Source: WSJ

In the absence of a data-based argument, how are we to understand this claim that wolves were harming the cattle industry? Some of it can be traced to the Trump Administration’s efforts to eviscerate the ESA by whatever means they can find. But there is more going on here than simply resistance to the ESA. With wolves, it is what I call “the risk distortion syndrome”: how a single tragic event can so imprint itself on one’s thinking that all ability to evaluate true risk evaporates. The best example of this in recent memory is how Americans avoided planes in the year following 9-11, resulting in an additional 1600 road deaths that year.

In the case of wolves, risk distortion syndrome can magnify rare instances of calf slaughter on an individual ranch into an industry-wide threat. For example, during the summer of 2025, the Beyem Seyo pack ravaged one ranch in Sierra Valley California – killing at least 40 calves in a few months. This pack was a clear statistical outlier, yet it prompted numerous calls for increased statewide wolf suppression. As a last resort, four wolves of the pack were lethally removed. The behavior of that one pack cannot be generalized to infer a widespread threat to ranchers. Although the other ten packs in California did occasionally take livestock, they never did in numbers that warranted lethal control. In fact, the Beyem Seyo pack alone accounted for 45% of the total livestock losses to wolves in 2025.

Wolf advocates sometimes downplay the carnage a wolf can inflict on calves. The California rancher that lost 40+ calves to wolves in one summer had every right to demand the state take lethal control action. However, there are over 11,000 cattle operations in California representing 5.24 million heads. There were 175 confirmed wolf kills of California cattle in 2025 – that is an incredibly small fraction of the total herd (less than .01%). Even if one focuses only on the three counties that are the hotspot of wolf-cattle conflicts in the state (Lassen, Plumas, and Sierra counties) there were 137 depredations out of over 60,000 cattle in those counties, or less than 0.3% (and this includes the Beyem Seyo depredations). The statistical context is important - if wolves were a significant source of cattle losses, there might be a case for suppressing wolf numbers. But the reality of the situation says otherwise: wolves are responsible for very few cattle deaths. The real source of unwanted cattle deaths is respiratory disease (~ one million heads a year lost), a figure that puts the few thousand cattle lost to wolves each year in perspective.

Emotionally charged photos of a calf ripped open by a wolf, or of a wolf pup snared in a leg trap can be very effective when arguing to advance anti-wolf policies or, alternatively, pro-wolf policies. And I am susceptible to both images. The key is that an image should not completely sway an argument – it should come down to numbers, data, and statistics. And the numbers are clear – wolves have no measurable impact on the cattle industry, although they can impact financial pain for some ranchers unlucky enough to be hit by an out-of-character wolf pack.

There is irony in WSJ’s risk-mongering regarding wolves as a means to weaken the ESA. Beef prices have risen because supply is low. That is usually why prices increase. And wolves have nothing to do with the low supply of beef. But climate change does. Recent unprecedented droughts and heat waves have depleted the standing stock of cattle in the US. Extreme weather is estimated to cause nearly 500,000 cattle or calf losses annually. Instead of scapegoating wolves and the ESA, a more appropriate response would be pushing to reduce the emissions that exacerbate extreme weather and climate-related cattle deaths. Blaming wolves and the ESA for the cost of your hamburger distracts us from the real problem we need to address if we want abundant home-grown beef, and that problem is emissions causing global warming, not wolves attacking a few hundred cattle.

Source: USDA

Thanks again for reading.

The argument I’ve made here: that policy should follow numbers rather than the most vivid image available, is easy to state and harder to hold yourself to. So in the next post I try to apply it…stick around for “Holding states accountable for their wolf management plans”.

Wolves now live in ten states, and as they’re delisted, management falls to state agencies whose plans range from exemplary to indefensible. Rather than argue about that impressionistically, Team Wolf built a report card: twelve practices you can check for, state by state, and score.

Best,

Peter & the Wolves

(Source: Gray wolf release, USFWS, Public Domain, https://www.fws.gov/media/gray-wolf-release)

One year later I joined a National Academy study committee that Governor Knowles had requested to evaluate Alaska’s lethal wolf control program. I was invited because I was an ecologist who studied predation and was especially conversant with population dynamic modeling of predator-prey systems. The final report, Wolves, Bears and their Prey in Alaska, is freely available to anyone, but it is not an easy read. National Academy reports require a unanimous consensus and are based on a thorough review of existing data and science as well as town hall meetings that seek public input. Hunting in Alaska is not a luxury sport, it’s a means of living – a moose can help feed a family throughout the winter. In fact, during one evening town hall meeting hosted by our study committee in Fairbanks, a woman who had moved to Alaska from New Jersey offered us samples of “mooseburgers”. She wanted us to appreciate how important moose meat was to Alaskans and emphasized that she never had such healthy and good meat before moving to Alaska. Subsistence hunting is core to Alaskan identity and rural livelihoods, and she wanted us to be sure to appreciate this when we asked if wolves should be hunted and trapped.

