Los Angeles County has welcomed a visitor it hasn’t seen in more than a century: a wild gray wolf. State wildlife officials say a 3-year-old female, tagged BEY03F and fitted with a GPS collar, crossed into the mountains north of Santa Clarita around 6 a.m. Saturday, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Earlier that morning, she had been tracked moving through the Kern County desert, part of a journey spanning more than 370 miles from her birthplace in Plumas County, north of Lake Tahoe, along the Sierra Nevada. This marks the furthest south any wolf has ever been tracked in California, CBS LA reports.
Researchers say she’s still on the move, as she hasn’t yet found a mate or a permanent territory. “Her journey isn’t over,” said Axel Hunnicutt, gray wolf coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. He noted that every mile she travels increases her exposure to roads and other human activity. Vehicle strikes are the leading known cause of wolf deaths in California; in 2021, a wolf known as OR-93 was killed on Interstate 5 in Kern County after reaching San Luis Obispo County.
California’s native gray wolves were wiped out by hunters and trappers by the 1920s. The species began to return in 2011, when a wolf wandered in from Oregon. Today, biologists estimate at least 60 wolves live in the state, aided by protections under the California Endangered Species Act and careful monitoring by wildlife agencies.
John Marchwick of the nonprofit California Wolf Watch called BEY03F’s arrival in Los Angeles County “a historic moment” in the wolves’ ongoing comeback. Whether she eventually forms the region’s first new pack or heads back north, her GPS collar will continue to log every step of her journey.