Assembly Standing Committee on Water, Parks, and Wildlife

Well, good morning, everyone. We're going to call our special hearing to commence. I was going to say to adjourn. You're not going to get off that lucky. All right, so first of all, thank you all for being and being interested in the subject matter, which is, to say the least, quite prevalent.

I was driving from my district today just outside of San Francisco and got an alert that there's a mountain lion in San Francisco in Pacific Heights, and they found it. It was a juvenile mountain lion, and they're working to understand the situation. So to say that it is current would be an understatement.

I know that some of the Committee Members are on their way because they can see me while we're broadcasting. So we will welcome when they get here. But I do want to welcome Assembly Member Hadwick, who is a big part of why this hearing came to light, given her district and a lot of the conflicts and interactions happened in her district. And this has been a real eye opener for all of us.

So I thank you for bringing it to the forefront, Assembly Member Hadwick. And I welcome you. You know, I really think I'm going to give a few opening remarks, and I welcome you to give some as well. Today's hearing really is about balance in an ever changing world.

And I think that given so many recent changes in our environment, it is important to have a hearing like this at this moment. We want to see where we are and how can we cope and how can we find a balance between humans and wildlife. And balance, I think, is the key.

If there's one word we're going to take away from today is how can we reach a balance. With pressures like habitat loss and fragmentation, expanding development, agricultural needs, and the growing impacts of our favorite climate change, wildlife are moving ever closer to people and people are moving deeper into wildlife habitat.

These pressures are unfortunately leading to the word conflict. We see this with mountain lions, as I mentioned today, bears in the foothills in communities, and coyotes in urban areas. There are many facets of human wildlife conflict and affected groups and species today. We've chosen to focus on California's predator management.

And I'm sure some of you in this room will have a lot to say about that. And then in healthy ecosystems, you know, predator populations are shaped by prey and habitat. But human activity disrupts those natural checks. Easy food sources can inflate wildlife presence, while vehicle strikes reduce populations. Climate change makes this all the harder.

We've got drought, we've got heat, we've got wildfires, and they Increase the competition for water and space. I look forward to a full exploration of these conflicts. As I said, this isn't a choice between protecting people and protecting wildlife. We really want to find a balance.

We're going to look at some very science based solutions, prevention measures, landscape scale planning, and clear conflict policies and protocols that I think are going to be critical for keeping people safe and preserving wildlife. So with that, Assembly Member Hadwick, I welcome you to give some opening statements.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for including me. I'm not a sitting Member of this Committee, but I'm very thankful that the committee was willing to hold this hearing and that I could be a part of it. My district runs for 11 counties in Northern California, from the Oregon border to south of here in Amador and Alpine County.

Unfortunately, the predator wildlife conflict has been mostly focused on District 1 and is a very District 1 problem. It's our biggest issue right now. We have mountain lions, bears, and wolves. I have El Dorado County that has the highest density of mountain lions in the nation.

I have Tahoe, that has the highest density of black bears in the world. And then now we have wolves on top of that. I'm very concerned about our big picture management of wildlife. Our deer, antelope, and elk herds have plummeted, and we just don't have the food supply to have all of these predators living in our area.

So they are moving. Our footprint in our communities has not grown. We are losing population. We build... Most of my counties build maybe a couple houses a year. We're very, very rural, very isolated. It's a real, it's a huge struggle to our resources for law enforcement, for fish and wildlife, for our counties, our medical.

We had the first black bear death in my district. We also had a young man killed by a mountain lion. We're just... We're at a tipping point, and I really appreciate the Chair and the Members that will be here. I've already texted them. That they're taking the time to really learn about this.

We've taken the year and really taught my colleagues about how we live because most of them are from urban areas. And this is not as an in your face issue as it is for us in District 1. So we have a lot of people here from the district and a lot of people watching from home and very eager to see what we're going to learn today. So thank you.

Excellent. Great. Thank you so much. Well, good morning, Assembly Member Hart, hailing here from Santa Barbara. Do you have anything you'd like to add? Great. Well, with that we'll commence with the first panel. Secretary Crowfoot, we're so delighted that you could be here to join us.

And we'll bring together the other witnesses from our first panel while you're getting settled. So, Valerie Termini, we've got Chad Dibble, come on down. Kevin Thomas, Chief Nathaniel Arnold, and Erica Manes. So please, you guys settle in. And thank you, Secretary Crowfoot, for making the time to be here and for your interest in the subject matter. We're delighted to have you. Please, whenever you're ready.

Chair, thanks so much for holding this hearing, and to Assembly Member Hadwick for all your leadership on this issue. I think in seven years in this role, this is the first time I've actually asked to testify before the Legislature.

And you're welcome.

And I really appreciate the opportunity to do so. A lot of the work in our Natural Resources Agency, we boil down to helping all Californians and nature thrive together. So limiting human wildlife conflict is really, really important. Now, clearly, you all and the Governor and we invest a whole lot in our communities, ensuring that they're safe and healthy places where people can prosper.

And at the same time, I think we're all really proud of the natural world in California. World famous scenic beauty and also just an incredible richness of life. California is a biodiversity hotspot, one of 36 places on Planet Earth that have the most diversity of plants and animals in the world, but also face real challenges to maintaining that biodiversity. So as you both put to open us up here, how do we find this balance?

First and foremost, protecting the safety of Californians and protecting our environment and this incredible wildlife that we have here. About a quarter of our land mass, over 25 million acres, can be considered prime habitat. If you think about 30 by 30, we're coming up towards 30% of the land.

A lot of that habitat is next to communities, or in some cases, communities surround that habitat. Likewise, if we think about the population in the wildfire context, about a third of Californians live in the wildland urban interface, which is essentially where neighborhoods meet nature. Some level of wildlife sightings and interactions, given this overlap and proximity, is inevitable.

But I'll say that wildlife, human, wildlife conflict is not inevitable. Interaction, yes. But conflict, not inevitable. There's a lot that we can and must do to limit contact and protect the safety of people and our environment.

A couple of clear examples are the actions that residents take to address things as basic as garbage management in a place like Tahoe really make a difference towards keeping bears out of neighborhoods. Likewise, the work that we're doing on wildlife crossings.

Helping animals cross highways is really important not only for those animals, but for traffic safety, given that traffic fatalities happen every year in California because of crashes into animals.

So I'm here to share how important this is to the Newsom administration and to our agency and also support the work of the colleagues of my colleagues at the Department of Fish and Wildlife. They have an important job and a tough job and you'll hear hear more about that.

Part of their job is proactive, educating communities and residents so we prevent conflict, the most important thing that we need to do. And then of course, responding when conflict does occur, understanding whether that conflict is related to impacts on property or, worse, on public safety, and then taking the actions that are needed.

As they'll explain, there are certain actions that can be taken if animals are threatening or impacting public property, including getting a depredation permit to kill or remove the animal, and likewise a more urgent set of actions that are enabled to protect public safety if there's an imminent threat of public safety. So they'll talk more about that.

Clearly, human conflict, human wildlife conflict comes in a range of dimensions and we're focusing today on predators. And even within the bears and mountain lions and wolves topic, they're different.

And I'll say that wolves in particular is pretty distinct and deserves some conversation here today, both because it's current impact of some of the packs on communities and ranching and their status as an endangered species. So clearly, I think my sense in doing this work is that there's actually real alignment that limiting conflict is essential.

It's essential to protect property and ultimately public safety and essential to protect this biodiversity that we have. I want to reinforce what Assembly Member Hadwick is saying, that while millions of Californians don't even understand this as an important issue, this is a full blown crisis in many of our rural communities.

And so I appreciate the intensity with which a lot of the folks that I work with, including the county sheriffs and county supervisors, bring to this issue, and resolution and coexistence is essential. Lastly, I'll just say that today, you know, we're here to share what we've been doing and what we continue to do with the recognition that there's more work to do.

I'm proud of the progress that we've made over the years and there's a lot of room for strengthening our work and improving our work together to really enable this coexistence. So thanks for letting me set up the table, and I'll turn it over to my colleague, Valerie Termini, who is the Acting Director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Thank you. Thank you so much. And I will say, with respect to the mountain lion that's in San Francisco today, Fish and Game, or your Department of Wildlife is on the scene along with the sheriff. So we're seeing interagency collaboration. Okay. Please, Dr. Termini, take it away.

Good morning. Is this on? It is on. All right. So, good morning. Yes, I am Valerie Termini. I'm the Acting Director. I normally have the privilege of serving as Chief Deputy Director at the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

And thanks to Nate and his team who let the mountain lion out last night to form this issue. It really highlights, I think I also have this slide up here to sort of demonstrate wildlife is all around us. Whether you're in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or out in Siskiyou County or Sierra County, they're here.

And we, as a department, this is our mission, is to work and to protect wildlife and nature for all Californians. So these headlines happening today as well as in the past, we have... You've heard them all. We have P-22, the famous mountain lion in Los Angeles, the Hollywood mountain lion.

We've got removals of bears, whether they're in a home under Altadena or in Tahoe. Every day. We've got the removal of the Beyem Seyo pack in Sierra County. We have the first confirmed black bear fatality in Sierra County. We have the first wildlife fatality from mountain lions in El Dorado County.

These are getting more and more prevalent in California, and we are doing all that we can to address them. But it's not... I also don't want us to only focus on the conflict. That's one part of it. But as Madam Chair, you highlighted, it's an ecosystem issue. We need to restore our prey populations.

We need to restore our forests. We need to restore our wildlife areas so that we can do this work in tandem with one another. With your leadership and the Secretary's and the Governor's, we're able to put in some pilot programs of wildlife conflict. But also our Cutting the Green Tape initiative.

We're restoring more landscapes and habitats faster than ever before. And I don't want us to lose sight of the connectivity between wildlife restoration and habitat restoration, as well as the conflict space. They go together. So, as the Secretary highlighted, California is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. We also have 40 million people.

And that creates a real challenge for us and our staff and our officers to deal with. Our work to prevent conflicts while safeguarding both people and animals. You're going to hear more about this today.

But it ranges from responding to depredation events, such as damage to agriculture, livestock, and property, to addressing situations that pose eminent threats to public safety. And just as we respond to that conflict, we lead statewide efforts to care for sick and injured animals, educating the public on conservation, and monitoring and responding to wildlife disease outbreaks.

That's all part of conflict. We are so committed to working on this issue. We are eager to partner with cities, with sheriffs, with counties, with NGOs to work on this issue. We're here, we have... We're going to go through a lot of the work that we do today, and we look forward to questions and working with you on this important issue. So thank you so much for hosting us.

Thank you so much. I've got Chad Dibble up next. Welcome.

Thank you. Good morning, Madam Chair and Members. Can you hear me okay? Okay. My name is Chad Dibble, and I am the Deputy Director for the Wildlife and Fisheries Division at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

My spot on the panel here today is talk to you a little bit about the history of the department's efforts with human wildlife conflict and what we've been doing. It really started back in 2014, believe it or not, with the drought that we had during that time.

We started to see an uptake in our incident response and issues we had across the state with animals just looking for food and water and having conflict with humans and in our spaces a little bit more than we normally would.

So in 2015 and again augmented in 2016, we received some nominal funds to help us respond to those incidents as a response to drought. In 2021, we continue to see those incidents increasing in numbers and responses across the state.

So the state actually funded us to take a more holistic approach, an integrated approach into like addressing human wildlife conflict. And that's really what started what we call our Human Wildlife Conflict Program. The backbone of the program was our ability to hire limited term staff.

These staff specialists were specifically trained in human wildlife handling technique, or excuse me, wildlife handling techniques and conflict incident response. It also allowed us to have a presence to track, respond, and really be on top of what was happening across the state, across all 58 counties with those staff.

In addition, the program focused on really revamping our policies to look at how we can support more coexistence, looking at depredation, conflict, animal welfare, and also allowed us to do what we've talked about, community outreach.

We did a lot of community outreach with homeowners associations, late night, weekends, off hours from what our normally staff would be doing, but that allowed us to do that. One of the major outcomes from the program was what we call our Human Wildlife Conflict Toolkit.

This is an online toolkit that the public can see every day that provides all sorts of information. The public can go to our website. It's kind of a pick list. You can pick anything from bats to insects to beavers to bears.

And it provides pamphlets, information, how to tips, preventative tips, things that the local communities, individuals, cities, counties, homeowners associations can use to help educate themselves and their community around what animals they might be dealing with and what kind of conflict they can resolve.

One of the other major outcomes that came out of the program was our Wildlife Incident Reporting System. And this is called what we call the WIR. This is another online application tool where the community can go online and report an incident of wildlife observation, a property damage incident, or even request a depredation permit.

So in front of you, we had a handout. I think that you all have that. And it displays some of the recorded data that we have through the WIR system. You'll note that the top five species that continually get reported are black bears, followed by mountain lions, wild pigs, coyotes, and bobcats.

Over 50% of the reports we get are for depredation, some sort of damage to property or home. You'll also note that Los Angeles and El Dorado Counties have the highest incidents reported through the WIR system.

