CDFW Begins Process to Evaluate Wolf-Livestock Compensation Program
[Image from CDFW]
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has started a process to evaluate California’s Wolf-Livestock Compensation Program (WLCP).
On Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, CDFW held a workshop with a group of stakeholder
representatives focused on how best to assess the program to inform potential adjustments to future applications and funding opportunities. The purpose of the workshop was to identify a transparent and collaborative process for evaluating the existing WLCP. The discussion marked the first step in gathering input and perspectives from key stakeholder groups involved in livestock production, wolf conservation, research and government agencies.
CDFW recognizes that the WLCP affects a wide range of interests. Participants were selected based on their previous involvement in the development of the program, their authority and expertise, and their roles representing multiple interested and affected stakeholders. During the workshop, attendees helped identify an evaluation process designed to ensure transparency while providing opportunities for public review and input.
Invited participants included representatives from the California Farm Bureau, California Cattlemen’s Association, Western Landowners Alliance, California Wool Growers Association, Rural County Representatives of California (RCRC), University of California Cooperative Extension, University of California, Berkeley, Defenders of Wildlife, the California Wolf Foundation, the California Center for Biological Diversity, Working Circle, USDA APHIS Wildlife Services, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
CDFW will continue working with these groups and the public as the evaluation process moves forward.
Since its inception as a pilot program in 2021, CDFW’s Wolf-Livestock Compensation Program has paid out more than $3.5 million to livestock producers whose operations have been impacted by the return of gray wolves to California.
For more information about the evaluation process, timeline and opportunities to participate please visit CDFW’s Wolf Livestock Compensation Grants webpage.
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$ 3.5 million? Those sure must be some hungry wolves. What’s that work out to, about $2,000 a day if spread over, let’s be generous and say 5 years.
Out of about 112 million cattle in the U.S.:
Source/Humane World For Animals
I read somewhere that some California ranchers may lose maybe one cow a week to wolves and some ranchers lose none.
Only because there are few wolves now? This changes because wolves are more than adequate predators. The next headlines will be about having to cull a pack that moved into proximity to people or having to figure out a way to treat them for some disease they picked up from dogs.
Maybe yes, may be no. Wolves don’t recognize borders and fences. A “holistic ranching” owner I know up in E Oregon uses the approach to not kill everything they eat. That is if you don’t kill every frog, bird, deer, owl or anything else, the wolves and big cats don’t feed on the cattle as a primary food source. Something else was noticed too; said person also has a small solar farm for-profit. Cows like the shade, grass around the panels grows better too . Predators seem to be scared off by them like scarecrows. He’s been quite profitable and not many problems with I think 4 known packs in his area. It comes down to better management methods than outright elimination that will cost you more in the end than the loss of a single cow that can be replaced.
Not to say predators aren’t a problem or can be. But it’s also not the biggest, most violent pest that’s really the constant problem. Disease is. You can lose 2000 head in a week to disease. Or just one fast moving brush fire.
4.5 million? How much of that is to BBQ?
No loss form wolves is acceptable.
.
But the real scam, and yes this is a scam, is these range lands privately owned, in conservancy, are taking a carbon credit $$$ for any reintroduce species on their land. Prove me wrong!
A lot of ‘range land’ is leased from the state or the fed. The difference between ‘free’ and ‘open’ ranges also matters as far as liability, and responsibility of parties involved.
How would someone prove that someone else isn’t being paid something?
Why not just share the evidence of these payments that you relied on to come to your conclusion?
Land trusts generate revenue from endangered species primarily through habitat acquisition grants, conservation easements, and mitigation banking. They secure federal/state funding (e.g., Endangered Species Recovery Land Acquisition grants) to protect critical habitats. Additionally, they create “conservation banks” where developers pay to offset environmental damage, providing income for land management.
Key Revenue Mechanisms
and even worse.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/3005456189844699
nobodies being paid. It is way past that.
It’s no wonder why I can’r afford a fishing license.
You will not be allowed to fish in the near future.
$3.5 million @ $2.30 per lb (today) ~= 1.5 million lbs / generous 1500 lbs per cow ~= just over 1000 cows. Over 5 years that’s ~200 lost cows per year…
wolves wont go after a 1500 lb cow. They will look for old or young first. We use electronic monitors on dairy cows now. You can see history of extreme stress real time. But you have to be looking and on hand with a 30-06 to stop it.
https://ambrook.com/offrange/livestock/california-wolf-payouts-ranchers-cattle
..17 hmr. They need to keep moving.
