- [Producer] Production funding for American Grown provided by James G. Parker Insurance, protecting agribusiness in the valley for over 40 years.

Brandt Professional Agriculture; discovering, manufacturing and supplying the Agen puts that support the heroes that work hard to feed a hungry world every day.

By UNWIRED Broadband.

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Keeping Valley Ag connected since 2003.

By Hodges Electric, trusted by builders to wire thousands of valley homes.

Now bringing that trust direct to you.

By Wawona Frozen Foods: Fruit as it should be.

Family-owned since 1963.

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By Harrison Co providing family farms insight to make the best possible financial decisions.

And by Valley Air Conditioning and Repair, family-owned for over 50 years, dedicated to supporting valley agriculture and families that grow food for the nation.

(dramatic music) The following program contains graphic images.

Viewer discretion is advised.

In the winter of 1995, gray wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park.

(solemn music) Supporters call it restoration, bringing back a missing piece of the ecosystem.

Ranchers in rural communities see something else entirely.

A predator they believed was long gone returning to landscapes, still shaped by livestock and livelihoods.

The wolves don't just survive, they thrive.

They reclaim their place as apex predators, and over time, their descendants begin to move outward into Oregon, Washington, and eventually California.

Today there are 10 established wolf packs in this state, the southern most of them now reaching all the way into Tulare County.

This story begins in September of 2025 in Sierra Valley, California, north of Truckee, to see firsthand what happens when old ideas collide with modern reality.

(solemn guitar music) - My family, most of them came from Switzerland, especially on our, maybe on our ranching side.

In the 1800s, they came over to the gold rush.

They'd heard about what was happening in California and they were hungry in Europe.

So as young men, they got on boats and came.

And my mom always used to say, "What a sad time for a family to ship off their kids on a boat."

But it was better than letting them starve at home.

So never, maybe, to see those kids again.

The one thing they knew how to do was milk cows.

So our valley was settled by a lot of English and a lot of Welchs in the 1850s.

They were tired of this cold climate.

So they sold after the Switzers and Italians and they began milking cows.

And it was a way to make a living on a small place without a lot of fencing or a lot of help.

- Well, my name is Paul Rowan.

I live in Sierra Valley.

We came here in 1995.

My brother bought a ranch that I operate and manage for him.

We run a couple thousand cows in Sierra Valley, and then we, those cows go down a winter in the Central Valley down by Oakdale and Merced.

I also am a county supervisor that serves District 3 for Sierra County, which represents the majority of the ag industry within Sierra County.

In Sierra Valley.

The southern half of the Valley falls in Sierra County, the northern half of Plumes County.

Sierra County is a very small county.

We have 3000 people as the total population.

And the agriculture industry is a large financial component of the county because we lost all of our logging due to the spotted al.

So the county is very dependent on the agriculture production on the east side of the county.

And it's a large portion of the county's viability.

- I have lived here my whole life.

I was born in 1986 in Yuba City, but my family ran cows in Sierraville and down in Yuba County.

And so we went back and forth between the two.

So I've lived here for almost 40 years now, with the exception of being gone for college and a few years in the workforce.

(objects rattling) (guitar music continues) So my husband and I run our family ranch, Madelina Ranch.

So we run cow-calf pairs.

And then I am a school teacher here locally.

I teach third grade at our local elementary school.

- [Producer] So you're a real slacker.

You don't have anything really going on?

- (laughs) We lounge around.

The very first colored wolf that came into California, OR-54.

She was a heavy traveler and she actually ended up on our ranch, kind of for the first known sighting.

She came into our old bone pile, and she was kind of wandering around the ranch after that.

And so we put up trail cams and caught her up there.

And then after there that she was around a lot.

She traveled a lot, but she came back quite a bit, harassed our heifers.

And then at one point walked within 80 feet of back door where my son, who was two at the time, and my daughter, who was six months old, would play.

So that was our first really like, "Oh, there's wolves outside of Yellowstone National Park."

And then after that, we just started seeing more and more.

- [Producer] Sierra Valley is a place built on grass, water and time.

Wide and open, flat enough to work, surrounded by forest and mountains that shape both the land and the life here.

For generations, cattle ranching has been the backbone of this valley.

Summer grass feeds herds that will eventually move down to lower elevations when winter settles in.

It's a seasonal rhythm.

Predictable, measured and deeply tied to the land.

The people we meet here, ranchers, families, teachers, they don't just live alongside cattle, they depend on them.

- Yeah, so I think it was actually when the whale backpack in Siskiyou County had been established, and ranchers that we've worked with on a variety of issues communicated what was happening up there.

That there was significant depredation of cattle and that, you know, there was also indirect economic impacts, like losses in conception rates, decreases in body condition scores on cows, things along those lines.