The WIR system has been a great tool for us, for our staff, for the public, to allow us to help, you know, respond, track incidents in a timely manner as best we can. The department tracks about 6,000 reports through the WIR system every year, but that's only a fraction of the total calls we receive. The department over the last several years has had about 30 to 45,000 calls per year dealing with wildlife incident. 30 to 45,000 calls that we respond to across the state.

One main point that I want to make sure I stress today as we go through all of this panel with our, with our information for you all is that conflict doesn't end when we pick up the phone and talk to a reporting party, we call it, or we might do a wildlife visit to the actual site.

Occasionally the wildlife conflict needs further assessment. They might need to be relocated. They might need to be removed from the, from the situation. They might need to go to a rehabilitation facility. The animal might need to be just moved to a more suitable habitat. This often requires the experience of a broader range of the department.

This brings our expert veterinarians to help us with this. It might bring in law enforcement. It definitely brings in maybe one of the 450 rehabilitation facilities that we permit, satellite offices, the zoos we work with across the state to handle and manage these animals depending on what we run into.

On average, 100,000 wild animals are received by rehabilitation facilities every year. And despite our best efforts, unfortunately, sometimes when these animals do not get intervention, they become public safety, or meaning they have some sort of human interaction or human involvement.

This is where our law enforcement, and you'll hear more about this later, this is where our law enforcement steps in. And let me be clear, they will be the same way. We do not take public safety lightly. It requires hours of time and immediate response by our folks in order to engage in that incident.

We have to make sure that we respond to the site to collect the evidence, understand what's happening, DNA profiles of the species, identify the sex, the age, make sure that we then take the appropriate steps to manage potentially offending animal. And this requires very fast turnaround times for our folks.

Specifically, when we're talking about DNA. If an incident happens in Southern California, we get it. Well, our officers will be out, they'll collect a sample. That has to get the Sacramento. We get a DNA profile. In the meantime, they're trying to capture the animal.

They capture what we think is the offending animal, matches, the sex matches, the species, DNA profile matches. We need to confirm all of that before we take any management on the animal that we think we've captured. We also have to manage any community relations in between that. Media, public inquiries, there's all sorts of communications that happen, which brings in a whole other sector of the department for us to be able to handle any one of these incidents at a time.

Last thing I'll note is that in 2024, as you all know, I think that the one time money's expired. And I want to make it clear the department recognizes that we have potentially seen a gap in service and folks have felt that. And I think you'll hear some evidence of that today from other testimonies.

We continue to try to find sustainable funding for this program while we continue to work hard to ensure that we're looking inside our existing programs and our existing efforts to figure out how we continue to provide this service. We take conflict seriously, we take it to the best of our ability.

And I promise you, we try and respond as proactively as we can every time we can. So I appreciate your time today. Thanks for listening. I'm going to turn it over to Deputy Director Thomas to talk to you a little bit about regional implementation and how that looks like across the state.

Thank you, Chad. Thank you, Madam Chair and Members. Can you hear me, okay? My name is Kevin Thomas. I'm the Deputy Director for our Regional Operations.

Our regions are the on the ground liaisons between the counties, the public, and how we implement Fish and Game Code and policies as put out by Chad's shop and our Fish and Game Code. I wanted to touch really quick on something Chad said about the resources in the regions.

We have spent a particular amount of time trying to analyze and look at how our resources are spent on human wildlife conflict. Obviously, as times change and things evolve, we have to analyze where our resources are going and what we're assigning staff to conduct.

And in the regions, we've took a particular approach to put a vested effort in increasing our efforts in the human wildlife conflict space, particularly in hot spots like Lake Tahoe, Sierra Madre, the wolf scene.

So we have been able to fill some of that gap that Chad described, but we continue to analyze our workload and where we can make improvements in it. One of the things we've discussed is depredation permits. There's some, I guess, misunderstanding about how those work.

Depredation permits are allowed in Fish and Game Code to provide the public an opportunity to seek resolution for damage they have to their property as the result of wildlife. It could be a bear crawling through a window and going through a house. It could be a mountain lion eating someone's chickens.

There's various things that someone can apply for a depredation permit for. When that permit request comes in, it comes into the region and we assign a staff to evaluate what's happening on the ground. So that staff will contact the reporting party, as Chad described.

We'll look at what stuff they have on the ground to reduce conflict, whether it be fencing or electric mats or putting away their garbage, those types of things. And then we'll make recommendations to that reporting party based on what we find.

In some cases, it'll be a non-lethal deterrent, like add a fence here or add an electric mat. And in some cases we will issue a lethal permit that allows them to take an animal for their property damage as defined in Fish and Game Code.

We have spent a lot of time in recent years making sure that when we do these, we do them thoroughly and that we fully analyze what's happening on the ground. That includes in many cases collecting DNA from the scene to verify if an animal is or isn't the offending animal.

Working with homeowners on those non-lethal measures, as well as educating the public about the WIR system, how to report, and how to get a response back from us. You'll hear from several of the folks that will speak today about the calls that go into other entities, whether it be the sheriffs or the local PD or NGOs. And all of those folks work together cooperatively to address the situation and try to provide the reporting party some resolve to their issue.

The next thing I wanted to discuss is a particular thing we're doing in the Tahoe Basin that we started a few years ago, which is a novel approach to kind of bear management, which is a Trap-Tag-Haze Program. Several years ago, we looked at and noticed that we were having issues identifying particular bears, particularly around visual identification.

The public would report things and say it was a bear with a spot here, or it was this bear that had a weird ear here. And we were trying to make decisions based on that. And we decided we would step up our game.

And with the help of law enforcement, we started taking DNA samples from almost every incident that we have in the Lake Tahoe basin, whether it be a break in, a trap tag haze event, a public safety event, every single thing. We collect DNA now and we've started building a database of how that interacts with the public.

As part of that program, we are also collaring and hazing animals. So we would trap them in areas where they're not supposed to be in and around homes, in and around garbage.

And then we take them to a site, collar them, take obviously vital data, and then haze them as we release them to try to deter that behavior of coming into those situations. Some of the things that we've learned in just a few short years from that is that a lot of our conflict stems from the same bears.

The DNA evidence clearly shows that bears are passing on this behavior through their lineages. So from adult to sow to cub and on onward, we have what I would call a genetic tree of a family that's three generations now that every single member has exhibited conflict behavior from learning from their parents.

So we have three generations now that have resulted in probably about 20% of the conflict in a particular area from one family of bears. So this stuff's really important and it helps us learn how to manage that going into the future.

If only 1% of the bears are causing the problem, then we can learn how to focus our efforts and tackle that and leave the other 99% to be available in the wild and conduct their normal behavior. The last thing I want to touch on is cooperative efforts. So obviously with any of these things, we have to work with many, many groups to get things accomplished. And in Tahoe we have what's called the Tahoe Interagency Bear Team.

It's a cooperative of agencies, departments, landowners that work together to provide a consistent message on bear management, trash management, non-lethal measures, provide information about bear behavior and how to protect your property, and are cohesively working to provide that information to the public and make a safe space for all in the Tahoe Basin.

So those are a few of the things that we're working on the region. Chief Arnold here is going to go over some of the law enforcement stuff. And thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Members. My name is Nathaniel Arnold, and I am the Chief of Law Enforcement for the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Can you all hear me okay? Perfect.

My portion of the panel is to provide you with some information about the Law Enforcement Division in general, human wildlife conflict, coexistence, and specifically public safety wildlife. The Law Enforcement Division consists of approximately 500 wildlife officers and 50 professional staff members.

That is for the entire state of California. They're responsible for patrolling 159,000 square miles of California. That equals to 1100 miles of coastline and three nautical miles out to sea. All marine protected areas. 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, 4800 lakes and reservoirs, and 80 major rivers.

And I say that in context because this is one of the duties that we do as it relates to protecting all of those resources I just mentioned. Wildlife officers respond when there is a physical attack on a person by wildlife or a public safety wildlife threat that is reported to the department.

Wildlife officers investigate the report, gather evidence, witness statements, and if warranted, will euthanize the responsible animal as confirmed by DNA analysis as it comes in. In the last five years, talking 2020 to 2025, the Law Enforcement Division has responded to over 230 reported public safety wildlife incidents.

Now, at times, due to the nature of the Law Enforcement Division's responsiveness and work with other allied agencies, we also respond and assist with non-public safety issues. An example would be wounded or displaced wildlife.

The Law Enforcement Division also manages the Wildlife Forensic Lab, which consists of four wildlife forensic specialists who analyze evidence for criminal investigations, prepare finding reports, and testify in court on those findings on behalf of the state. These forensic specialists conduct all of the department's DNA analysis for wildlife attack incidents, as well as human wildlife conflict.

The primary function in the lab is to support wildlife officers in poaching investigations to compare samples taken from items from different species of wildlife our officers may encounter during wildlife trafficking type investigations.

However, in the last five years, from 2020 to 2025, the Wildlife Forensic Lab has conducted DNA analysis for the 230 public safety wildlife investigations and over 950 human wildlife conflicts. And if you look at the last slide that's on the screen and in your handouts, I'll go over some of that material.

Of the 230 public safety wildlife investigations, the breakdown as follows. 99 coyote, 73 bear, about 19% in the Lake Tahoe Basin, 27 lion, and then 33 other wildlife. Deer, river otter, those type. Prior to 2020, the Law Enforcement Division and Wildlife Forensic Lab investigated less than 20 per year. So this workload has absolutely doubled.

Of the new 950 human wildlife conflict incidents, the Wildlife Forensic Lab has processed over 809 bear samples, 64 wolf, 81 additional wolf related just to the strike team in Sierra County, Plumas. 126 lion, 21 shark, and 99 coyotes. Prior to 2020, the Wildlife Forensic Lab processed samples from less than 10 human wildlife conflict cases per year.

And there's some different reasons for that change in policies. And of course as we mentioned, you know, climate change, drought, wildland fires, everything that we're facing. So for specific questions, more than happy to take them. And thank you for the opportunity to be here today.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Erica Manes. I'm the Deputy Chief of our Law Enforcement Division. I manage the day to day operations for the division, and that includes overseeing the work and activities of our Wildlife Forensics Lab. So I'm just here today for support and to answer any specific questions regarding the data. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much for being here. I see we've got a couple other folks joining us, Assembly Member Caloza and Assembly Member Harabedian. I'm gonna... Any questions from anybody? Let me start there. I bet you got some given what's happening in your neck of the woods, Assembly Member Caloza.

Thank you so much, Chair Papan. And thanks for your presentation today. I represent parts of Los Angeles, like Echo Park, Silver Lake, Los Feliz. And you know, I live in Eagle Rock personally, and I know that we have increased sightings of coyotes like even where I live.

And so I guess hearing what's been reported and what you know about, curious to hear like how much underreporting you feel like there is. I feel like in maybe one of the things that was surprising to me about the data was actually the highest number of incidents in LA County, which I was actually... That's not where I thought you would have the highest incidence.

So just to make sure that I understand. So what's the number of that we feel that's not reporting?

Yeah. Just curious if you have thoughts on underreporting. Only because I've seen personal accounts of this and I, you know, don't immediately think of, oh, let me report this. Now I will. Now I'll report all of these to you. And so just curious what we can do to partner.

You know, we all represent very specific districts and want to make sure that I'm properly informing my communities and my constituents of the resources that you have because it may not automatically trigger them to report some of these incidents to your agency.

Well, thank you very much. And we absolutely have underreporting, I would say, by the communities. We try to get out there, educate, do the best that we can. But I'm sure when people see coyotes or experience something that, you know, generally what they call Is to dispatch 911. And they will refer over to our department when that happens, but it's the severity of the incident that occurs at that time. So I absolutely appreciate that. And I don't know if my colleagues, if there's more about the educational component.

Yeah. Is this on? Yeah. Okay. So what I'd say is that it really depends on the species and it depends on the setting you're in. If you're in a rural community, depending on the species, they may have different means to take care of the animals themselves. They may have more educational experience around how to handle and deal with that animal. They won't report it.

When you get into some of the urban areas where they have less ability to manage those animals or treat, take care of different things, or they're in a bigger setting where those animals are more in conflict, they may have a tendency to report it. It really depends on the species. And as we begin to look at that, that's part of what our team has been trying to do, is try to assess that. And it helps us to know where do we go in and try and educate.

And in the same sense, some communities that are more educated, they won't report because they know what they can do, they know what steps to take. Others that don't. And the more that there's awareness around it, they'll report it. So it's really, it's kind of a nuance in there when you see this. But it has a lot to do with the species and then just the actual settings that the individual's in and where they are in the state.

Okay. And for my own clarification, as somebody who wants to report it, only because there are so many sightings, you have somewhere on your website where I should be going as...

Yes, you can go to our WIR system, the Wildlife Incident Reporting System.

Okay. I'm sorry if I missed this. I came in late. Okay, that's super helpful. I look forward to reaching out to your office to better understand some of the resources that we can can share with our constituents on the work that you do.

If I can just add, we'd also be happy to follow up with you with our local field staff and do community engagement, town halls, things like that. So we can also connect the dots of, like, where is the information on the Wildlife Reporting system. So it's not innate that people know where to go and report this stuff. So we'd like to figure out how to make connect those dots for your community members too.