Aw, i see how you think. But….that wound my heal.
You forgot the administrative and investigative costs. Would dorp payout figures way down.
They only need to keep YOU off the land.
Huh? The news release clearly states:
According to data from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), the annual loss of cattle has shifted dramatically:
That 2025 increase was mainly due to one pack, which has since been culled.
The bastards at fish and game would not even count the incident i know of as wildlife caused. Total bullshit. Absolutely a mountain lion. So add two to 2024.
You know those were not counted how please?
Where did you find that data please?
Rabies, distemper, brucellosis, lymes, parvo, flukes, etc etc etc. This romanticizing attempt to return to some garden of eden that never existed anyway will need constant maintenance to contain because wolves roam widely, breed rapidly, spread diseases to dogs who then spread it to people and people, their cars and dogs are everywhere these days.
Wolves were here first.
We should welcome them back and learn to coexist with them in their homes.
Lots of things were “here first” – mosquitoes, wild fires, slavery, cholera for example- but they are not compatible with what exists now. Doesn’t make coexisting with them a good idea.
Slavery was here first?
Wildfires, sure. But like wolves, they are an important part of ecosystems and humans caused enormous harm in our earlier efforts to eradicate them.
Mosquitoes, similar to wolves, are unwelcome on my porch.
But in the wild, they too are an important part of the ecosystem.
And cholera was introduced to the Americas. So that one makes about as much sense as your comment about slavery.
Bats eat mosquitos
And bats are more than welcome around my house.
IMHO;
Meanwhile:
Lassen County Sheriff John McGarva released a letter on Monday, saying gray wolves have “become a widespread threat to the producers in Lassen County” and pointing to 45 attacks on livestock since January 2025.
In the most recent incident, a horse named “Smoke” was euthanized after suffering a major leg injury during a suspected attack by gray wolves on Jan. 1.
A roughly 600-pound calf on the same property was also found dead with bite marks.
Two days later, on Jan. 3, another calf at a ranch nearby was found killed and eaten. McGarva said a gray wolf pack called the Harvey pack was reportedly nearby during these attacks.
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Mountain lions menaced hikers, pets for months near national park before fatal attack
A woman hiking near Rocky Mountain National Park was killed by a mountain lion on New Year’s Day, according to an autopsy released on Jan 5th. The hiker, identified as Kristen Marie Kovatch of Fort Collins, Colorado, died due to asphyxia caused by external neck compression, the autopsy states.
The fatal attack came just weeks after a man fought off a mountain lion in the same area, and after a group of hikers was surrounded by multiple mountain lions on the same trail.
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Mountain lion terrorizes Monterey County neighborhood, killing miniature horse and pet dogs.
Residents in the Corral de Tierra area said the big cat appears to be targeting domesticated animals. On an almost nightly basis for the past few weeks, the mountain lion has been coming up onto front porches, into pens, and into barns looking to kill livestock. A miniature horse and family dogs have even been killed.
“The Sunday before Christmas, about 12:30, I could hear rustling on our porch. Our family dog was taken off of our porch,” said Corral de Tierra resident Michael Antle. “The following night, the lion came for our goat and actually took the goat to the same spot. Didn’t eat either animal, so I think it’s out to kill.”
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Oh well…
OH wait till the grizzlies are on the lose. Packing a .44 mag is a pain.
IMHO:
Newsomites & Bonta won’t let you pack a pistol… even out in a wilderness area.
You will be arrested, ‘felonized’, and and tossed in jail.
Well, unless you are an Illegal Alien… then you get welfare.
You are 100% allowed to carry a pistol in California– even out in the wilderness.
You’re starting to sound like Mr. C with your completely imagined vexations.
I was amazed when the Caihong juji made a comeback in the US.
They’re still trying to get them out of the libraries.
Who’s a good boy?
It kinda shows the impracticality of late stage civilizations, that we would reintroduce a species that was killed off largely due to its incompatibility with the western livestock culture that predates all of us.
so we will reintroduce them, only to have to kill them again when times get tough, and we care more about our cows than feral dogs in the mountains
CDFW Wolf Livestock Compensation Grants https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Mammals/Gray-Wolf/Grants
Wolf-Livestock Compensation (pdf) file:///home/pi/Downloads/WLCP_Feb.23.2026_ADA-1.pdf
Interesting.This reads like a renewal from the original pilot program that ran out of funding in 2024. I wonder how they handle the fact that wolves are rather borderless so crossing between CA and OR is a thing and who compensates who?