And so it still seemed very isolated because it was in the very northern parts of the state.

And other producers throughout California and myself didn't really anticipate that wolves would be kind of everywhere in the state in, you know, 10 years time.

- Adjacent to our valley is a higher mountain meadow called Clover Valley, which is right north of this valley.

And we have a local rancher that has a permit up there and some private ground.

So their cows go up there in the summer and they come back down here in the winter.

A couple years ago, he started recording Wolf kills up there, and then they escalated last year.

And then when he brought his cows down last year to the valley from the summer pasture, the wolves, within three days followed the cows down, and then the killing began in Sierra Valley in earnest.

- [Producer] When gray wolves are introduced into Yellowstone in 1995, they're protected under the Federal Endangered Species Act.

That protection follows them as they expand across the west.

But in California, the state goes a step further.

The gray wolf is listed as endangered here as well, adding another layer of protection beyond the federal law.

Supporters argue it's a necessary safeguard for a species reclaiming lost ground.

Critics, including some biologists and ranchers, raise a different question.

If this particular wolf was never historically part of California's ecosystem, can it truly be considered endangered here?

That debate now lands squarely at the feet of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The agency tasked with protecting wolves while also responding to the people who live and work alongside them.

In Sierra Valley, that balance proves harder to strike than anyone expected.

- [Producer] Good morning, how are you?

- [Bystander] Good.

How are you doing?

- [Producer] Pretty good.

- Can't see any bite marks on that piece.

- [Bystander] I didn't either.

- [Producer] And you guys can probably tell the difference between a, I know this is kind of like a stupid question, but I gotta ask it.

Between a coyote bite and a wolf bite, right?

The canines on a wolf are gonna be bigger, the holes are gonna be bigger, all that kind of stuff.

- A lot wider.

- [Producer] Yeah.

- And you can stick your little finger in 'em.

- The other thing is the bruising's really severe on the hide and on the meat.

When when the wolf bites it, you can, I mean, it's... They have a tremendous amount of biting power.

So they're, they're bit force is way, way above what a coyote- That and where they attack is, is not the way a coyote attacks.

- [Producer] Coyote?

How does a coyote attack?

How's it different?

- Usually they'll grab the calf by the tail and then, you know, several coyotes will get ahold of it and they'll grab it by the neck and stuff more than the wolves bite 'em, mostly right on the back.

That's their angle, because the wolf's this tall, they're looking down at the calf, they bite these little calves right on the back.

- [George] Yeah.

- It's pretty sad to watch your livelihood get eaten up.

If we'd have... If we'd have killed these wolves when they first come in the valley, somebody would be out of jail by now.

And it would've saved the ranchers a lot of money to pay the a hundred thousand dollar fine.

- [Producer] Yeah, well, you know- - [Rancher] It's six months in jail and a hundred thousand dollars is pretty easy math.

We'd be way ahead of the game if somebody would've went and sat in jail.

- As an economist, I became interested in wolves and particularly their consequences to cattle producers, when the state introduced the concept of a pilot compensation program that would reimburse ranchers for confirmed losses due to wolf predation and then also reimburse them for non-lethal deterrence measures that they use and what they call pay for presence, which is hopefully compensating 'em for some of those indirect costs that I talked about.

So when they were gonna introduce that program, I realized as an economist that there was very little, almost no research on that pay for presence aspect, right?

What should we pay a producer for ranching in a wolves territory to compensate them for losses on their livestock?

And so that was when my husband, Ken Tate and I started writing grant proposals to conduct a research study to hopefully inform compensation for ranchers in the future in California.

- [Producer] By the spring of 2025, the wolves are no longer passing through.

An established pack, known as the Beyem Seyo Pack, named for the region, sets up permanently in Sierra Valley.

(wolf howling) The California Department of Fish and Wildlife captures and collars three adult wolves.

The primary animals most often linked to cattle harassment and kills.

By early summer calf losses are no longer isolated incidents.

They're happening daily.

Frustration grows.

And for ranchers like Paul Rowan, both a cattleman and county supervisor, the pressure on the state begins to intensify.

I made repeated requests for interviews with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, including its then director Chuck Bonham.

None of my calls, texts, or emails are returned.

With tensions rising and real concern that ranchers might take matters into their own hands, The department rolls out what it calls, "Strike teams."

Wardens are deployed to monitor the wolves and use non-lethal harassment when they enter active pastures.

The tactic works, but not as intended.

The wolves adapt.

Attacks shift to nighttime, creating a new problem and drawing in another layer of federal oversight.

Alright, so we're following Paul Rowan on his property right now, and he has drones up.