Okay, thank you so much.

Madam Chair, thank you for allowing me to sit in. Mr. Secretary, thank you. Thank you for everything you're doing at Altadena and all the work you're doing. And thank you to all of you. Let me just say I appreciate the shout out to Sierra Madre. I represent Altadena and Sierra Madre.

I grew up in Sierra Madre, was on the city council and mayor there for a number of years. We saw a lot of each other. And I appreciate everything that your department did and does on a daily basis down there.

You know, the bear incidents in the San Gabriel Valley, especially Sierra Madre, have now risen to, I think, daily occurrences. And I think we probably take up way too much of your time relative to the limited amount of resources you have. And so let me just say, historically, you guys have been real lifesavers for my community.

Appreciate all the help. But this is really complicated stuff. And you know, we ran a bill last year to bring the Tahoe Basin Program to the San Gabriel Valley. Applaud you on the Tahoe Basin Program. It's really innovative. It's worked extremely well. Would love to see it in San Gabriel Valley.

Obviously, resources are really tough to come by right now, and I understand the challenges there. But I guess my only question is, what do you think aside from doing the Tahoe Basin Program, which I think is really just spot on and could be used in other places, aside from that?

Because I think it's really hard to do that because it is, again, human intensive, time intensive, resource intensive. What can we do, especially in Sierra Madre, Altadena, right now, given what's going on, to help address it?

Because I do think that our theory has always been having lived there and grown up there, it's a few amount of bears causing a lot of the problems. And we wish we had the data to confirm it. But how can we do it without the full blown Tahoe Basin Program? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yeah, if we could. I'll take that one. There's a few things we've actually been discussing with Sierra Madre, which is a coalition of the cities there working on a cohesive management plan across all the cities. Obviously there's four or five cities there that all have the same issue with bears coming down from the mountains into the city there. We made a little progress on that a year or so ago, but I would like to kick that back off.

We've been doing a kind of light Trap-Tag-Haze, I would call it, with the staff that we have of trying to identify the bears. We do have some need for increased genetic analysis down there, which is something that's on our plate as well.

The city itself of Sierra Madre has done a great job of educating the public. The police department down there has really been helpful. They've been an ally to us. And continuing those relationships, I think would benefit everybody. And if we all can pitch in a little more, I think we can get to a solution.

I'm guessing Assembly Member—Assemblywoman Hadwick—has got some questions.

Yes, I have a lot. We've had a lot of these discussions before, too. What ability does CDFW have to increase the flow of information with our ranchers about wolf location? What resources do you need to make that happen? I know that's been one of the biggest frustrations, I think, coming from the, the producers is they don't know.

They, they want to be proactive, they want to be able to do these things, but they don't have the information to make that possible.

We're going to split this answer. Okay. I'm going to talk about where we've been and Kevin's going to tell you a little bit about what we're doing. So, as most of the folks in the room know, here, you know, it's, it's been a difficult thing for us to work through.

So, with, with the wolves moving back into California, we have been trying, since day one and the first time we had a collar on an animal to work out how best to communicate with ranchers.

And the history of it is, you know, we would—we had our Staff Biologist, who's on a federal grant, and their job was to get up every morning with the caller or callers we had, look at a map, and try to contact the ranchers that we thought that the wolf was in the area the night before and give them some information about, hey, you know, you might want to go take a look, make sure there's no depredation events that happened last night. Check on your cattle, see what's going on.

That's basically the early onslaught of it. This was one staff member every single day, weekends, holidays, what have you. You can imagine the frustrations and gaps that probably happened in that space with the ranchers who were last to know, last on the text message thread or however it played out.

We've continued that effort and as wolves have expanded across the state, we've tried to replicate that with additional staff, pulling on other resources and other folks to try and help out in that space in our wolf world.

Just last year, we made that public so that we introduced our Wolf Tracking Tool, which is a map online that, every morning, as the satellite sends the information down to us, it also sends it down to the website and the information creates a polygon on the map that says where the wolf was last night or last time that that caller checked in.

That's the same data we get in our hand that we used to text out every day. So, that's where we're at right now, we have those—both of those communications.

In the example of Sierra Valley, we were working hand in hand with folks daily trying to communicate that we were adjusting callers, trying to figure out the right methods as we were trying to work through that whole strike team and those efforts there, which was a little bit unique.

There's all sorts of things, as you know, that happen when you start changing collar times and downloads and uploads and GPS data. You lose battery life on the collar. So, there's lots of—lots of technicalities in between that.

But I think Kevin can talk about where we're trying to go to continue to enhance our ability to work with ranchers and local communities in sharing that information that we have.

Yeah, I think we all realize that data and sharing data is key to the solution for everybody.

What we've been pursuing in the last, I'd say four to six weeks, is this idea around using liaisons in the counties and then having what we call data sharing agreements with them so that rather than rely on one person to distribute that information, we can have an agreement with multiple people who can be a local on the ground, interact with the ranchers in the community, and provide that information in a more timely manner that will allow them to address the conflicts that are happening on their land.

So, that's the steps that we're taking right now. We have about three or four of them in progress, and we're in meetings with all six or seven of the counties who have the highest wolf rates right now to further discussions with them as well.

And then, trust has been a huge issue between the state. My district is very slow to trust government, and we also don't report sightings at all. I didn't even—I'd be really curious to see, I noticed my county is number 53 on there, but would you, would CDFW be willing to have the sheriff's, the local sheriffs, come alongside them on investigations and, and be involved in those, accompany them or make observations, just be more involved in the process?

Is that something that would be a possibility just to build back that trust? Because our local, our local sheriff's departments are—our local sheriffs are elected. They're trusted by the communities where—I just think that might be a good bridge to bring back that trust.

I think the answer is yes. And so, I think there's also a nuance here to understand coming alongside to observe an investigation, be a part of investigation, if there's a depredation incident, is something we do. We actually rely, most of the time actually, the counties and the ranchers will—we rely on wildlife services with the Federal Government to do that work for us, or it's our staff.

It really is like, hey, something happened. Who can get there the fastest so that we can try to get on scene before the evidence is, you know, sort of deteriorates or something else happens?

So, sheriffs are more than welcome. I think what you might be talking about is actual determinations in, in the investigation, and that is something we are also exploring with folks.

So, along with the county liaison role that Kevin's talking about, about, you know, sharing data and information, we're also having conversations about how to get more people trained on the ability to do the investigation, which leads to a confirmed or probable or unknown conclusion about the depredation and whether it was truly a wolf attack, or whether it was a coyote, or a natural cause, or what may have happened, which also then rolls into the compensation place, because compensation for ranchers is based on a confirmed or probable confirmation of a depredation event.

So, we're working hard to figure out how to do that. That's not as easy as folks think.

There's a lot of evidence that needs to come, again, back to our DNA samples, contamination of the samples, making sure that we actually take the right sample, the samples can be read when it gets back to our offices in Sacramento to make that determination. And there's a lot of things that you need to understand.

I don't want to get into detail here on what a depredation event looks like, but there's a lot of detail there to be able to confirm, was it actually a wolf attack, what happened there, and how does that work?

So, we're absolutely having those conversations, and I think we're open to exploring how we can help us do our job, help you, the benefit of the public, get the things that they want in that space.

Yeah, this was a topic that was brought up. The Department hosted a large county event with representatives from each county back in December.

And then, we've had further discussions with the local county groups that we've been working with to identify if there is a process, particularly on those events that are deemed, you know, unknown or not assigned to a specific animal, how to talk about those and discuss those going forward.

So, we have been in those discussions with the local county folks to try to find a resolution that works for everybody.

And I'll just reinforce, one, the recognition that we need to build trust, first and foremost. Secondly, that we're moving into, you know, essentially a situation where we have to adaptively manage wolf populations much more nimbly than we've had to in the past. And then, third is, you know, thanks to the department's leadership, I think they and we are interested in institutionalizing what that partnership looks like so that, you know, our—the department's activities are not a black box.

And that information sharing, for example, as Kevin shared, is in real time. And there's a real understanding on what the expectation is and on adaptive management and depredations, et cetera.

So, it's definitely been a learning curve and there've been a lot of pain points that we'll probably unpack here today. But the commitment is to build that trust by institutionalizing the partnership as we adaptively manage.

And you kind of went in already. Is there going to be some form of appeals process for those depredations that either aren't investigated or have been unfounded?

Yeah, that's a discussion we have to have with all of the stakeholders. And I think we've kicked off the discussion, but I don't think we've come to any kind of agreement on a process yet, but we are having that discussion with all of our stakeholders across the wolf space.

I'm almost done, I promise. So, then, what are we doing to accelerate the Wolf management plan and what phases we're on and how are we allowing for more adaptive management like you guys have talked about, so we can just be more effective?

Maybe explain what the management plan is.

Yeah, I think I'd maybe correct that we're not accelerating the management plan, per se, with the phasing. The phasing occurs based on the population and how it's doing.

The phasing of the management plan and what steps we're in, as far as recovery, are really dictated by the number of pups, breeding pairs, the population at the end of a given year and how that plays out. We are continuing to work on the management plan at large. It's a resource thing as well.

As you know, we have very limited staff. We spend a lot of time in the field with all of the folks and which pulls away from the time of doing it. We have partnered with Berkeley and other parties.

I think you'll hear some other folks today trying to continue on the research side and the understanding, which is more in that management space, of where are we going, what are we doing, what are we learning? Now that we have more wolves than one when we started this campaign, you're learning a lot and they're different.

I know a wolf is a wolf and you can look across the west as how wolves have transpired and moved across the states. But it is also California. So, there's some familiarity with what other states have experienced as wolves have started to recolonize in places.

But there's also some newness as to what California is and how we need to thrive and live with them on the landscape. So, we're continuing to do that. We said last year that we were going to try and go back and look at review of our—of the species—and work through some of that stuff.

And then frankly, we got caught up in the middle of Sierra Valley, which pulled almost every—not almost—every resource we had in the Department, that dealt with wolf was sitting in that valley and, or on a phone call dealing with what was going on in that valley. So, that's part of our plan this year.

Coming out of the meeting we had that Chuck—I mean, that Kevin mentioned in December—was to sort of think about how is that our next step with those communities. And we really feel like there's two pathways that we need to focus on. One is to talk about revision or reimagining what the compensation program.

We've had a couple years of it in play. Is there some tweaks we need. We've heard some folks that think that maybe there needs to be more compensation in this space or this space or we need to readjust here or there. I think that's a conversation we need to continue to have, which you've talked about.

The second place is where do we go with science and research and management. And to me, those are separate meetings, Lots of the same crossover stakeholders, but a pathway for us to think about how do we do this collectively? We did it 10 years ago, very open forum, lots of, you know, working stakeholder groups, lots of input.

And then, we've kind of been sitting in this, I don't wanna say silo, but just basically living with wolves as this happened. We need to reinitiate that process. And we're just trying to figure out how do we do that because the stakeholder has gotten larger, right? It was a smaller subset when we started with one wolf.

It's a large community now. There's eight, nine counties that are affected with wolves or have wolves in their backyard. There's a larger subset of ranchers. So, we're still working through how to make sure we do that transparently. But also, you know, we can progress in a.

In a manner that's actually producing products and having something for people to give us some comments on.

I, I just want to Reiterate that sense of urgency because our, our—for winter, our cows are moved, they're coming back early March and that's when our kills started last year. And we've had this crisis. So, it's on the minds of many of these ranchers in the room what that's going to look like.

And we had hoped there'd be faster progress. Do you think that we will have a depredation permit process at all in the future for wolves?

Wolves are a listed species federally in state.

Are we working to change that or no?

I mean here's what I would say and this is—you and we are living this, but for those who are not, obviously the major difference between management of like a bear and a wolf is the wolf is this endangered species that's protected under federal and state law.

So, there's not a depredation process to enable the killing of a wolf if there's property damage, for example. But as we experienced in Sierra Valley, at the end of the day, you know, the Department made a very, very, very difficult decision to take wolves and they did that after essentially all non-lethal interventions were exhausted.

And so, we're going to continue to discharge our legal responsibility to enable the recovery of this endangered species, but absolutely do it in a way that protects public safety and addresses the very real economic impact on these ranchers.

So, I think you asked about sort of what is the arc of management from here and I think that's playing out in real time. But ultimately, where I sit, as a non-expert, is coexistence is critical. If wolves are going to coexist, communities need to understand and feel comfortable with that and understand that there's a process.

So, I imagine that this process will continue to evolve. The tools will be better known and used that, in the near term, we're really minimizing that ultimate decision that we had to make in Sierra Valley. But we're committed to being partners with you through this because it's going to take the partnerships to actually enable the coexistence.

And last question, I promise. I do want to thank you for all your work on this. We—it didn't go unnoticed how much, how many resources were brought to our Sierra County, one of the smallest counties in the state, population wise. We do appreciate that.

