{"id":569240,"date":"2026-04-07T05:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T05:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/569240\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T05:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T05:48:11","slug":"l-a-s-history-making-wolf-lands-in-eastern-sierra-seeks-forever-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/569240\/","title":{"rendered":"L.A.’s history-making wolf lands in Eastern Sierra, seeks forever home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A wolf that seized national attention when she ventured into Los Angeles County<\/a> earlier this year continues to make history.<\/p>\n

The 3-year-old female with black fur entered Inyo County around 7 a.m. Sunday about 20 miles south of Mt. Whitney. She became the first documented wolf to set paws in the Eastern Sierra county in more than a century, according to state wildlife officials.<\/p>\n

By early Monday afternoon, she had pushed deeper into the county to west of the community of Bartlett, said Axel Hunnicutt, gray wolf coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Her movements are tracked with a GPS collar. <\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Share via Close extra sharing options <\/p>\n

The wolf \u2014 known as BEY03F \u2014 essentially traversed the Sierra Nevada in the span of three to four days, a feat Hunnicutt believes was made possible by a low snowpack this season<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She was \u201cable to amazingly quickly cross quite mountainous terrain,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think I could do that in three days.\u201d<\/p>\n

The roughly 60-mile journey adds to the hundreds of miles she\u2019s already traveled from her birthplace in Plumas County, in the far northeastern corner of California.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s been in at least 12 counties and has possibly covered more than 1,000 miles in her lifetime \u2014 crossing dangerous freeways multiple times, Hunnicutt said.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s BEY03F up to now? She\u2019s likely still looking for a mate, experts say.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what brought her down to Los Angeles County on Feb. 7 in the first place. Breeding season runs from mid- to late winter, and wolves are fertile only once a year \u2014 right around Valentine\u2019s Day. So even if she finds a hubby, pups won\u2019t be in the cards this year.<\/p>\n

Born into the Beyem Seyo pack, she made her way down to the Yowlumni pack in Tulare County, where she was collared in May. (She left her birth pack before it became notorious for an unprecedented number of livestock attacks<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t stay in L.A. long<\/a>. Within two days of her arrival, she doubled back to Kern County. She soon was back in Yowlumni territory, in the southern Sierra, where she spent several weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably what we\u2019re seeing is that she\u2019s like, \u2018Well, I didn\u2019t breed this year, but I do still need to find a mate,\u2019\u201d Hunnicutt said. \u201cSo she will continue to travel.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that she\u2019s pregnant and on the move, although that scenario is \u201cless likely,\u201d Hunnicutt said. Pregnancy would suggest that something unusual happened, like she was about to give birth and her partner died or left. Wolves start giving birth around mid-April, and they\u2019re largely monogamous.<\/p>\n

BEY03F\u2019s journey is \u201ca good educational opportunity for people to learn what a dispersing wolf is\u201d \u2014 i.e., one who makes one-way, unpredictable movements in search of mate and territory \u2014 said John Marchwick, of the educational group California Wolf Watch<\/a>. \u201cAnd it\u2019s great to see that she\u2019s doing it in a historical context that\u2019s getting more people to care about wolves.\u201d<\/p>\n

California\u2019s wolves are steadily increasing, a stunning turn of fortune for the apex predators who were wiped out by hunters and trappers about a century ago. What was then the last known wild wolf in the state was shot in Lassen County in 1924.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until 2011 that the endangered canids returned, when a wolf ventured into the state from Oregon. He didn\u2019t stay, but his arrival presaged their comeback, with 50 to 75 roaming the state today.<\/p>\n

Still, they haven\u2019t come back to all their previous haunts. There have been reports of wolves in Inyo County as the animals have rebounded, but none of those reports were confirmed, Hunnicutt said.<\/p>\n

Although conservationists hail the resurgence as a success, crediting state and federal protections, some ranchers are concerned. Wolves that eat livestock take a bite out of the bottom line for ranchers.<\/p>\n

A recent study from the UC Cooperative Extension<\/a> found the economic toll of the attacks by the Beyem Seyo pack on cattle over seven months last year reached at least $2.6 million, a figure that includes the loss of livestock and interventions aimed at deterring predation.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The state\u2019s wolf tracker shows BEY03F\u2019s last known location in Inyo County as of Monday.<\/p>\n

(California Department of Fish and Wildlife)<\/p>\n

On Monday, the state alerted officials in Inyo County that BEY03F was in town.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s done every time a wolf enters a new county for the first time to \u201cprompt people to take non-lethal measures, or at least start thinking about preparing for wolves potentially being in their area,\u201d Hunnicutt said.<\/p>\n

BEY03F is now in the Owens Valley, a place rife with livestock and elk \u2014 likely \u201ca good place for other wolves to be,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

She might just find one and settle down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A wolf that seized national attention when she ventured into Los Angeles County earlier this year continues to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[213101,251212,46611,275,171258,251211,24339,4281,40130,6753,3590,44220,79,13109,201,28262,2394],"class_list":{"0":"post-569240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-axel-hunnicutt","9":"tag-birth-pack","10":"tag-california-department","11":"tag-day","12":"tag-eastern-sierra","13":"tag-inyo-county","14":"tag-livestock","15":"tag-los-angeles-times","16":"tag-mate","17":"tag-mile","18":"tag-people","19":"tag-rancher","20":"tag-science","21":"tag-state","22":"tag-wildlife","23":"tag-wolf","24":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}