So we have federal scientists that have drones up, that have heat-seeking cameras on 'em, and they are locating, there's wolves right now hunting cattle in this big field right next to me.

So I'm just kind of, we literally just met Paul, I shook his hand and he said, "Get the truck, let's go."

We're in the ultimate cat and mouse game here, right?

You're just- - Oh, this is a (bleep) show.

- It is?

- Last night, we, yeah, right here, we kept 'em back.

We fought until two o'clock before they finally spilled over the highway.

- So you have night vision binoculars that you're using?

I have night vision.

I don't have 'em with me right now, but, so are you looking for where the, are the drones seeing 'em?

- [Paul] No, these wolves cross right here every, almost every night.

- Okay.

- Colby's coming right behind us.

He's got telemetry and we're gonna try to figure out where in the hell they're at.

- Okay.

- We left the den and we don't know where they're at.

- Are we hunkered down right here?

- For a minute, yeah.

- Okay, got it.

Copy that.

Now, if you were to see wolves right now, what would we do?

- Start hollering like hell and run 'em back up the hill.

Because if they want to get across the road here, it becomes a dog fight.

- [Producer] Is there, at some point, are you guys gonna have to go to like, a big crazy fence system to keep 'em out or?

It seems like it's a crazy, you know- - Oh, it's insane.

- You can do this- - (bleep) all night.

It's insane, yes.

No, we do it all night every night.

It's like a- - [Producer] Well, at some point there's gotta be something that changes.

Where there's gonna be a tipping point.

'Cause you can't be expected as a cattle rancher to stay up all night long chasing these animals out here.

- [Paul] You're right.

- I do think, Lori, I think that male is still over there.

- [Lori] Okay.

- From the telemetry?

- [Lori] Yes.

- [Producer] By midsummer, confirmed cattle kills in Sierra Valley are approaching 70 calves.

That's when the federal government steps in.

The United States Department of Agriculture deploys a specialized response team.

Scientists, technicians, and drone operators tasked with one goal: keeping wolves out of active pastures without killing them.

Night after night, high tech drones lift off.

Equipped with infrared cameras, they scan the valley in total darkness, tracking heat signatures movement and signals from radio collars.

- Found a Turkey.

- [Caller] Oh, in the trees?

- Yeah.

- It's like a fricking petting zoo down there.

When wolves are located, the drones move in.

Lights, speakers, human voices, even loud rock music blasted from the drones above in an effort to disrupt the hunt.

The man leading this unusual operation is named Paul Wolf.

- And so she's been following a little bit, but now we've got weird stuff going on with bounce.

- Yeah.

- We don't know if the animals are trying to scoot along here and come back.

Or if they're trying to get back, it appears that they're trying to get back to from the, from the direction that they came.

- Yeah, - But we don't know that yet.

- [Producer] The entire scene can be best described as chaos.

Wardens race across the valley with spotlights, not to stop the wolves from killing the cattle, but to make sure ranchers don't stop the wolves themselves.

Ranchers move just as fast, trying to protect the herds they've raised.

Knowing every calf lost is another season pushed closer to the edge.

And above it all, federal pilots chase wolves from the sky with technology that didn't exist here a generation ago.

Watching it unfold, one thought keeps surfacing: how is any of this sustainable?

What does it cost financially, emotionally, culturally, to maintain a system built around managing a problem we introduced ourselves?

Especially when many biologists argue this particular wolf was never part of this landscape to begin with.

- There is a lot of controversy about whether the specific subspecies of wolf that is in California right now ever existed in the state.

So the argument that I have heard is that the wolves were native to California, but they were much more the size and subspecies that we now call the Mexican Gray Wolf, which is slightly bigger than a coyote, but not the kind of full size and stature of the gray wolves that we're seeing here that came from Canada originally.

- This is hitting on, you know, where our constitutional rights are being violated.

This is, they're coming and basically stealing people's paychecks.

And at the same time, I think even a bigger issue for most of us is we truly care about our cattle.

We care about cattle health, we care about the wellbeing of our cattle.

And it is very hard to watch cattle get ripped apart in this valley where everyone takes such good care of their cattle.

- The Gray Wolf in California is covered not only under the Federal Endangered Species Act, but it's also covered under the California Endangered Species Act.

So essentially you have two different laws, two different law enforcement agencies that have, you know, the ability to enforce that.

So on the state side of things, you're looking at a upwards of a $10,000 fine and a misdemeanor charge, which, you know, could be up to six months in county jail.

On the federal side, it's a much steeper penalty.

You're looking at up to a $100,000 fine and you're looking at up to one year in federal jail.

- [Producer] If something doesn't happen, at some point ranchers are gonna take matters into their own hands, are they not?

- The point is really close.