I think the problem just keeps expanding and it's my, it's our biggest issue. It's the thing I get the most calls about. I get pictures every day. I wake up to what those scenes look like, which are things my colleagues don't want to see on my phone anymore. How much money would you need?

What funding do you need? Because I know you guys took a cut. You took a hit already. What is the number that you need to be able to do this and do this right to keep everyone safe and keep our—get our balance back?

My sense of the reluctance that you experience is just the deference to the policymakers, the Governor and the Legislature, at setting the budget. And ultimately, you all have a much broader field of vision for what the state priorities are.

I think the case we would make is that, and this is not a secret, but more resources provide more capacity. And we've seen how the surge in resources that existed during the General Fund surplus enabled a lot more proactivity, which is important to limiting conflict. So, I think we can leave it there.

Resources equal technology, equals expertise, equals people in the field and capacity and partnerships.

Okay, thank you.

And maybe to just add on, just as we, and most of you have probably heard this before, when we went through the service-based budget process, right, looking at every nook and cranny of the work that we do, there's resource gaps that can be filled with technology.

And I think wolves is a prime example of where we need to bring in new innovative technology to think through how we're managing the cows and the wolves on the ground. And so, it's not just a one for one. It's not like we need five staff there and five staff there and five stuff there.

We need to think—like the example we like to use is a law enforcement boat, right? So, we have ships north of California that can work in enforcement all along the California coast. That one ship serves as like five staff.

I'm making stuff up now, but the point is, is that technology is going to be a way that's less resource intensive that we can use to help manage these things in real time and we're really looking forward to exploring how we do that together.

Well, thank you very much to all the panelists. This has been really helpful, and I appreciate Secretary Crowfoot giving the reality check on the budget. That is what we're trying to do though now is build our budget for this year. So, we, we do need a little more help with that.

I don't have any context about how much money the one-time money was and what that means in relation to the gap that you might need to have a fully functioning program. Understanding that technology might help be more efficient about that.

But I also understand that as these crises occur, you're having to shift resources from other things to take care of those things. Those things get put to the side and that has a consequence too. So, I really just need a lot more information about what were the resources required for the wolf strike team?

How much is the depredation compensation in context of your budget? You know, is there a conversation about when we're compensating ranchers for an incident, are we asking them to have made, taken steps to prevent that incident? Is that part of the depredation process? Is there a true partnership in that respect?

Seems like there would be minimum levels of activity that somebody would have to do to make sure that they're preserving their livestock in that complicated urban wildlife context. Just a million different.

Maybe I'll give you some, some background history, if that's okay. It's public information. You just have to do a lot of homework. So, I mentioned earlier, 2015 and 2016, when we really kind of kicked off some of these efforts and saw some incident increases.

I believe in both of those years as part of drought packages, it was about a million dollars the Department received. And that was just to enhance our ability over time, maybe we hired some side aids, to really just respond to it in some of the immediate spaces where we were experiencing drought across the state.

If you all remember, that was pretty bad. In '21-'22, when we were funded, again, that was a onetime investment, biodiversity BCP that went through, that was a $7 million benefit to the Department—or budget for the Department that carried through.

And again, I believe it was '23 that we received another tranche of 5 million through a drought, another drought, unfortunately, drought response package. So, those are the funds we've received to support human wildlife conflict over about the last 10 years. Those monies are typically loaded so that we have an extended encumbrance.

So, they're not just a one-year dollar, maybe two years to encumber, three years to liquidate, if you're familiar with the budget processes. So, those have allowed us to kind of stretch that out over time. Those funds in '21 and '23 supported about 20 limited term staff across the state.

And so, for those of you that don't understand it, our limited term staff, they're not permanent, right? They're a two-year assignment. And part of that struggle that we had is that when somebody gets a two-year assignment, potentially gets hired as a limited term, about the time that two years expiring, they're leaving.

And we're trying to now retrain specialized, highly specialized staff to go learn these new jobs all over again. So, there's some capacity issues when you look at that, but that's about where it landed. I would say that compensation—so, in the wolf program, we've had some compensation, but it's a little bit different when you talk wolf and just in general human wildlife conflict.

We, as the Department, don't have a program to support individuals for just general conflict. We don't pay them to fortify their house or build a chicken coop better or what have you.

In the wolf compensation world, it's a little different. The compensation program we have has three prongs in it. First one is a payment for direct loss. So, if somebody experiences depredation, they can seek reimbursement at fair market value. We'll get into the details, but essentially reimbursement for that.

The second prong—as we call it, prong two—is support for non-lethals. So, that program actually has the ability to pay livestock operators to implement these tools, put in flattery, help with range riders, help with lights, help with different things.

They can actually apply for a grant, if you will, that gives them the funding to be able to fortify their properties. The third one is what we call pay for presence. And again, you might hear some of this later, which is actually trying to get at the indirect loss for ranchers.

So, just having wolves on their floor, the presence of them around their cattle, that might adjust their fecundity rates or how much weight they're gaining in the field this summer for the stresses of just having wolf or maybe not having birthing at all. So, there's a whole formula and science and things that go through that.

And so, those are the three prongs. The first year we received funding for the compensation program thanks to the Legislature. This was a legislative ad. It was $3 million.

It took us a little while to build that program with stakeholder input, but that money went pretty fast once you rolled it out into the non-lethal grants and as pay for presence rolled out. This year, and so, you're in '25-'26 and '24-'25, we received $600,000 because the 3 million was gone.

We are just finishing up that $600,000 now. We've only opened up the program to direct loss. That is not that much money in this, in the grand scheme of what that program takes to run, so, we thought it was wise to continue to reserve those funds as long as we could to ensure we could continue to pay for direct loss and ranchers experience direct loss.

We still have $2 million right now that we're working through with—Kevin mentioned—in ways that we can most strategically work.

That was this year's add, again, into the budget of '25-'26. So, that's where we're at right now. And we have promise that we will hold a subset of those funds to continue direct loss for the ranchers that are experiencing that directly.

And we're working through these conversations that we've been talking about how to apply the remaining of those funds to the best of our ability that supports the ranching communities, us, all these things we're talking about technology, data sharing, trust, et cetera. So, we're working through that now.

So, is that helpful with some background on dollars or is that too fast?

Yeah, that was very fast.

I was writing quickly and so, let me see what I got. Going way back, you got an extra million, 25, 2016. So, that's kind of not relevant for our current budget cycles. But you got 7 million in '21-'22. You got an extra 5 million in '23.

That helped pay for 20 limited response term staff for over a two-year period. And then, additionally, beyond that, you got $3 million. And then, is 600,000 additional or is that the leftover of 300,000?

We had, we had three installments, 3 million, 600,000, and 2 million.

Okay, perfect.

And those funds have all gone directly to the program. That's another thing that we've talked about. Those funds weren't available for the Department to manage the funds, run the grants, run the program. They directly—every dollar has gone directly back to the producers.

So, the seven and the five is 12 plus the three and the two is another five. So, about $17 million over the last four years. That was one time?

Correct.

Okay, thank you. That's, that I can.

And just to clarify, the last part of it was just for your Wolf Program. 2014-'15 was the Wildlife Conflict Program, which is more general.

Okay, so, money specifically invested for wolves. I think it was to please Ms. Hadwick before she got here. I'm certain. Very effective, yes. Advocacy prior to. All right, Assemblymember Gonzalez, take it away.

That is correct.

Thank you, Madam—thank you, Madam Chair. First and foremost, thank you, Secretary Crowfoot, for your continued advocacy for the Salton Sea region. I, I follow you on LinkedIn to keep track of your, of your efforts down there because we absolutely need more eyes, more collaboration in the region. As noted here, I represent the southeast corner of California.

So, I know we have a lot of north state folks here and some Southern California, but I'm all the way down at the bottom with the 36th Assembly District encompasses Riverside County, San Bernardino County, and all of Imperial counties—a little bit larger than the state of New Hampshire.

And we also have 12 sovereign nations in that region. My question is really towards manpower in that region. What is the footprint of CDFW in Imperial County?

I don't know an exact number off the top of my head. I can say we have the Salton Sea Program down there which has I think about 12 staff that work directly on Salton Sea itself. We have our Imperial Wildlife area that has about eight or nine staff down there that work on the wildlife area.

And then, we have a half dozen or so folks that are with wildlife management, permitting, fisheries management, those types of things that work out of the headquarters office in Ontario. So, that's kind of a rough ballpark, I guess.

And then I would say for wildlife officers in that particular county, around five that, that cover and span throughout, usually a squad of officers.

Okay, so we're looking at about, let's call it 30ish science administration folks and five law enforcement.

Right.

With, with that being said, I go back to, you know, the Colorado River, which is in, in my district, the largest body of water in California, the Salton Sea. And I get it, we're, we're desert. So, we have a different set of predators in, in our area.

What is, from a law enforcement perspective, first and foremost, what are you seeing as the challenge down there?

I think, especially in that particular area, we do a lot of work with wildlife trafficking. So, things that are illegal, we work closely with other nations to make sure what's coming into California, what's going out of California. So, trying to deal with all the ports of entry is one.

We have some human wildlife conflict in that area as well.

Maybe not as much as what we see up in the north state, but we definitely have especially coyote in that area and what have you and kind of everything in between, even from the theft of sage to other things that occur in those counties that we work diligently and with other mutual aid law enforcement agencies to combat.

I'm glad you, you pointed into the angle that I was going, going towards. You know, I represent the, the border between Mexico and the, and, and California, the United States. Obviously, the trafficking of fentanyl and illicit drugs is a huge thing. The trafficking of humans and human slavery is also a big thing.

But when it comes to, if you will, your scope, so to speak, the trafficking of wildlife, whether living or, or deceased, is also an issue that doesn't get much attention.

And I guess people on the outsides of our region don't realize what a big industry that is, the trafficking of both live and dead, the trafficking of meat across there. And yes, we do have our Customs and Border Protection that are trying to do their piece with respect to agriculture and the meats piece.

But really, you know, as I, as I look at it from a California perspective, right—now, let's kind of leave the feds off to the side. What, what are you, what's the dollar amount that you are seeing—you don't have to, give me approximate—in that industry, with respect to the trafficking across the, the, the border?

Great question. Because we look at it almost holistically for all of California for the trafficking that's coming in. Like we just made a very significant case out of Madera and Fresno counties on trafficking of mostly elephant parts that were coming in. It's in the millions of dollars.

We could try to narrow it down for—specifically for—the southern part of California. But as we look at it, we do look for kind of the entirety of California for ports coming in.

And like I said earlier, with 500 wildlife officers total, that's a lot of being one of the major ports of entries that we have in California and a major consumer of unfortunately illicit wildlife products.

And do you have any restrictions with respect to, you know, SB 54 is an issue, but we're talking about animals right, right, right now. But do you have any restrictions with collaboration with federal law enforcement, as it relates to SB 54 for can you work with feds?

Yes, we can work with Feds, but obviously not with immigration efforts.

Right. So, so, your ability to work with the, our, our federal, your federal counterparts is unrestricted.

Yeah. Especially when it comes to like U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Yeah.

Who we work closely with, within the ports of entry.

So, the reason I ask that is because if I'm—for instance, right, I'm using my investigator hat, right—if I have a bag of bad stuff that is animal or whatever and it crosses the international border, realistically speaking, we're, we're—we assume that the port of entry will catch it first.

Assuming that they don't catch it first and it that now gets inland, the chain of investigation could potentially land in, in your lap. Right? You're in Mendocino County and you have—you, you, you get a find.

What is the, the study or is there data that says, hey, we're, we're receiving a lot of stuff coming in from the southern border. And are you collaborating with respect to, to that?

I guess what I'm looking for is show me, show me the data that says, hey, we got a lot of stuff happening here and it's coming this way. The reason why I asked that question is because data will then inform budget. Right?

Oh man, we have a huge problem, but we only have 500 officers and down here in the desert we got like one—that's, if you will, because of 24-hour shift, five equals one supervisor, which means four. And we're talking about three shifts. Right? So, we're looking at one person really on duty, plus a supervisor on duty.

Am I getting my numbers right?

Yeah, but we also have, in addition to that, we also have our special operations teams. So, if you look solely focused on wildlife trafficking, that's what their sole focused on, our undercover teams, Internet wildlife trafficking.

We have positions for those few positions, but positions that we do look into that and of course, our ports of entry officers as well.

Do you have data that shows where these investigations have led to, as in where their originating point of entry is?

Yes, if we are able to catch it at the port, it is. But we also do like fish business, inspections, taxidermy, other inspections, internet being probably our biggest, that we do that we, we'll go see, that may not identify the exact port of entry as it comes in, but we always try and do that.

Okay, and my last statement, and I'll hand it off to whomever.

We have another panel, so I'm going to hurry you along.

I'd love to understand more about your, your—the patterns of activity happening in California, with respect to them coming inland because that will help inform us or help—I'm pro law enforcement, so I want to make sure that you have the right resources.

And if we are not looking at it appropriately, then I think that's something that we need to do.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll try to be very quick here. Lightning round on this panel. You know, on the black bear question, we haven't talked a whole lot about bears. I think there's a direct correlation between the end of allowing us to hunt bears with dogs and the increase in the amount of conflict between bears and humans, and humans.

