dispersed from that area about a week ago.
“Her journey isn’t over,” Hunnicutt said.
BEY03F is seeking a partner “and the fact that she is still on the move is an indication that she has not found a mate and suitable habitat.”
The location from the collar on a wolf on Saturday. The CDFW’s wolf tracker provides the last known location of satellite collared wolves within California to help livestock producers mitigate wolf-livestock conflict.
(California Department of Fish and Wildlife)
She’s come a long way to look for love. Born in 2023 in Plumas County’s Beyem Seyo Pack, she’s traveled more than 370 miles and walked the length of the Sierra Nevada to get to her current spot. It’s been perilous. Two days ago, she crossed State Route 59 three times near Tehachapi.
“This signifies a historic moment in the return of wolves for California,” said John Marchwick, a writer for the nonprofit California Wolf Watch.
Marchwick credited the state Department of Fish and Wildlife’s monitoring efforts and the animal’s protection under the state Endangered Species Act, saying they “allowed for this individual’s dispersal to be documented, but also for it to be realistically feasible.”
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California’s wolves were wiped out by hunters and trappers about a century ago, with the last documented wild wolf shot in 1924.
It wasn’t until 2011 that the broad-muzzled canids returned, when a wolf ventured into the state from Oregon. He didn’t stay but his arrival presaged their comeback.
Today, it’s believed that roughly 60 wolves, at minimum, roam the Golden State.
BEY03F’s future is full of possibilities. Though there are no known wolves in the San Gabriel Mountains (where she was as of this morning) or the Tehachapi Mountains, there could be a male inhabiting them. If there is — and she meets and mates with him — she could form a pack. Or she might wander back north, along the Sierra Nevada and potentially hundreds of miles more.
”The one thing that we do know is the more that she moves, the more that she has to encounter human infrastructure, and particularly highways,” Hunnicutt said. “And we know that in California, the highest known cause of mortality for wolves is vehicle strikes.”
A fellow southern traveler, OR-93, ventured into San Luis Obispo County in 2021 before being struck and killed along Interstate 5 in Kern County.