In spring of '25 here, the wolves were here.

I advised California Department of Fish and Wildlife people, the wolf people specifically, and chuck, the importance of coming to, and let me show them the ranches and how cattle would be coming in and what cattle would be coming in.

And they was told there'd be between 15,000 and 20,000 head of cattle in this valley.

How are we going to protect them to include the fish and game?

Let me show you your, say you're wolf experts.

Let me show you what's coming.

Let me show you how these ranches run.

Nothing.

Never, never would they come and meet me to go so I could show 'em.

- One of the crazy things to me is the information sharing or lack of, you know?

A lot of the things that I've asked for from fish and wildlife under public safety, I've been denied.

And that's historic GPS information from the collared wolves.

I wanna see truly just how often these wolves are in and our ranches, our ranch houses, our communities, and you know, that information is just not being shared with me.

- [Producer] The reason Sheriff Mike Fisher wants access to the GPS data from the state's collared wolves is simple: In April of 2025, two separate incidents near the town of Loyalton brought the wolf debate painfully close to home.

In one case, a deer was attacked inside a fenced residential yard on private property within sight of a family home.

In another, and what would become one of the most disturbing images of this conflict; a large cow elk was hunted down and killed by wolves, literally at the front doorsteps of a rural home near Loyalton.

Blood stained the concrete, paw prints tracked across the porch, a violent reminder of what a wolf attack looks like and how close it can come to people's front doors.

These weren't remote wilderness encounters.

They happened near town on private property where families live.

This is the moment Sheriff Fisher is talking about.

As the county's top law enforcement official, he's responsible for public safety, for knowing what threats exist and where they are.

And yet even with the wolves wearing GPS collars, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife refused to share real-time location data with him.

The state argues that releasing that information could put wolves at risk.

And ranchers here understand why they may not be given that access.

But the sheriff isn't a rancher.

He's charged with protecting people.

And without that information he says he's being asked to do his job blind.

So what does it take for agencies to share critical information?

Where is the line between wildlife protection and public safety?

And how close does this conflict have to get before something truly irreversible happens?

- The question I asked yesterday at one of our meetings, because we're up to 70-some kills in two months.

So I asked our deputy director from Federal Fishing Wildlife, they said, you're telling me that this law is so strict that they could eat every cow or every calf in our valley, tens, maybe 20,000.

And you still don't have the right to take out these wolves to remove 'em?

And he said, "That's right."

So that also means that they can go into our communities, jump the fence, eat your dogs, eat your cats.

You can stand there and watch 'em, and nobody's gonna say, "We can do something about this."

That's when people are gonna wake up.

When our communities, we were talking earlier about the coyote, how it has got into the suburbs, how it's living there, adapting to that.

This is gonna happen with the wolf and it won't be funny.

It will be serious because people are gonna get hurt in one way or another.

And it's only a matter of time before I think we know what might happen.

- The battle lines in Sierra Valley have been drawn, but the questions remain and they are deeply moral ones.

Should humans reintroduce large apex predators into ecosystems that have lived without them for generations?

Especially landscapes now shaped by cattle ranching, and industry central to our food supply, our economy and the way we feed a nation.

And when those reintroductions are engineered into places where some argue wolves may not have lived before, are we restoring balance or creating new problems?

Because the wolf has a right to exist, too.

A right to survive.

A right to thrive where it once did.

By mid-2025, confirmed calf kills in Sierra Valley are nearing 90.

Ranchers are at a breaking point and the pressure on the state is reaching a boil.

In part two, that boiling point is reached.

Drastic decisions are made and California is forced to confront a solution few expected.

But this story doesn't end in Sierra Valley.

Wolves are now moving south into the central Sierra Nevada.

An established pack has reached Tulare County.

Game cameras are capturing wolf activity near communities surrounding Yosemite.

The wolves aren't retreating, they're expanding.

And California must decide quickly how to live with a predator that's here to stay.

(solemn music) Production funding for American Grown provided by James G. Parker Insurance, protecting agribusiness in the valley for over 40 years.

Brandt Professional Agriculture, discovering manufacturing, and supplying the agen puts that support the heroes that work hard to feed a hungry world every day by UNWIRED Broadband.

Today's internet for rural central California.

Keeping Valley Ag connected since 2003.

By Hodges Electric, trusted by builders to wire thousands of valley homes.

Now bringing that trust direct to you.

By Wawona frozen foods, fruit as it should be.

Family-owned since 1963.

By Harris Farms, a legacy of growing.

By Harrison Co., providing family farms insight to make the best possible financial decisions.

And by Valley Air Conditioning and Repair, family-owned for over 50 years, dedicated to supporting valley agriculture and families that grow food for the nation.