Dangerous beast spotted for the first time in 100 years in LA County after being wiped out

A lone gray wolf padded quietly into Los Angeles County before dawn on Saturday — and made history.

State biologists say the female wolf may be the first documented in Southern California in 100 years, after the apex predators were wiped out across the state by eradication campaigns aimed at protecting livestock by hunters and trappers. The last known wild wolf in California was shot on June 12, 1924, by federal trapper Frank W. Koehler in Lassen County.

The three-year-old female, known as BEY03F, was spotted on a trail camera in the mountains north of Santa Clarita.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has been tracking her movements via GPS and told the Los Angeles Times she passed through the deserts of Kern County and survived multiple crossings of busy highways.

Axel Hunnicutt, the department’s gray wolf coordinator, said BEY03F was born in 2023 to Northern California’s Beyem Seyo Pack in Plumas County and has traveled about 370 miles since.

Her progress is being closely monitored using a GPS tracker fitted in 2024.

Wildlife officials estimate about 60 wolves now live in California, though most remain concentrated in the state’s remote north. Wolves first crossed back into California from Oregon in 2011 and have slowly been re-establishing a presence since.

Hunnicutt told the LA Times cars – not hunters – are now the species’ biggest threat.

Another wolf, OR-93, reached San Luis Obispo County in 2021 before being killed on Interstate 5 in Kern County.

There are no known wolf packs in the San Gabriel Mountains, where BEY03F was last seen, but biologists hope a lone male may also be roaming the region – raising the possibility the pair could establish the first modern wolf pack in Southern California in more than a century.