This is a story straight outta Yellowstone. It is a story told to Quincy Rotary by Rick Roberti, president of the California Cattlemen on Monday (seen in the photo with Chuck L.).
Roberti painted his side of the story, the cattle ranchers' side. There is another side to the story that the California Fish and Wildlife Department could tell. Roberti wanted to be clear about that.
As his story goes, the cattle producers in Plumas and Sierra counties faced off some aggressive opponents. Canadian gray wolves migrated into California from the north where they quickly became habituated killing and eating the cattlemen's herds. During the spring and summer nights of 2025, wolves attacked, getting closer to ranch houses, with no predators in sight. If ranchers shot a wolf, they faced 2 years in prison and fines of $100,000+ because the animals were on the Endangered Species list. And yet the personal properties of these ranchers, their livelihoods, were threatened. Roberti stated in an earlier interview, “We are business people. We’re losing money and we can’t do anything about it.”
Ranchers faced endless setbacks and losses. That's when the Sierra County Sheriff got involved, says Roberti, and when the Sheriff gets involved, it's time to act, just like in Yellowstone, right?
The California state government was adamant that the wolves could not be killed. The ranchers, with the sheriff, appealed to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to put pressure on the state's decision makers.
On October 25, 2025, the CDFW sent out a press release stating, "following an unprecedented level of livestock attacks across Sierra Valley, the agency, in coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has taken the difficult step of lethally removing four gray wolves from the Beyem Seyo pack."
The CDFW website lists the partners involved in the Summer Strike Team including the USFWS, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Resources Conservation Service, Sierra County, the Sierra County Sheriff’s Office, Plumas County, the Plumas County Sheriff’s Office, the California Wolf Center and Sierra Valley ranchers.