There has been legislation and when we talk about hazing, that's been a thing that's brought up a lot. One of the best ways to haze is through the use of dogs. Ms. Hadwick had a bill last year. You know, would you guys be supportive of such a policy to haze and help avoid those human conflicts?

I mean, what I would say there, Assemblymember, is that is an area of—that would be a statutory change. And so, we're going to defer to the policymakers on that.

Yeah, but you guys are the experts and I want, you know, think it helps inform it. I mean, would that help avoid these conflicts, you know, from the folks who deal with this every day?

I, I will say that under the current laws that are in place, the folks from wildlife services in the counties that implement depredation requests are allowed to haze with dogs if they want to, already. That is a specific set of code that's different. If—are you asking about...

Only law enforcement, though, right?

Huh?

Only it's not allowed broadly.

It's, it's allowed by those implementing depredation. So, not the general public or hunters, correct.

Yes. And I'm not, again, it's not for a kill. It's for hazing purposes.

Yeah, for hazing purposes. Yes.

Okay. And then I'll move, you know, so, sounds like it does help, and you, you and you do utilize it in that context?

Correct, yes.

All right, so, I think that's helpful. On—with regard to wolves, I think there has been a lot of progress made. There's been a lot of good means, good discussion, but I think one problem is, look, these wolves are getting closer and closer to humans. There is a very big concern that we are going to see devastation to our communities. We already are seeing it with our cattle.

And I think what we need is a public safety—the ability for our sheriffs to use a public safety kill in these circumstances. Would you guys be supportive of such a change?

Chad, can you explain?

Let me take a crack because I know you'll hear from Sheriff Fisher and the county sheriffs have been really focused and vocal on this, as they should be, given the concern of their community. As former Director Bonham, you know, explained, always very directly, a local law enforcement official, if they are concerned about the eminent public safety risk, the danger to somebody being attacked by a wolf, they can take that wolf.

So, the public safety that actually protecting a person from a wolf is not only the responsibility of a wildlife officer, a local law enforcement official can do that too, if it's an eminent public safety risk.

I think you're talking to, and at least the sheriffs are discussing, what constitutes public safety, but as it is under code—Chief, correct me if I'm wrong, we want to be very clear on that.

Yes. As it's under code, it's imminent threat. So, within policy. So, to expand public safety—might talk about that a little bit today—and that may be where you're at—headed with your question.

But as of right now, a sheriff that, if they take a lion or a bear, which has occurred here in California, they have that ability to do that under their constitutional authority.

That's going to be a case of too late, man. You know, and what I'm trying to say is we're going to have a kid or a person killed if we don't have greater tools from a public safety standpoint to keep these wolves from coming into communities.

And so, I do think that we need to have that better tool that gives more clarity to law enforcement to be able to utilize, you know, that tool. And then, I will agree with Assemblywoman Hadwick. I think we also on—there's too many of these unconfirmed kills out there that I think everybody really knows, and this is a frustration.

They're wolves, you know, but we need to have, you know, and it sounds like you guys are agreeable to having local law enforcement be part of that process to determine, you know, whether or not these were wolf kills.

And I think that would be a very good change that could help, help this process. But we do need real tools to keep—essentially that wolves and bears learn that they can't, you know, come into these communities. They can't kill cattle, like, and they're not going to learn that, you know, unless we have these tools available.

Okay, so I've got a general comment that I'd like to make, but before I do that, I got to talk a little bit about mountain lions, given that they are often appearing now in suburban communities, like myself, while we're all asking about our own districts. So I understand we have a three-strike program in place.

Do I have that right? Number one.

There's a, under the depredation rules, there's a three strike for the ESU Proposed Candidate Species right now, and then, everything else is under our normal depredation rules. So, I believe your district's within the proposed ESU, so, I think it would be in the three strikes category, but I would have to look at them.

That's okay. That's okay. I want to ask you about the three-strike program, whether it's in my district or not, but let me simplify it for you. And is it that—how often is a third strike reached and is it resulting in, in a reduction of conflict?

And Kevin, can you explain the difference of the general application of mountain lion and what an ESU is and how it applies?

Yeah. So, an ESU is a.

By the way, I banned all acronyms, so you better speak in regular language, please.

It's a significant unit of the animals that live in a portion of California that are at threat greater than the rest of the state. So, Southern California, where we have connectivity, loss of habitat, lions are not doing as well as they are in other parts of the state. And so, there's specific rules under depredation for that.

The three-strike rule simply says that we will use non-lethal deterrence multiple times before we will authorize taking of an animal as lethal. To my knowledge, the non-lethal has been used multiple times and we've only taken a few animals under the lethal in the last couple of years since it was implemented.

There has been a greater understanding on the landscape of mountain lions in that area where people are working with us more on those non-lethal deterrence, prior to having incidents. So, that's been a good thing. But overall, most of the permits down there fall in the non-lethal category.

So, you see, there's been some of a reduction then. Have you had success in the non-lethal?

I believe that we've had success in implementing the non-lethal measures, yes.

Okay.

As a reduction in the conflic? That was a question. I was a lawyer in a past life, so I'm gonna get an answer out of you.

I don't have exact numbers to say if it's a reduced conflict. Maybe, maybe Nate does. I don't—I'm not sure off the top of my head. I can only say that the measures have been implemented and we don't have lethal permit requests after that. So, that would indicate to me that it is working.

I got you, by deduction. Okay. So, I just want to first of all, thank all of you for being here. Secretary Crowfoot, don't be a stranger. It's been nice to have you, and it is apparent that you must do more with less. If we take nothing away from this panel, we understand that.

And I do think you're right on institutionalizing perhaps the shared resources, because it's not going to happen otherwise, and that whether it's a wolf or whether it's a mountain lion. So, I can appreciate that desire to institutionalize that collaboration. And I also want to say to Ms. Termini, you're onto something with the technology part of it.

And that may cost upfront money, not necessarily resources. I appreciate Assemblymember Gonzalez's attempt to say how many more personnel can we get for X, Y, or Z, but I think you're onto something with the technology part of it, and I would welcome the opportunity to work further with costing that out.

And you know, it may, particularly when you're out in the hithers with the wolves. So, let's, let's continue that discussion. Thank you all for your time and for being here. And Gallagher, thanks for those hard questions. And we're going to go to the next panel. Thank you so much. It.

Well, welcome. After that brief commercial break, I want to thank Dr. Orrick and Dr. Najera. Najera for being here. And I will let you take it away and let us know what you need technology wise to make sure that we get your presentations out there. Welcome.

Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair and Assembly Members. My name is Kaggie Orrick. I'm the Director of UC Berkeley's California Wolf Project. But I've also been a conservation practitioner for over 15 years on human predator conflict and coexistence.

This was covered briefly, but conflict is growing due to land use changes, human expansion as well as the Endangered Species act and other recovery. Species recovery using conservation law and then climate driven shifts.

Research on human wildlife conflict has shown that actual losses explain only part of the conflict and that strong predictors of human tolerance as well as human action towards wildlife are going to include perceived fairness, trust in the institutions that are managing those wildlife, a sense of control or agency, and then also how do wildlife impact culture, cultural identity and livelihood dependence?

What I think is important as well is that two communities can experience identical losses and respond very differently. So when we're thinking about policy, when we're thinking about management, it needs to be flexible to reflect the differences in those communities.

Improving tolerance and addressing human wildlife conflict is not only ethically important, but it's also going to be one of the most effective ways that we can reduce poor and support recovering wildlife populations. The loss of private property in rural areas can lead to development subdivisions and that decreases wildlife habitat. That is especially true in California.

And the best interest of wildlife management agencies and those who want to support carnivore recovery. To try and reduce human wildlife conflict. We are going to have to be thinking about incentive based programs on private lands, across species, across regions.

Evidence for successful human wildlife programs are co designed, they're co produced solutions and they always outperform top down ones. So responsible agencies need to be able to act early rather than react to chronic conflict. There needs to be focus on improving that trust, communication and clarity along with technical tools.

There needs to be able to reduce uncertainty for affected communications. We've heard about this already. Communication is key and above all it's going to have to be adaptive, tailored to local ecological and social conditions to be able to react in the ways that the communities need.

The bottom line too, and what we've already heard in the previous panel, is that no single tool is going to work everywhere. That we really need to have systems that are sustainable as opposed to standalone interventions. I know that this is going to be asked.

I know we're going to be talking about this, so I just briefly want to state the role of lethal removal in Wolf management. Lethal removal is an active tool in Wolf management and other US States and Canadian provinces where wolves occur and other states can provide models for better flexibility.

So in eastern Washington and eastern Oregon, after a certain number of verified livestock depredations over a specific period of time, lethal removal can be considered. But in western Washington and western Oregon, it's only possible to lethally remove a wolf when it poses an immediate threat to human life.

So giving context to other places that have incorporated this in different areas. The. California UC Berkeley's California Wolf Project has been contracted by the CDFW over the last year and a half and has co developed seven objectives to provide foundational understanding to the recovery of wolves in California.

The conclusions I'm presenting are kind of a high level summary of various data that we've collected using different methods.

I want to highlight things that I'm not going to be talking about today, but we have one of the largest camera trap arrays in Northern California in partnership with UC Davis to look at prey species and other predator species that are going to be important.

And we've also conducted a number of interviews and interacted with a number of different stakeholders. I want to talk about three key results that will be useful for this conversation about human wildlife conflict. The first is that wolves have widespread suitable habitat across California and that is going to enable population growth and expansion.

So we're going to see increases in human wildlife conflict moving forward. We've developed a habitat suitability model and incorporating that with wolf biology, we've been able to predict and project where new packs are going to settle across the next 20 years. And so each of these polygons here represent a potential home range where wolves could establish.

And the color of that Polygon indicates a potential pack ranging from dark blue all the way, which is where wolves are currently established, to yellow, which is a predicted 20 years out.

I think I just want to highlight to you all here that we need to be thinking about policies and sustainable funding that is more comprehensive and supportive of for a program around wolves, because even districts that don't necessarily have wolves now could have wolves in the near future.

The second result that I want to share with you is that depredation risk is high in California compared to depredations per Wolf in 2023 across other states. For those in the back who can't see, California is at the top.

Oregon, Wyoming, Washington, Idaho and Montana follow, but that depredation risk is significantly higher in our state compared to others that have wolves. And what we have found is that that depredation risk increases as deer densities decline. That pattern is most consistent with prey limited human dominated systems such as Europe.

And that speaks to our need to be thinking about native prey availability. So not only thinking about improving habitat for elk, for deer and other prey that wolves are eating, but we also need to be thinking about domestic prey vulnerability. Wolves are constantly weighing this negative stimuli, again like hazing, against the reward for food.

So we need to be figuring out ways that we can create more negative stimuli around cattle, around livestock that push them towards that native prey. The third result that I want to share is that trust needs to be improved. And that's both around nonlethal tools as well as across institutions.

So we sent a questionnaire to those who received the pilot compensation funding and we asked about the effectiveness of non lethal tools. And what you can see here is that all tools have supporters and detractors.

And that speaks to the value of a flexible program so wildlife or livestock producers are able to implement the tools that they think are going to be most effective.

I think this also speaks to the need to have more workshops and programs and and support of how to use these tools and implement them specifically on their operations and capture the nuances that might be available. We understand that wolves could have been new in some of these areas.

So the familiarity and knowledge about some of these tools can range. And that's why I think it's really important to address education within all of that. The second question, we've talked a lot about trust already on this panel. We've talked about how trust can improve human wildlife conflict.

One of the questions that we asked was to what degree do you trust information about wolves as well as Wolf management from the following sources. Again, for those in the back, I know that it's difficult to see it ranges, cattlemen, CDFW, county officials, neighbors, nonprofit organizations, NRCS, cooperative extension, university researchers and USDA.

And what we can see is that there is higher trust in neighbors, Cooperative extension universities and counties opposed to CDFW and other institutions. But that just highlights that there's all things that we need to improve in order to reduce human wildlife conflict.

Especially as we are seeing wolves increase across the state, we are going to have to work on improving this. This also speaks to sustainable funding and training for management to address this. So ultimately what this means for California, thinking about solutions and suggestions there needs to be co developed.

Bottom up programs that work alongside livestock producers to reduce conflict. There needs to be more coordinated action across multiple scales and science based management that's paired meaningfully in the immediate. The things that I think that we can hit on thinking about bridge building with landowners and local communities. I know that's moving in that direction now.

Stable funding for applied and adaptive management as well as the science. There needs to be an expanded non lethal conflict prevention program essentially. And there needs to be stronger federal and state coordination in the long term.

We also need to be thinking about land use planning specifically around habitat management not only for large carnivores, but their prey base. And that is also in conjunction with. Forest management and fire recovery. Finally, I just want to end with a quote that's from the IUCN Human Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence Specialist group.

It says there can be pressure for quick fixes to human wildlife conflict, but actions that do not consider the wider social and local context lead to unintended consequences and increased tensions. And with that I thank you.

Mr. Najera.

