‘History being made’: Gray wolf enters Sequoia National Park for the first time in over a century

A lone gray wolf has traveled hundreds of miles across California and into Sequoia National Park, marking the first time a wolf has been in the area for over a hundred years.

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The 3-year-old female wolf, known as BEY03F, made headlines in February when she became the first wolf to cross into Los Angeles County since gray wolves reentered California in 2011. She was born into the Beyem Seyo pack in Plumas County and has since dispersed hundreds of miles across California, likely in search of a mate, according to reporting by the Los Angeles Times. 

Since then, she’s been closely tracked using a location mapping system created by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Her location was tagged inside Sequoia National Park this week and remains there as of Tuesday. 

“This wolf represents a massive ecological milestone since wolves were completely eradicated from California by 1924 and it’s been a century since a wolf has been detected in this area,” CDFW spokesperson Cort Klopping told SFGATE via email. 

The return of gray wolves to California has not been without conflict, especially among ranchers, who say that wolf-related cattle deaths have rapidly increased in recent years. In October, CDFW officials killed four Beyem Seyo wolves after the animals had reportedly begun relying on cattle as a primary food source. 

Partially due to threats from poachers, the accuracy of CDFW’s public-facing wolf tracking map is limited, according to Klopping. Wolves’ movements on the map are intentionally shown as “approximate and generalized locations rather than real-time coordinates,” he said, and appear as large blocks of land instead of exact pinpoints.

The CDFW released the map to the public in order to mitigate conflict between wolves and livestock, Klopping added, as knowing when a wolf is nearby can help ranchers utilize nonlethal deterrent methods before conflicts arise. Additionally, wolf location data was made public “to build community trust, reduce panic and prove that while gray wolves are expanding, conflicts remain relatively rare,” Klopping said.

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It is illegal to kill or harm gray wolves anywhere in California, as the animals are protected under federal and state endangered species acts. While she remains within Sequoia’s borders, BEY03F is also protected under laws that prohibit hunting in national parks, though the Trump administration has been quietly lifting many of these restrictions in recent weeks. 

Wolf enthusiasts and conservationists have been using the CDFW’s map to track BEY03F’s movements along her travels, with many onlookers considering her dispersal to be proof of the resiliency of California’s natural landscapes and the enduring connectivity of its wild places. The Apex Protection Project, a Los Angeles County-based nonprofit, noted that the wolf’s trek “is becoming one of the most important wildlife recovery stories in modern California history.”

“In effect, watching this lone wolf push hundreds of miles south into the Sierra is like watching history being made in real time,” Klopping said.