So, what did we find? Our most important takeaway was this: fewer wolves does not necessarily mean more game animals for hunters. In many instances, removing wolves did nothing to increase caribou or moose because other factors were limiting their growth and reproduction. The committee also recognized that methods for wolf management were not simply a matter of ecological impacts. Public attitudes needed to be considered and the public was against aerial hunting and trapping.

The video of a wolf being shot in a trap impacted me personally as well as spurring the National Academy study. Growing up, I had difficulty connecting with other kids and was painfully shy. My favorite thing to do was exploring the woods and fields around my home with Margo, our family dog. Coming home from school, Margo would always run to greet me, and I would tell her about my day. I could talk to Margo. Then tragedy struck. Margo was poisoned by some high school punks. Her hind legs were paralyzed and we had to put her down. Half a century later, memories of Margo can still make me cry and somehow all forms of animal cruelty make me remember Margo. I am not against hunting, but I abhor pointless and cruel killing of any animal – and wolves represent one of the most persecuted and vilified predators in North America.

The ecology of predation and the role of predators in ecosystems has had a special pull on me and I have studied predators and predator-prey interactions for decades. My best friend and mentor, Bob Paine, had revolutionized ecology with experiments that documented the phenomenon of keystone species. These are species whose activities shape the entire structure of an ecosystem, much like the keystone in a stone arch supports the whole arch. Spending time in the field with Bob and being familiar with his research tuned me into the important role top predators play in nature. Scientists now view wolves as the quintessential keystone species whose absence can lead to an unraveling of an ecosystem in the form of out-of-control grazing animals and a wide variety of secondary impacts such as increased erosion. If wolves were part of the “balance of nature”, why were we so eager to eliminate them?

Sources: Endangered Wolf Center, National Academies

The last step in my transformation to Team Wolf occurred when I was hired to serve as a CEO for the Aquarium of Pacific. I realize animal rights groups occasionally paint zoos and aquaria as inhumane because they confine animals. What I discovered when I joined the aquarium was the opposite. Never have I encountered such thoughtfulness about animal well-being, nor such rigorous standards for animal care. I am convinced most animals in accredited AZA facilities receive better healthcare than the majority of Americans. Staff at AZA institutions have a deep love and respect for animal life. When a beloved sea lion at our aquarium died of old age, I was compelled to write consoling emails to grieving staff. My job at the aquarium led me to think deeply about animal captivity, animal welfare and animal rights. I read up on the latest scientific discoveries regarding animal sentience, whether animals feel pain or grieve, and the ethics of animal treatment. If you want to find an expert on animal welfare, talk to husbandry staff at your local AZA accredited Zoo or Aquarium.

This is when and why I joined Team Wolf. I came to see the plight of wolves in the US as an opportunity for melding traditional conservation with evolving ethics about animal treatment. To me, wolves are a test of our willingness to hold animal welfare as a core value and to accept some inconvenience for the chance of salvaging bits of wild nature.

Surely, in this era of free-range chickens and humanely raised beef we can agree that neck snares and leg traps are inhumane, and that lethal control should be a last resort. Surely, we can treat wolves as the keystone species and ecological asset that they are, as opposed to viewing them as a pest that needs to be suppressed. Surely, we can use data about control methods and wolf impacts to inform our decisions– as opposed to tired old myths and unsubstantiated assumptions. And surely, conservationists can recognize that wolves do kill cattle and sheep and that the worries ranchers have about wolves warrant our respect and consideration.

My hope is that by thinking about wolves from all angles, we can learn a lot about animals, ethics, conservation, ourselves, and about the future of nature and wildness in a world overrun with concrete and nine billion people who need to be fed. And maybe we can help make it so videos such as that recording from a cold November day in Alaska are forever in our past.

Thanks for reading– I’m glad you’re here, and there’s much more to come. Tune in for our next post: “Scapegoating wolves: ‘the risk distortion syndrome’ and why statistics matter” to learn about why one dead calf on the evening news does more to shape wolf policy than 5.24 million living ones, and what happens when we let a single image stand in for the data.

Best,

Peter & the Wolves