Oh, we can skip or Dr. Najera.

Proceed. I'm sorry, are we waiting technologically speaking? Okay, while we're doing that, I got a quick question for you, Dr. Orrick. Can you explain for me just what you mean by the multi jurisdictional land planning around Habitat management for large carnivores and their prey?

Is that moving deer into the location of the wolves? That's what I'm getting at. Just so you know.

Yes.

No, I wasn't necessarily hitting on moving. Deer into these areas, but improving habitat. Restoration, removing of cheatgrass, incorporating and understanding fire regimes and how that is impacting prey base, how that is impacting deer and elk, finding more ways to improve habitat in those areas.

Because we got a lot of deer in suburbia constantly.

Are you asked out a lot? Yeah, yeah. Often I hear that wolves should be moved down to those areas and so dead. But.

All right. Well, that's where I was headed. Okay. Are you ready, Dr. Najera? Yeah. Good. Welcome.

Thank you. Thank you Madam Chair and Members of the Assembly for letting me speak today about human felit conflict. So I prepare a quite ambitious outline. Let me check. Here we are. So I'll talk a little bit on an overview of a human failure conflict worldwide.

Then I'll talk about the role that UC Davis Wildlife Health Center California can imagine program is taking on human failure conflict. I'll talk about current operations, our study sites and methodologies and then I'll end with some examples.

So what is human physic conflict and why it matters because human physic conflict is one of the most urgent conservation challenges for wildcats worldwide. And human physic conflict happens when fillets threaten human livelihoods and safety. And most common through livestock depredation.

Retaliatory killing, or less frequently thanksgiving attacks on people is driven by increasing overlap between humans and fellates due to habital loss and fermentation, expansion of livestock grazing operations and prey depletion. And this is concerning when we're talking with about endangered species. Because retaliatory killing can drive population declines. So which fellies are most affected?

So we know that the conflict severity increases strongly with felid body size. With felid body mass. And in the literature these nine species that are overrepresented because the experience moderate to severe conflict worldwide. This here, over there. Caracals, African lions, cheetahs, leopards, jaguars, the original lynx, leopards, tigers and mountain lions. But why larger cats face more conflict?

First because they are perceived of higher risk for human safety. But as well because they can take on more valuable economically valuable cattle or other type of livestock. And also larger cats are going to be roaming larger territories. So there is more more opportunities for them to overlap with human settlements of livestock operations. So why drives conflict?

So livestock depredations is the dominant trigger. And then retaliatory killing is a major conservation threat because often exceeds natural mortality.

And the conflict hotspots emerge where we have those felid habitats just on the borderline with human settlements and actually with grazing lands when wild prey is reduced or is unavailable seasonally and when livestock husbandry and garden techniques are poor. And why managing human felt conflict is so challenging because this is not static.

This is a conflict that is dynamic, it's context specific. There's many variables in this theme. So we need to take care of what kind of wildlife species is involved, the type of livestock is involved, the scenario, the site all is going to inform this conflict. Data worldwide is inconsistent, comparable and sometimes missing.

From this literature review we see that only 31% of mitigation strategies have been scientifically evaluated. Really low. We say that there is not one solution for all carnivore species. We need to adapt depending on the species we are working with. That's why UC Davis depression research is heavily involved in this theme.

Because we know that depredation prevention is paramount for Pacific coexistence with mountain lions and to ensure mountain lion survival long term. We know that in California primary threats are the loss of connectivity that is leading to genetic inbreeding.

But higher on the list is the predation permits and poaching that is bringing low animal survival for males staywide and for both Texas in the southernmost part of the distribution. And some threats are still not well known like rodenticides, the impact of fire, some diseases.

So these stats are from a UC Davis led research from Kolermont and Lions over a 12 year period of time. And you guys see that in Southern California degradation permits and animals illegally kill is almost the same amount of animals that die due to vehicle collisions which is the primary threat in Southern California.

So I know that this is not right to do this date. But there is some three demographic groups that they are usually involved in this kind of depredation events. The first all we know this is just the dispersal individuals.

These young mountain lions that recently left the natal range and left mom mom is spoiling them for too many months 20, 24 months. And it's hard to take on wild prey. So if they encounter this livestock, it's easy for them to go for it. Second group will be females with dependent kittens.

They live in a state of a caloric demand so it's easier for them to take in livestock if they have the opportunity. And also injured individuals. So these photos are from one animal that we captured because he was depredating on goats.

And when we were doing the physical exam, we saw that the animal was suffering from an injured in one of the digital vats. The animal was unable to move accordingly to his age. These are the areas where our program is operating. Thanks to the scientific collecting permit issued by California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

We are really invested in areas of Central California and Southern California while tackling human failure conflict. Our areas of interest are livestock depredation. We investigate any kind of depredation I may happen with sheep, goats and other type of livestock like alpacas or llamas and so dogs and cats. Along with our regional biologists of cdfw.

Also we are paying attention to human interaction. How mountain lions behave in areas with a huge overlap with hikers, bikers, runners, you name it. That this is happening mostly in Southern California. Our depredation prevention research started in 2021. We are using several conflict mitigation techniques and we are educating the public through to typical preventive husbandry.

But we are using these deterrent devices, these electronic devices that they turn on when they detect motion and they display annoying sounds and lights. So this is how we work at what we call artificial bait sites. So first we need a color mountain lion.

When we know how the animal moves is when we set a bait over here and then the deterrence device. And let's see if I can play a video. How it would work. That will be an example of how this works. We're using as well other other tools. This is something that we're trying at the moment.

It's just this camera that have an interface with our cell phones. So when we detect the offender, we can actually put in place one kind of stimuli to deter the animal from the side. And we tried this in this setup when we were trying to capture. I don't know if we can play this video.

We're trying to capture a female, but her boyfriend came first and we're trying to detect this guy. On getting into the trap, we didn't need it in the trap. So we started to talk over the phone and through the camera. Let's see how the animal responds. See. The beginning, the stimuli that we're using is pretty mild.

The animal is still interested in the cage trap. So what we do is just trying to increase the level of annoying stimuli to deter the guy. Then at the end, just clapping was enough for this guy to leave the site. So we're using this tool as well opportunistically with other species.

So this is a family of black birds that they are taking on one of our mountain lion baits. I don't know if there is a video as well in here. Four individuals involved in this case. So. At this time, we watch the animals feeding. Now we're connecting the camera. It's gonna take a little while.

Thanks for your patience. And now we start to talk. It was effective, it was effective, but we're trying to do that opportunistically every time we have the chance. So some preliminary results about these deterrent devices.

So even this time Period20212023 in Southern California, we use these devices and alarm combination, we have a success of 64% of the cases, 16 over 25. We see other ones that they are not too successful, the ones that are based just on lights. So those ones we are not going to be recommending.

And the next phase that we are working is including AI because one of the main disadvantages of using these deterrent devices because they get set off just with other species or just with wind. So we want some deterrent devices specific for the animal that we want to deter, for the species that we want to deter.

So this is the moment that we are going to be using these new devices. And at this time, we are trying this prototype, thanks to our collaboration with the pajarito Environmental Education center in New Mexico. And this is how we set up everything. You guys see the bait, we see the vanity, you guys see a camera.

And luckily we have an opportunity to test this device. Not too long ago we, we are going to see the algorithm is picking up this mountain lion and we have some videos as well with that. We don't have too much time for this, but let's go through it.

And just last thing that I want to say is we want to build up numbers when we are working in real life scenarios. So for us really, really valuable to call our conflict mountain lions. Because then we can actually study the behavior of these individuals in real time.

And this is what happens with what animal that was injured. We colored the animal. And you guys see the cluster of points over here? Yes. The animal was doing the day bed just next to the goat pen.

So we were speaking with the livestock owner in a daily basis for almost nine days saying hey, the mountain lion is still there. Please keep secure your goats because he's visiting the goat pen every night. So the livestock owner was wonderful, was collaborating with us. And then after nine days the animals start moving.

And when we see a second cluster, we studied a cluster in August, another goat pen. So we went there and we started to be proactive. So we put some deterrent devices. This is another video now we can play it really fast. We see that it seems like for a couple of days it worked.

But let's see the third day. What is going going on? This is not the response that we want. The animal is habituated and this is happening. Right. So at that time we need to have a plan B and the plan B is just a study. How is the goat pen? It's not secure at all.

It's an invitation for mountain lions to take goats. So we need to secure that pen and that what we did. Usually you cover visually that goat pen will be more successful. But just with that the animal stay couple of nights around unable to take any goats and the animal is starting to move.

So just to finish the presentation, just we need to be proactive. If we live in mountain lion country, please be proactive. Don't wait until a mountain lion takes a goda sheep out of you. We need to put in place husbandry practices, basic husbandry practices. And finally we need some tools.

We have some tools that we can provide these deterrence devices that can be helpful. That's what I have. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Pictures worth a thousand words and then some. Okay, questions from the Committee Assembly Member Gonzalez.

Thank you. This was very inform, Informative. You know, as I'm watching this, obviously there's success. Right. With the different type of proactive measures. And because you were on site at these goat pens, you were able to assist the owners of that land to be able to do that.

The assessment would be that you're not tracking every single, you know, predator that's out there, right? Correct. What type of communication do you have?

Because if the ones that you are tracking, what type of communication do you have with the ranchers that are in the region, if you do spot that they are in an area outside of, you know, your.

Your direct interaction with this area, if something pops up in an, you know, another area, what type of interaction do you have with them? Do you have their phone number? Do you have, hey, we're tracking this, or is it just. Are you just specific to one area and that's it?

Yeah. For us, it's easier to operate in all our study sites, so we have more communications with ranchers and livestock owners in those sites. Usually we're working in those areas for a very long time, so they know of our research operations. So it's easy for them to go through CDFW and fit to CDFW and us.

We have a good collaboration on this matter. So it's just how we operate. So usually when we have opportunity to talk over the phone or even to visit the livestock operation, we will. We will because we want to build that trust with the livestock owner.

We want to help, we want conserve mountain lions, but we need to take care of these other people that they are sharing the landscape with them.

And with respect to CDFW and our law enforcement partners associated with them, what's your level of interaction when you hear of these sightings on your end or on their end? Is it rare, is it moderate, is it continuous and always. What is that on your end?

Well, I feel that it's seasonal. I feel that it's seasonal. There is some times of the year that we have more communication about that. Usually the last.

For example, in Central California, the Tehachapi Mountains has been thanks to the regional biologists from CDFW that communicate with us and give us the opportunity to interact with, with the livestock owner because they know that we are really invested on getting conflict. Montana, Lyons Color.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah. Can you just succinctly kind of tell us what the state of the science is in regards to the prevention techniques that you were talking about versus no intervention or lethal intervention from your initial slides when you talked about the problem worldwide. You said there was a real darth of data. Is that the case in California?

Is that a challenge for us? Tell us about how those. What would you want us to take away from this presentation today? Thank you.

Well, in regard to mountain lions, can you repeat the question? Yes.

Yeah. What I'm looking for is do these techniques work? And you know what, what do we need to take from that? Your presentation about the, the habituation of the animals from the different techniques, the lack of the data that you said was only 30% useful.

You know, I'm getting the impression that there's not a lot of clarity from your presentation.

Well, so we have only just a couple of years of testing those devices and there is a lot of variability because there is a lot of variability in mountain lion behavior. So one of the things that is most helpful is just to put in place basic husbandry practices.

Securing your animals just at night when mountain lions are more active. It will take a lot of this conflict out. That would be amazing. Then we have other techniques and this, when this kind of devices may help.

But I think the starting point will be just to do an education program with people that already live in Montana Leon country. And maybe they didn't have a depredation event yet. So that you don't have a deprivation event. It doesn't mean that you won't have it once later on.

So if you are proactive and you don't let that mountain lion to take one livestock out of you, it's gonna make a big difference in the future because then you are teaching that mountain lion how to behave around your livestock. And that's huge. That's huge. Then we can assist with other techniques. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

I will just add there are a number of techniques that non lethal techniques that work across multiple states. In California there's a number of pilot and larger programs that are going on, but it really depends on the operation.

Something that works in Sierra Valley and I'm thinking about specifically for wolves is not going to work in a more mountainous area of Siskiyou. So getting that fine scale information and understanding the operation is what's important. Important.

So the context, the site specificity, the techniques for the situation and being proactive and doing basic husbandry are the recommendations.

Okay. And changing it up because they habituate quickly.

Right. Thank you. Thank you so much. My questions are for you, Kaggie. Can you tell us how other states manage wolves and livestock? Livestock depredation?

So many other states that have wolves, as I kind of said before, do have lethal removal as an option in some areas. There's also a number of non lethal programs that exist and that is both through the state but also through NGOs and other organizations that are supporting that.

California has that slightly smaller than what other states have. I also think that California is unique in that as we talked about, there are many more people in in even in a small area of California compared to Montana, compared to Wyoming. And so that conflict comes up much, much sooner and less non lethals have been implemented.

And I really appreciate that you say we should be flexible between communities and areas. I think my district with 11 counties is the perfect example of why blanket programs and mandates don't work.

