She was looking for a partner. Mid to late winter is breeding season for wolves. The broad-snouted canids are fertile only once a year – around Valentine’s Day.
But the 3-year-old wolf – known as BEY03F – is spending the romantic holiday in Kern County. She cut her time in LA short after crossing the county line north Monday morning, according to a state-run GPS-collared tracker of wolves.
Now time is of the essence for her to find a man.
“Unlike dogs who may mate a few times a year and go into heat a few times a year, wolves are not like that,” said Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “So it’s very important that they find a partner before this time. She’s really on the borderline here. It’s possible that she could still find a partner in about two weeks and still be fertile. But time is passing and the clock is ticking.”
(California Department of Fish and Wildlife)
BEY03F, loving called “bae” by somecomes from far northeastern California, in Plumas County, where she was born in 2023 into the Beyem Seyo pack.
Last year, this pack made headlines for an unprecedented number of attacks on livestock, leading state wildlife officials to euthanize several members.
But BEY03F left her family before that happened, according to John Marchwick of California Wolf Watch, an educational group.
She spent time with the Yowlumni pack, the state’s southernmost group of wolves in Tulare County, where she was collared in May, said Axel Hunnicutt, gray wolf coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
She has come a long way in search of love. To get from her birthplace to the mountains north of Santa Clarita, she traveled more than 600 kilometers and walked through the entire Sierra Nevada.
According to Hunnicutt, she was just south of State Route 58, the dividing line between the Tehachapi and Sierra Nevada mountains, on Saturday morning.
Hunnicutt suspected she was heading north because she saw no signs of other wolves during her southward journey. Infrastructure like the Grapevine might have fended her off, too.
“Like [it] If it wasn’t for her, I bet she would have continued west to Ventura County,” Hunnicutt said in a text message.
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Where exactly she goes from here is a bit of a toss-up. Hunnicutt said she could possibly head back south, but based on her movements he thinks she will head further north on Sunday.
“Impossible to say, but it makes me wake up early every day to watch!” he said.
Unlike mountain lions, wolves need a lot of open space, said Beth Pratt, regional executive director of the National Wildlife Federation in California.
That’s not LA’s strong suit.
“You’ll never see a pack of wolves running in Griffith Park,” she said.
However, she did not rule out that a wolf could one day venture across the huge Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing being built over the 101 highway.
Some see BEY093’s arrival in LA as a major victory for the conservation of the endangered species.
“This marks a historic moment in the return of wolves to California,” Marchwick of California Wolf Watch told The Times when she first showed up.
California wolves were exterminated by hunters and trappers about a century ago, with the last documented wild wolf shot in 1924.
It wasn’t until 2011 that the apex predators returned, when a wolf ventured into the state from Oregon. He didn’t stay, but his arrival was a harbinger of their comeback.
Today, it is believed that there are at least about 60 wolves roaming the Golden State.
Not everyone is excited about their comeback and challenges remain. It has raised tensions in rural provinces, where the animals prey on livestock.
Their biggest threat is roads, especially highways. Vehicle collisions are the leading cause of death for the state’s wolves.
In 2021, a wolf known as OR-93 made waves when it ventured into San Luis Obispo County and possibly further south into Ventura County.
His journey ended when he was struck and killed along Interstate 5 in Kern County.
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