Do you think does the data sharing and the sheriff's accompanying the investigations, is that something that you see as an effective solution in like you were talking about with that coexistence and what our, what our future should look like?

I would love to talk about that a little bit more. I think that there are nuances and it depends. There are. There is some evidence from other states that having a ton more people at a livestock depredation event certainly impacts how people are feeling and how they deter determine if it's a predation event or not.

I also think that it's good to have accountability there. I also think that the county so. CDFW does do a number of depredation investigations but there are county, county officials, county trappers that do depredation investigations that are incredible in Northern California and they're doing a great job.

So I know that there is a lack of trust with CDFW at times. But I do think that there are a number of other options and there should be more funding to support those. Other options like county trappers and our people.

I have to say in the north state collaborate better than. I didn't know that that was not a normal thing until coming to this position. But we do it kind of out of survival and it would be an addition of one person probably to the scene. Not.

I mean some of our departments have eight deputies so it's not. We don't, we don't have anybody that has a ton of extra officers to send. So thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and your presentations.

Okay with that. Well, thank you so much for your time and your. I had questions but you answered them. Except for the dear one. You came up short. That's all right Dr. Orrick I'll get you another time. Thank you very much. Okay. With that we'll have our next.

Our next panel come up and I know we've got quite a few people here. We will get to public comment. Well, welcome. I'm going to have each of you introduce yourselves as you go along, but I do have that.

We will more than likely start with Mr. Wilbur and then go to Ms. Flick, Mr. Fisher, Ms. Bozell and Ms. Pratt. Take it away, Mr. Wilbur.

Excellent. Good morning, Chair Papan and Members, and thank you to you and to the excellent staff for putting together this hearing today and for inviting us to participate. My name is Kirk Wilbur. I am the Vice President of Government Affairs at the California Cattlemen's Association.

For the past 13 years, I've been working at CCA to help ranchers avoid and when necessary, manage conflicts between their livestock and wildlife. In 2014, I was fortunate to be selected to be on the department's Wolf Stakeholder Working Group to advise the Department in their development of the Wolf conservation plan for wolves in California.

And over the past dozen years, I've advocated before the Department, the commission and the Legislature on matters relative to human wildlife conflicts, particularly about coyotes, wolves and mountain lions. There we go. Ranchers steward 38 million acres of rangeland throughout the state of California. So they do actually provide habitat and steward habitat for innumerable wildlife species.

Relevant to today's hearing, I want to focus on predation conflicts with livestock and predator species. I've listed a few up there of animals that frequently come into conflict with livestock.

Want to focus today primarily on mountain lions and wolves because their status as a specially protected species and an endangered species respectively create unique management difficulties and considerations in California. So I want to start by discussing mountain lions. In recent years, ranchers that are Members of my association have complained of increasing mountain lion conflict.

These images here are taken just seconds apart in Santa Clara county show a mountain lion chasing after a cow and her calf. And I was told by this producer that it was a near nightly occurrence at the time this photo was taken. Chair Papan, you had a conversation with CDFW about the three step permit process.

Just briefly, want to go over it here? The first permit in the Southern California and Central Coast ESU typically is just a non lethal permit that authorizes pursuit and hazing.

There's usually a second non lethal permit issued and then only after a third permit may you possibly get a lethal take permit that has to go through the headquarters in Sacramento for authorization.

My understanding is there's a two step process elsewhere in the state and typically it's the regional manager that has ultimate decision over whether or not to issue a lethal take permit on that second strike. So I want to. Sorry, I want to briefly talk about Proposition 117 which was passed by the voters in 1990.

That is a permit. Sorry, that is a proposition that allows specifically for the Department to issue take permits when mountain lions depredate against livestock. I failed to mention that previously. There are two concerns with the permit process that I laid out that I want to focus on today.

The first is that there's a lack of timely responsiveness by the Department. Proposition 117 requires that the Department, upon notification from a producer within 48 hours, investigate a suspected depredation and issue a determination and possibly a permit. I am hearing from producers throughout the state.

As an example, there's an email here that often there is a multi day delay in the Department's response when they contact those regional managers. Sometimes it's complete non responsiveness.

I think one way that we can help address this problem is something that the Department mentioned earlier today, which is just better resourcing for the human wildlife coexistence programs within the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Additionally, I think it would be beneficial to get some better guidance from CDFW as to how to elevate those permits when the regional office doesn't take action. The more substantial concern I want to address today is that CDFW's permit process almost completely frustrates Proposition 117's intent to authorize management of mountain lions that harm livestock.

For instance, permits authorizing only pursuit and hazing in the Central coast in Southern California fail to comply with the Department's legal obligations under Proposition 117 to authorize take because hazing is not a take under California law and pursuit is not a take within the meaning of Proposition 117.

Additionally, the department's requirement that a single ranch must suffer multiple depredations from an individual identifiable mountain lion within a relatively short period of time often practically frustrates ranchers ability to actually manage that animal. Proposition 117 was explicitly sold to voters as a provision that would allow ranchers to protect their livestock from mountain lions.

And by delaying permit issuance and giving ranchers the runaround in permit issuance, all too often that doesn't actually happen. Frustrating the voter's intent with Proposition 117, I want to move quickly on to wolf livestock conflicts. The most tangible example of conflicts between wolves and livestock, as you've heard today, is direct depredation.

I have made an intentional decision today not to show you particularly graphic images. We've got some ranchers in the room. My members would very much like you to see the devastation they see of their calves and their cows when they go check animals in the morning and see there has been a wolf depredation.

I don't want to do that to you, so I've got a few mild examples up here on the screen you can see a cow that has had its hind legs chewed on by wolves, a cow that's been killed and had some of its soft tissue consumed by wolves, and a calf that has been killed by wolves.

Want to speak? Well, I should say that the incidence of depredation has increased roughly proportional with the population of wolves in the state of California, and we've seen a precipitous increase in rates of direct depredation over just the past four years. I've highlighted here something from the conservation plan for gray wolves in California.

We all recognize within this space that those numbers vastly undercount actual losses of livestock to wolves for a variety of reasons. I'm going to skip that in the interest of time.

I do want to speak briefly about the indirect impacts of wolf presence on cattle, which in truth is probably the most significant impact of wolves on livestock producers and the animals they steward. Cattle harassed by wolves have lower weight gain and lower body scores because of the chasing and stress effects of having wolves present.

Stress caused by wolves may cause negative immune responses in cows and calves, and often it causes a pregnant cow to abort her calf. Research from UC Davis suggests that direct and indirect impacts combined from an individual wolf can be anywhere from $69,000 to $162,000 for producers in the.

I was told to be patient. There we go. I'll spend some time discussing conflict avoidance because I know that's a priority for today's hearing. There are several tools that ranchers can deploy to deter Wolf attacks on their herds, including range riders, guardian livestock, dogs, and fladry.

It's important to note that every deterrent has its limitations, and Kagi did a good job of discussing some of this. Many interventions are expensive. They may require scarce resources in this state, or they may only deter wolves for a limited period of time before new interventions are necessary.

Additionally, not all deterrents are suitable for all landscapes or all ranch sizes. And while some have suggested that ranchers are not doing enough to deter Wolf attacks, it bears mentioning that some of the most effective deterrents enhanced human presence. Changes in animal husbandry practices, removal of attractants may not be particularly visible to outside observers.

Madam Chair, I want to commend you on authoring AB411 last year that will help ranchers reduce those predator attractants by newly authorizing on ranch carcass composting. This slide briefly highlights some sort of novel intervention efforts recently in the state of California.

Drones from USDA Wildlife Services, and of course there's been some discussion of the strike team that was deployed by CDFW this past summer in the Sierra Valley. I want to reiterate that no deterrents are perfectly effective at avoiding Wolf livestock conflict.

The state's experiment with the 24/7 strike force in Sierra Valley underscores this fact, as ranchers still suffered near nightly losses of livestock to wolves.

I appreciate the perspectives of some today, including on this panel, that interventions have to occur much earlier than they did in Sierra Valley, though I would caution you that this burden cannot fall squarely and solely on ranchers.

But even in circumstances of early intervention, there may well come times when deterrent efforts fail and the state must be open to alternate management, including lethal removal of wolves like we saw in the Sierra Valley this year. I do want to commend CDFW Assemblymember Hart.

You had a question about compensation funding, so here it is in sort of graphical representation. That's from the Department. I do want to commend the Department because under authorization from the Legislature, they really did come up with the most comprehensive, robust compensation program in the West.

You won't often hear cattlemen commending the Department, so I want to underscore that right now part of the problem we have is from the Legislature. It has just been underfunded. So for the last two years, for instance, There has been no assistance for funding for ranchers to proactively deploy nonlethal deterrence to Hazaway wolves.

And in the instances where those non lethal deterrents fail, there's been no compensation for their presence impacts of Wolves. I also want to address very briefly some of the intangible impacts of wolf presence on livestock we saw in the Sierra Valley this summer. I've seen it in Siskiyou County.

Ranchers are suffering physical, psychological and emotional harm from dealing with wolves day in, day out on their herds. And this isn't just something that impacts ranchers that have lost cattle. This is really having a fear response and a grief response throughout entire communities in Assemblymember Hadwick's district in particular.

So I want to underscore that there's more than just the harm to the livestock. This is something that has a human element as well.

I also briefly want to mention that in instances where ranchers may not go and graze cattle on certain pastures because of the presence of wolves, that has a natural resource impact on those areas and also has an economic impact on our rural communities.

So I briefly want to end with a non exhaustive list of some of our policy improvement suggestions. You've heard a lot of this already today. First of all, more wolves need to be fitted with GPS collars and that data needs to be shared with ranchers in wolf territory.

You've heard today about some of the information improvements on that issue. We recognize that battery life and other factors impact the availability and the value of that GPS data. For this reason, we think California ought to invest in technologies like telemetry equipment and certainly ought to invest in research and development of better tracking technology.

Ranchers would also, as you heard today, like to see an appeals board for circumstances in which, for instance, they can only find some blood and a calf bone. That gets determined as unknown by the Department when it's very likely it was a wolf, particularly if we can track the wolf to that area.

We'd like to see an appeals board. You heard some willingness from the Department to have that. The Department last year announced that we've entered phase two of Wolf recovery and that it was considering permitting more aggressive non lethal take to deter Wolf attacks. We haven't seen that come to fruition yet.

And ranchers are eager to get more assistance, more guidance from the Department on how they can do more to less than lethally haze wolves from their herds. Finally, the department's wolf livestock compensation program has to be better and more reliably funded. That gets me to my next and final slide.

We are making strides with the Department in just recent months on all of those asks. So I'm not suggesting that the Legislature needs to come in and give us a really prescriptive solution in the policy arena. I am asking two things of you today. One is continue this oversight with stakeholders and with the Department.

You're doing an excellent job of it today. I'd like to see more of it. But secondly, we need the Legislature to adequately fund the Department of Fish and Wildlife's human-wildlife coexistence program, and as a subset of that, the Wolf program. We have a budget request that some of you have seen. We're asking for $31 million.

That's a lot of money, but it's necessary if we want to fully protect wolves and reduce these conflicts. That money will go to better compensating ranchers, specifically for implementing nonlethal deterrence. It will improve the research and outreach and education, communication that Kagi and others are doing.

And it will allow us to better staff the Wolf program at CDFW and ensure, for instance, that we get more collars on more wolves. So we are asking for $31 million for that program. That is the single biggest thing I think you all can do to improve, improve Wolf human coexistence in this state.

With that, I'll stop talking and change on to our next speaker. But I'm happy to take any questions you have when this panel concludes.

Madam Chair, can I ask a quick question? I'm unhappy.

Oh, it all comes down to money. Yes, go ahead.

Assemblymember Hart, thank you for the additional numbers. Very different than our previous numbers, a lot bigger. But I wanted to ask you directly about the depredation compensation and whether or not that should be tied to some minimum standard of intervention from ranchers, the husbandry techniques that the science panel spoke to. What do you think about that?

Yeah, so it's a complicated question in part because, for instance, in areas where ranchers and their cattle are entirely naive to wolves, we probably don't want those folks spending the limited resources and time and money on, you know, preemptively deploying wolf deterrence that could be taking resources from other places where they're needed.

For instance, there isn't a whole lot of fladry in the state in terms of animal husbandry practices and other non lethal deterrent efforts. As I mentioned, a lot of that is stuff that's already being done by ranchers to better improve, you know, carcass removal, which is often an attractant for wolves.

Better, you know, kind of group their cattle into herds, et cetera. But as Kagi mentioned, this is going to be very ranch specific. You know, some of these ranches are on thousands of acres of National Forest Service land where they're permitted to graze in the summer.

They may not have fence lines, they may not be permitted to put fence lines up. And the, you know, territory, the terrain may present specific concerns. So I think it is fair to say that ranchers should be doing something in the realm of nonlethal deterrence. And they are.

But we have to be careful to make sure that our non lethal solutions are not overly prescriptive. They cannot be one size fits all. They have to be tailored to the ranch and they have to be deployed at a time that is economically feasible but also makes sense. That makes sense too. Thank you.

Please, Ms. Flick.

Thank you. Good morning Committee Members, staff and invitees. I'm Pamela Flick. I'm the California Program Director for Defenders of Wildlife. In my 20 plus years with Defenders, I've worked on many human wildlife conflict issues surrounding bears, condors, sea otters, desert tortoises, beavers, fishers, burrowing owls and many more species.

It has been the highlight of my career, however, to be Defenders lead staff on wolf issues here in California. Ever since OR7 stepped pawn to our state in late 2011. I served on the Wolf Stakeholder Working Group to assist the development of our state's wolf conservation plan. I'm a proud founding Member of the Pacific Wolf Coalition.

Defenders advocated for the 2021 Trailer Bill Language that set up the initial $3 million program for the compensation pilot program, and I was on the Department's working group to help determine that program's framework.

I work shoulder to shoulder with CCA and with Farm sorry, Cattlemen's association and Farm Bureau for funding to extend that compensation program and as well in support of AB411. Thank you, madam Chair, for championing that that Bill.

If you're unfamiliar with Defenders of Wildlife, we're a national nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection of all native species and their natural communities. We pride ourselves on bringing sound science to policymaking and seeking innovative solutions to conservation challenges.

Our goal is to foster transformation in both human attitudes and how wildlife and people interact, moving from conflict to coexistence. We partner with state and federal wildlife agencies and have been staunch advocates for creating and funding the USDA Wildlife Services Non Lethal Initiative to implement livestock protection projects in multiple states, including here in California.

We also work directly with livestock producers, posting workshops and demonstrations for rancher to rancher information exchange about tools and techniques that can minimize livestock losses by predators. We also employ range riders in various locations around the country.

Defenders established the nation's first wolf livestock compensation program and paid out more than $1.4 million over 23 years before the Federal Government authorized funds to initiate state run compensation programs. This allowed us to focus on upstream solutions to minimize wolf livestock conflicts before animals are harmed.

We help advance coexistence by helping people share the landscape with wildlife and use innovative tools to reduce human wildlife conflicts. Defenders has been at the forefront of these efforts for decades, pioneering transformational approaches that successfully limit negative human wildlife interactions and build social acceptance for wildlife across the country.

And we do this through outreach, engagement, reforming and safeguarding policies and on the ground projects. Gray wolves here in California are native species and they belong here. It's truly remarkable that these ecologically important animals have returned naturally to our state under their own wolf power.

But gray wolves have returned to a very different landscape than that of the 1920s when they were locally extirpated. We have far more humans, less available native prey and more fragmented habitats, all while facing increasingly severe impacts from a changing climate.

But wolves are adaptive critters and we can they can survive and even thrive in challenging conditions as long as humans are willing to share the landscape with them. California has had a major opportunity to do things differently when it comes to gray wolf recovery. But unfortunately the situation in Sierra Valley last year changed that for the worse.

After CDFW made the decision to lethally remove the three Bam SEO pack adults and unfortunately mistaken killed one of the juvenile males, there's been an increasing demand to kill even more wolves.

In fact, at the recent CDFW wolf stakeholder meeting, county representatives repeatedly stated that they want to be able to kill wolves and they want CDFW to act more quickly to kill wolves. But California prides itself on science based wildlife conservation and management and the peer reviewed bless you, published peer review science is clear.

Killing wolves does not solve the conflicts and can in fact exacerbate them. Nature abhors a vacuum and killing wolves does not address the root cause of the wolf livestock conflict. Other wolves will move in eventually and the conflicts will continue.

I know I speak for many Californians when I say we never want to see lethal removal of another Wolf pack here again, ever. But we also don't want to see more livestock killed because of wolves. Thankfully, the use of non lethal conflict reduction tools and strategies is more effective and more cost efficient over the long haul.

And there are tools and strategies that have been proven to reduce wolf livestock conflicts.

These include human presence and range riding, increasing increased monitoring of predators as well as livestock to watch for injured and ill individuals, to doctor in the field or to remove from the range to reduce their vulnerability attractance management and there is a collective agreement by many that there needs to be a comprehensive carcass removal program.

Barriers including turbo flattery, night penning and other specialized fencing guard animals, livestock guardian dogs or the big white dogs as they refer to donkeys and llamas, hazing and scare devices including drones, radioactivated guard boxes and fox lights, husbandry and low stress livestock handling certainly has an important role to play, as do ranch assessments, because every operation is different.

There's also potential for operational changes such as shifting calving and lambing season to coincide with higher native prey availability and supplemental feeding in the evening to naturally bunch livestock prior to nightfall to reduce vulnerability to predation. While I don't have time to discuss bear conflict reduction methods, the basics are generally the same.

Make it challenging for bears or wolves to obtain food resources. The harder it is for these wild animals to get calories from human derived sources, whether that be livestock or bird feeders, carcasses or garbage, the more likely they are to move along and seek natural foods.

It's also important to note that not every tool or strategy works everywhere or in any given scenario. Some of the methods work in the short term or in smaller areas during periods of high vulnerability like calving and lambing season. It's also beneficial to utilize multiple conflict reduction measures simultaneously.

I want to emphasize that not implementing non lethal measures never works once wolf livestock conflicts begin to occur. It's imperative that proactive strategies be deployed early and often and at the landscape scale. If one ranch uses conflict deterrence and their neighbors don't, the whole effort can unravel. That's why California must support community wide adoption of proven practices.

We must also ensure that when the state provides compensation funds, livestock producers are all doing their part through the proper and documented use of proactive measures. There's been a lot of concern about public safety.

Claims have been made that wolves simply observing people being out in the open near livestock or moving through areas near schools or bus stops means that wolves are a danger to people. It's simply not true. In the last 120 plus years, there have only been two documented instances of a Wolf killing a human in North America.

One in Alaska in 2010 and one in Canada in 2005. This is despite the fact that there is an estimated 55,000 to 78,000 wolves on our continent. This fact underscores the importance of education as one of the most critical components to successful coexistence.

Apart from actual conflicts, a huge part of the controversy surrounding carnivores is the amount of misinformation, misunderstanding and outright falsehoods about their origin, biology, behavior and ecology. For wolves in particular, they've been painted with so much misinformation for decades that coexistence efforts will not succeed without meaningfully investing in public education and outreach.

Coexistence begins with fundamental facts and knowledge. The importance of education to advance coexistence is acknowledged time and again in state and federal wildlife management plans. But then staff time and resources don't get allocated by agencies that are already chronically understaffed and underfunded.

To that end, Defenders is proud to be co sponsoring legislation to create and fund a comprehensive state Human Wildlife Conflict Program DFW that we've heard a lot about today. This would provide 50 to 60 permanent positions and resources for temporary staff to span the entire state.

This includes urban, suburban and rural areas and covers multiple species including wolves, black bears, coyotes, cougars, beavers and more. Speaking of beavers, one example very quickly of how dedicated state funding can make a difference for coexistence is CDFW's first-ever beaver restoration program. Created in 2022 and codified in 24.

This program has invested important state state resources and staff, equipment and outreach to further coexistence through a comprehensive approach to beaver management and also includes a new state run and NGO funded.

Excuse me, state funded and NGO run Beaver Help Desk launched last fall offering landowners and managers new easy to use resources like technical support, financial assistance and training opportunities to help turn beaver problems into beaver solutions. Back to our soon-to-be-introduced legislation which will also contain funding to meaningfully resource wolf coexistence program.

As Kirk outlined, this will include funding for the compensation program, support for UC Berkeley's wolf project in the Cooperative Extension helicopter, collaring efforts, and additional Department staffing for wolf management and rapid response. Our goal is to provide the Department with the staff and tools they need to successfully foster wildlife coexistence statewide.

Defenders is eager to help and looks forward to working together to find common ground and lasting solutions. Thank you for hosting this important and informative hearing and for the opportunity to speak with you today.

Thank you so much. Okay, Mr. Fisher, take it away.

All right, Chair Papan and Members of the Committee, thank you so much for having me here today. Many of you may be wondering why is a sheriff down at the state capitol and testifying and speaking about wildlife conflict? That's a great question. And you know us sheriffs in the northern portion of California.

I will speak to dealing with them on a daily basis. And this has become a huge topic amongst ourselves. We heard earlier today with CDFW staffing, funding issues. So a lot of these things have fallen onto the local sheriff.

CDFW I've had a great working relationship with for 25 years now in law enforcement, sometime lately a little more strained than others, but I still consider them a very valuable partner along with the other partners that are in this room. My county Board of Supervisors that are in this room today.

So I want to thank you for the opportunity today to testify about human wildlife conflict. And so my name Mike Fisher. I'm the elected sheriff of Sierra County, which is a small county in Northern California, a couple hours away from here.

My county consists of family ranches, schools that all live alongside apex predators such as bears and mountain lions and most recently wolves. My testimony today is going to focus primarily on the human health and safety as it relates to public safety and wildlife conflict in rural California.

Wildlife conflict is not theoretical and it is not just about livestock. It involves repeated predator conflict near homes, near schools, predators losing fear of people and communities living under constant disruption and chronic stress. From a public safety perspective, this is a key point.

When conflict is repeated, predictable and close to where people live and work, it becomes a human health and safety issue even before someone is injured or killed. In wildfire prevention and flood control, we act on foreseeable risk. In public safety issues rather than only seeing it as a wildlife issue. We oftentimes do not act on that foreseeable risk.

I want to ground this in two examples today. Wolves and bears. First, wolves. The conflict with the Bio Saiyan pack in the Sierra Valley was not just about economics. It became a public safety issue because of the repetitive and proximity and the physiological toll it had on our community. There were over 90 confirmed livestock attack and kills.

In one case, a wolf killed an elk on the front porch of an occupied home. California Department of Fish and Wildlife deployed a strike team consisted of 114 days, logged over 18,000 hours and conducted 95 hazing events. That level of effort shows this was not routine wildlife activity. It was a sustained crisis.

Losses approached a quarter million dollars in the Sierra Valley with the total cost including California Department of Fish and Game strike force exceeding $2 million in one summer. But greater impact was the human impact.

Chronic stress, sleep depredation anxiety for months, constant vigilance of our community, our ranchers, and even our CDFW partners that were there living this day in and day out with us as part of the strike force.

Ranchers stated publicly that the emotional toll was far worse than what the financial toll was the human health impact and what the human health. And when human health is degraded across communities, public safety is degraded as well. Fatigue, fear increases and the likelihood of poor decisions and accidents increase.

After months of deploying non-lethal tools, lethal removal was finally authorized. That delay shows how communities remained in crisis as there was no clear definition of quote, public safety or when public safety is reached. Now on to bears.

In November of 2023, a Downieville resident, Patrice Miller, was found dead inside of her home and partially eaten by a bear. Autopsy results later confirmed she was mauled and eaten. Despite this, this incident, this incident was treated as a wildlife conflict rather than a public safety incident.

I fully recognize that the beginning of this investigation it was believed that she was consumed post mortem. And it was only after the investigation went on for several weeks that it was determined that the Patrice was mauled and then eaten. But after her death, that same bear had repeatedly returned and broke into the home.

Friends and neighbors watched the bear that killed Patrice lying and sleeping on her front porch. There were delays in authorizing its removal because CDFW's policy classified this in the beginning as a wildlife conflict, not a public safety issue.

In July of 2024, the next spring or early summer, a large black bear broke into the Loyalton High School AG barn twice where students had their animals and were caring for them daily in anticipation of going to the county fair.

Despite repeated break ins to the school barn, the incident was classified as a wildlife conflict and no depredation permit was issued despite the school superintendent requesting one. The sheriff's office ultimately intervened with the assistance of the USDA wildlife services, and the bear was removed under a public safety concern.

The issue was not whether or not the bear was protected. The issue was whether or not the bear break ins into a barn used by high school students represented a foreseeable risk. It did. When apex predators repeatedly caused conflict near ranches, homes, schools. The impacts go beyond wildlife management.

They create chronic stress, disrupt routines, increase emotional strain, and reduce community safeties. We heard some testimony here, you know, about, you know, wolves attacking human beings. I think when we look at the public safety side of things, we have to look at a larger picture of that immediate risk of being attacked.

And we have to look at the chronic stress our ranchers that are sleep deprived because they're range riding all day and then going to school and teaching our children. We have a ranch that husband, wife would be out all night long range riding and she's a local school teacher during the day.

So we need to look at the overall impact, not just the fact of somebody going to be attacked. I think I'm going to stop right there and I'm going to open it up to questions.

I tend to go very, very long and I could spend the next two and a half to four hours discussing wolves, bears and mountain lions. So with that, I appreciate today and I would love to invite any of the Members to come up to Sierra County.

I give you a tour, let you lead, meet our local ranchers and have a real look of what is going on with, you know, Wolf conflict in California. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Ms. Bosell.

Thank you, thank you for having me. Today I'm going to be speaking to you in regards to Los Angeles county and the wildlife conflicts that we are seeing there and how we are managing those. My name, excuse me, my name is Kim Bosell. I'm the Regional Operations Manager with Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation.