Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for a three-way summit with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, despite that at this moment the war is arguably hotter and more dangerous than ever, given aerial strikes between the warring sides have been escalating for many consecutive days. "If Putin is not comfortable with a bilateral meeting, or if everyone wants it to be a trilateral meeting, I don't mind. I am ready for any format," Zelensky had said in the middle of the week.

Zelensky said he's ready for a "Trump-Putin-me" meeting, but simultaneously called for Washington to slap more sanctions on the Kremlin. "We are waiting for sanctions from the United States of America," the Ukrainian leader said. And Trump's response?... "If I think I’m close to getting a [peace] deal, I don’t wanna screw it up by doing that," he told reporters at the White House.

Deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and former president Dmitry Medvedev has written in a Friday Telegram post that Zelensky is merely clout-chasing in wanting the two more powerful leaders at the table.

Describing that the reason is "obvious enough" - Medvedev wrote that:

“A three-way conversation means [he] can get a massive legitimacy boost by latching onto the clout of those at the table,” the Russian official claimed. Medvedev also surmised that Zelensky could capitalize on such a meeting domestically, using it as a pretext to put off elections further and to convince Ukrainian elites that “now is not the time to change horses in midstream.”

Indeed Zelensky could be feeling greater pressure on the domestic front, especially given the ongoing deeply unpopular mobilization and recruitment policies, which has involved preventing most able-bodied men from leaving the country, and which has seen brutal efforts to grab potential recruits from off the streets. Russia has called him 'illegitimate' for having long ago canceled elections amid martial law.

Naturally, Moscow is not taking kindly to Zelensky simultaneously calling for yet more US sanctions on Russia, even as he calls for a three-way meeting.

"Trump confirmed that if Russia does not stop, sanctions will be imposed," Zelensky had said in the comments which were published Wednesday. 

"We discussed two main aspects with him – energy and the banking system. Will the U.S. be able to impose sanctions on these two sectors? I would very much like that."

Trump admin officials have meanwhile been teasing a timetable of weeks, saying the clock is ticking for Moscow to show progress in peace negotiations - the next round which is set for Monday in Istanbul - as the US president himself has warned Putin against "tapping us along". Trump has said he is two weeks away from having an understanding if Putin is serious about peace.

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

At some point in this century, I began to watch movies with grave trepidation. There is a good chance that somewhere in whatever film, the moment would come when the producer would send some strange political message with a barely guarded attack on some fundamental tenet of bourgeois society. They began eschewing art for hectoring.

A poster of the movie “Snow White” (2025). Walt Disney Pictures

We watch movies by choice. We pay to see them mostly. Why should we do this if the point of the movie is to sneakily attack core values and preach some strange woke creed? Stung too many times, I’m far more careful to avoid anything that seems coded with a political purpose in mind. Life is too short.

This is why I never bothered to watch the live action version of “Snow White” that came out this year. It was coded left and revisionist even in the promotion. It was met with terrible reviews, and goes down in history as one of the worst film investments ever made by Disney. It could easily have been otherwise.

The mystery to me is why Disney could not have known the result from the beginning. Why would this company spend $250 million on a sure loser? To understand, we need to explore the ways in which ideological fanaticism eats away at rationality.

Fortunately in our times, anyone can hop over to a free movie site that is ad-supported like Tubi (the third most popular service after Netflix and Amazon Prime) and have thousands of great shows and movies immediately available. It’s not all there but there are true treasures awaiting.

I vaguely recall when “On Golden Pond” came out in 1981. It was considered old-fashioned and slightly boring, an attempt to deploy two scions of Hollywood (Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn) in their late years toward box office success. The movie then won three Oscars and was a huge triumph. Apparently Fonda and Hepburn had never met before the film but they were just magic together.

The beauty of the film is indescribable. It is set at the classic New England lake of a New Hampshire summer cottage at the height of nature’s beauty, revealing the tender relationship of this aging couple. She is an ebullient lover of nature, games, and life, and he is a crabby retired professor with a crusty outer way but beautiful inner soul. The theme of death looms large throughout. I cannot think of a film that more authentically portrays the struggles of aging.

Their daughter is played by Jane Fonda at her prime. She arrives with a new boyfriend who is a single father of a boy of 13 who is already jaded and cynical. A relationship forms between the old man and the boy, based on various activities of summer like boating, fishing, and swimming.

The father reveals a secret that there is a big trout he calls Walter who has evaded capture for many years. They hunt this fish for weeks, catching many others along the way but not the one they want. As the movie closes, they finally do snag Walter but let him go out of respect for his size, might, and long life.

All of which recalls the huge drama of another great book made into several films: “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville. It’s one of the great American novels, oddly dreaded more than thoroughly read. Written in 1851, its tremendous fame is due to its detailed accounting of the whaling industry and culture in a time when whale oil was the resource most in demand for lighting before electricity came along.

Captain Ahab puts together a whaling expedition but with a fanatical desire to get the biggest whale of all, the one that caused him to lose a leg. The purpose of the trip is not profits but revenge, which the sailors on the boat knew but had underestimated the power of their captain’s obsession. The journey takes them as far as the South China Sea and ends with a grave lesson about the problem of single-minded obsessions untempered by concern for others and the larger context.

The reader or viewer is a fan of the Captain and his genius for as long as possible, truly hoping that he gets his wish. The lesson of the story only comes with the ending of doom, and only in reverse is it obvious that he allowed his obsession to cloud all his judgment.

A poster of the movie “On Golden Pond” (1981). IPC Films/Universal Pictures

The search for the fish in “On Golden Pond” is rational and sporting by comparison. Both stories are set in New England and surely the parallels here are not accidental. One shows destructive fanaticism and the other shows a tempered and loving ambition.

Both films are what my mentor Murray Rothbard called “movie movies,” meaning that they are deep, exciting, emotionally rich, wonderful and evocative to watch, and barren of hidden and manipulative attempts to browbeat or manipulate the politics of the viewer. Young people today who don’t watch older movies probably do not know the meaning of such things.

Murray did not review “On Golden Pond,” so far as I know, but I feel sure that he would have adored the film. Truly, I was taken aback by the innocence of the plot and the comfort that comes with realizing that at no point in the movie would the other shoe drop and we would be presented a lecture on the evils of normal society.

That’s true for most movies made in the 20th century before ideology came along to ruin them. We can think of identitarian politics as the equivalent of Captain Ahab’s whale, something the left has pursued with fanatical vigor even to the point of its own self-destruction. I see this operating at the New York Times, in large corporations, and in sectors of government where a single idea has swamped all rationality and even concern for the metrics of profitability.

The role of Moby Dick in this case is occupied by a malevolent vision of “white” Christian society—and the values that undergird it—as irredeemably corrupt and worthy only of being destroyed. In the past 10 years, it got so out of hand that a small but powerful coterie of writers tried to change the date of the founding of America and wage a wild war on the president who they believed to represent everything they hated.

There is truth to the observation that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” has ruined vast amounts of art, journalism, commentary, and culture. There is plenty with which to disagree in Trump’s first and second term, and nothing wrong at all making that clear. The problem comes with the single-minded obsession that pursues the whale at the expense of everything else.

The right approach is the one taken by Henry Fonda toward “Walter” the trout. There is adventure in the hunt. Politics as a normal sport is a great thing. It sharpens skills at observation, argumentation, and rhetoric. Unlike Henry who lets the fish go once it is caught, Trump’s enemies have raised the stakes to the highest-possible level, attempting to jail him and worse.

We live in changing times when woke ideology is on the ropes, banned in many sectors of society and defunded according to policy. That said, the apparatus of understanding behind the ideology will long endure in culture, deeply institutionalized in academia, professional societies, and media. It’s true for films too.

Good movies might make a comeback—and perhaps that is happening now—but if you are like me, I wait until the reviews are out and eschew anything coded left simply because I don’t want to pay to be insulted. For now, I take recourse in the beauty and luxury of the older movies without the fanaticism that has compromised so much elite culture.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Goldman energy analysts, led by Adam Wijaya, are closely tracking wildfires in Alberta, where over half a million barrels per day of crude production are at risk. 

"Good morning and happy Friday! Coming in this morning to see Brent at $64/b and WTI at $61/b… quiet on the macro front this morning for the most part, with most of the focus on (a) monitoring progression of Alberta Wildfires (number is now above 50… 28 considered out of control from 24 prior, with 19 under control)," Wijaya told clients. 

The latest data from Bloomberg shows that 29 out-of-control fires are raging 12 miles from massive oil sands well sites that produce 459,000 barrels of oil daily. 

The fires are now spreading dangerously close to major oil sands operations:

• MEG Energy's Christina Lake site (93,000 bpd) is just 4 km from the flames; production continues, but non-essential staff have been evacuated.
• Canadian Natural Resources' Jackfish site, with 38,000 bpd within 3 km and 83,000 bpd within 10 km of fire zones, is also at risk.

Important context: Canada is the largest foreign oil supplier to the U.S., accounting for approximately 60% of total crude imports, with the vast majority of that coming from Alberta's oil sands.

According to a person familiar with prices, Canadian heavy crude's discount to WTI has narrowed to $8.70/bbl, reflecting supply concerns. The discount on Thursday was $9.70/bbl. 

Fire danger remains extreme in most of Alberta but may ease in the next few days with expected cooler weather and rain. Meanwhile, high winds in Saskatchewan and Manitoba are expected to worsen fire conditions. 

Smoke is drifting into the U.S. Upper Midwest...

Lots of smoke on satellite this evening in Canada as dozens of wildfires burn out of control, particularly in Alberta where pyrocumulus clouds can be seen. Around 17,000 people are under evacuations in Manitoba and a 30 day provincial emergency has been declared in Saskatchewan. pic.twitter.com/YGAPCkKUS4

Any severe disruption in Alberta's oil production will tighten North American supply, raise prices, and could force U.S. refiners to source costlier supplies elsewhere. Something to certaintly keep an eye on, as per what Goldman's Wijaya noted, mainly because the summer driving season has kicked off. 

A rare mass emergence of cicadas is underway across the eastern United States as Brood XIV—one of the largest 17-year periodical cicada broods—surfaces for the first time since 2008.

Found only in eastern North America, periodical cicadas are known for their long underground life cycles, synchronized mass emergences, and piercing mating calls, according to researchers at the University of Connecticut.

As Chase Smith reports for The Epoch Times, Brood XIV is considered a keystone brood because of its size and central role in cicada evolution.

Researchers say it may have given rise to nearly all other 17-year broods through rare timing shifts known as “four-year jumps.”

This year’s emergence spans a wide area, including parts of Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York state. Disjunct populations also exist in places like Cape Cod and Long Island, though scientists say those groups may be in decline.

University of Connecticut researchers are urging caution when interpreting sightings this year due to the presence of “stragglers,” cicadas that emerge early or late compared to their expected brood. These misaligned appearances, along with a phenomenon called “shadow brooding,” may confuse mapping efforts and lead to mistaken conclusions about the size or expansion of Brood XIV.

Accurate data is critical, researchers said, because Brood XIV plays a key role in understanding the distribution of other broods. Its interactions with adjacent broods, like Brood VI, X, and I, are still being studied, particularly in areas such as southwestern Ohio, northeastern Tennessee, and northern Kentucky.

The cicadas began appearing in April in Southern states and are expected to continue emerging through June in Northern regions as soil temperatures 7 to 8 inches below ground reach about 64 degrees Fahrenheit. Their emergence is typically triggered by warming weather. Once above ground, the insects climb nearby trees, molt into adults, mate, and die within several weeks.

Eggs hatch six to 10 weeks later, and the tiny nymphs fall to the ground to begin another 17-year cycle.

Periodical cicadas are not harmful. They do not bite, sting, or carry disease. While they may damage young saplings during egg-laying, they are not considered pests and do not require pesticide treatment. Most adults feed briefly on woody plants before dying.

Cicada densities can vary extraordinarily, the researchers stated. In some areas, estimates suggest up to one million insects per acre. This overwhelming presence is believed to protect the population from predators through a process called “predator satiation,” where animals eat their fill without impacting the entire population.

So far, citizen scientists using the iNaturalist platform have reported the most sightings in Townsend, Tennessee; across North Carolina; and in Clermont County and Miamiville, Ohio. According to project data, Townsend alone has logged 174 confirmed reports.

Scientists encourage residents in affected states to document sightings using platforms such as iNaturalist or the Cicada Safari app to aid researchers in real-time mapping. Since Brood XIV emerges only once every 17 years, this season offers a rare chance to witness one of nature’s most distinctive phenomena.

When the UEFA Champions League Final between Inter Milan and Paris Saint-Germain kicks off at the Allianz Arena in Munich today, it will be the first final without a club from either England, Spain or Germany since Mourinho's FC Porto beat AS Monaco in 2004.

It will also be a game of European football heritage versus a new footballing power, as Inter with its rich legacy will play a PSG that has been transformed from a mid-table club to a serial league winner and global brand since the takeover by Qatar Sports Investments in 2011. Ironically, the current PSG squad, which is arguably the least star-studded in years after the likes of Neymar, Messi and Mbappé all left, is given the best chance of finally winning the Champions League, a title the club has been chasing for more than a decade now.

As the following chart shows, Inter won the Champions League (or the European Cup as it was previously called) three times already, most recently in 2010. Real Madrid is in a league of its own in terms of European triumphs, however. The outfit from the Spanish capital won 15 Champions League titles, leading AC Milan (7), Liverpool and Bayern (6) by a wide margin.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Additionally, football fans from all across the globe will be watching.

After all, it is the biggest club competition in the world, where fans get to watch star-studded teams compete for European glory and a place in the game's history books.

As Statista's Felix Richter reports, for UEFA, Europe’s football governing body, the competition’s global appeal is paying off handsomely. Over the past two decades, the media and commercial rights for the Champions League have more than quintupled in value. In the 2023/24 season, UEFA made €3.2 billion from Champions League rights, up from just €569 million in the 2003/04 season.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Looking at UEFA's lower-tier club competitions, the Europa League and the Conference League, highlights how far ahead the Champions League is in terms of its status and commercial appeal. Last season, UEFA's combined revenue from Europa League and Conference League media and commercial rights amounted to €478 million, which is just 15 percent of what the Champions League brought in.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The first ever ASEAN-China-GCC trilateral summit earlier this week in Malaysia is even more than a cross-regional, South-South breakthrough.

The 17 nations united on the same table in Kuala Lumpur graphically demonstrated, as evoked by Malaysian Prime Minister and current ASEAN chair Anwar Ibrahim, how “from the ancient Silk Road to the vibrant maritime networks of Southeast Asia to modern trade corridors, our peoples have long connected through commerce, culture, and the sharing of ideas.”

Call it the 21st century New Silk Road spirit. And it’s no wonder China is right at its heart, via interlocked Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects – from infrastructure to trade development. China, Southeast Asia and a large part of West Asia do conform a Golden Triangle of natural resources, manufacturing and a large consumer base.

The final declaration of the Malaysia summit of course had to celebrate these “enduring and deep historical and civilizational ties”, as well as geoeconomics, in a drive to “promote economic development in the wider Asia-Pacific [note the correct terminology] and Middle East [old terminology: the correct one is ‘West Asia’].”

So it’s natural that China proposed the possibility of including the West Asian Arab nations of the GCC in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the vast 15-member trade pact that includes China and ASEAN (but not self-excluded India).

Free trade was the key theme in Kuala Lumpur – from the recently completed China-ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0 upgrade to the upcoming China-GCC Free Trade Agreement negotiations. In contrast to Trump 2.0, the trilateral committed to “strengthen the resilience of industrial chains and supply chains”, everything geared towards long-term, tariff and sanction-free sustainable trade.

Last year, ASEAN’s total trade with China and GCC surpassed $900 billion, almost twice the $453 billion in trade with the US. And yes, trade de-dollarization is the way to go all across Asia. Right before the summit, China and Indonesia jointly announced that from now on, trade between both powerhouses is only in yuan and rupiah.

The final declaration was explicit on exploring “local currency and cross-border payment cooperation” – in tandem with promoting “high-quality BRI cooperation and seamless connectivity, including the development of logistics corridors and digital platforms”, and advancing “sustainable infrastructure construction.” The trilateral is engaged in building a web of pan-Asia connectivity corridors – the prime geoeconomic theme of the 21st century.

The trilateral had to refer to Gaza – although not as forcefully as it should. At best, the final declaration “endorses the advisory opinion rendered by the International Court of Justice on 19 July 2024, including its finding that the United Nations, in particular the General Assembly and the Security Council, which requested the advisory opinion, should consider specific modalities and further actions to bring an end to the illegal presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as soon as possible”; and to “achieve the two-State solution based on the 1967 borders in accordance with international law.”

How East, Southeast and West Asia Connect to BRICS

East Asia, historically, is most of all a mosaic of transnational regions linked by maritime corridors. The first globalization happened – where else – in Asia, from the opening of the trans-Pacific route linking the “New World” to the Philippines in 1511 to the takeover of Malacca – the great Southeast Asian emporium – by the Portuguese in 1571.

But even before the Vasco da Gama era, East and Southeast Asia formed a relatively integrated economic zone, with ports from Malacca to Nagasaki shining as trade centers crammed with Arab, Chinese, Indian and Japanese merchants. Malacca boomed thanks to excellent infrastructure, moderate port tariffs and a sound fiscal regime: a much better deal compared to the subsequent predatory Portuguese and Dutch colonial set up, all the way to admiral Alfred Mahan conceptualizing the principles of sea power to the benefit of the thalassocratic US.

Former Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo has clearly explained how China and South East Asia have been relieving – with spectacular success – their historic, culture and trade connections. This summit taking place in Malaysia, home of the historically crucial crossroads Malacca, is a touch of poetic justice.

Add to it Indonesia President Prabowo – a former Suharto general, and his son-in-law – effusively praising China’s firm anti-imperialist stance since 1949 and during the Cold War, right in front of Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang. A 21stcentury parallel can be made with the legendary Spirit of Bandung in 1955, when Indonesia’s Sukarno – a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) – was side by side with Zhou EnLai.

The ASEAN-China-GCC summit may be able to advance moves that the inestimable Prof. Michael Hudson deem absolutely necessary for BRICS members – and quite a few in Kuala Lumpur will be at the table at the BRICS summit in Rio in early July.

Prof. Hudson has conclusively demonstrated how landlord classes, monopolies and residues of European colonialism will have to go for BRICS nations to “achieve the same kind of take off that made England, Germany, US industrial leaders of the world.” That means to drastically “cut back payments to foreign investors concentrated on raw material rent” and to subdue “the rentier class.”

Prof. Hudson argues that when it comes to “how to free their economies – rent, creditor payments – this is what China did. China had a revolution. After the revolution it did not have a financial class. China made money creation a public utility – an arm of the Treasury; it created money to finance tangible investments in capital formation, factories, housing – a little too much – huge public infrastructure, urban transportation, high-speed rail.”

What I previously defined as “The BRICS Lab” – all those models being constantly tested, starting last year in Russia before the Kazan summit – is indeed trying to answer questions posed by Prof. Hudson in several ways: “We need to create our money. Elites should not keep benefitting from regressive taxation. How to industrialize? No more economic rent.”

The Chinese, predictably, are already at the next level of the integration business. This is their “magic weapon” to “defeat the enemy”: “The construction of the ‘dual circulation’ of the domestic and foreign markets, uniting as many living forces as possible to form a united front to deal with unilateralism. Most of the southern countries are natural allies. The feasibility of close linkage between ‘South-South cooperation’ and ‘dual circulation’ is increasing day by day.”

Jeffrey Sachs, in Kuala Lumpur, ahead of the ASEAN-China-GCC summit, succinctly nailed the New Silk Road spirit: “If you put together Japanese skill, Korean skill, Chinese skill, ASEAN skill, oh my God: no one could possibly compete (…) Diplomacy requires a table and two chairs. The military requires $1 trillion a year. Which do you think is the better deal?”

Authored by Brad Jones via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Descendants of rewilded wolves are taking a heavy toll on cattle in Northern California and Oregon, killing calves and full-grown animals and putting stress on cow-calf operations and ranchers’ pocketbooks.

A gray wolf approaches a bull, caught on a game camera in June 2023. Ken Tate, Tina Saitone/UC Davis

Because wolves are listed as an endangered species under state and federal law, ranchers are hamstrung: They can’t shoot or harass these protected predators. The penalty for killing a wolf is steep; federal law carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine, unless a rancher can prove that it was in self-defense.

While animal advocacy groups say the wolves are native apex predators that belong in California and other western states, some ranchers argue that there’s nothing natural about wolves’ stalking domestic cattle because there isn’t enough natural prey.

“They’re welfare wolves,” Janna Martin Gliatto, an owner at Table Rock Ranch in northern California, said. “We have entitled wolves—multiple generations.”

One wolf pack, known as the Whaleback Pack, near her ranch doesn’t seem inclined to hunt elk or deer, she said.

Since November 2021, wolves have killed at least 44 head of cattle at the Martin family’s ranch in Siskiyou County, Gliatto told The Epoch Times. Of those confirmed wolf kills, three were adult cows, and the rest were calves.

“There’s a handful of people and ranches like us that have been hit really hard,” she said. “I’ve had so much carnage.”

The protection of wolves has been a “costly experiment” for ranchers and taxpayers who foot the bill for it, Gliatto said.

In 2021, state lawmakers voted to disburse $3 million to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) to develop a pilot program to mitigate the effects of wolves on livestock producers.

The resulting Wolf-Livestock Compensation Program was started in 2022, and by March 2024, the funds were exhausted after 109 claims were paid out to livestock producers for wolf depredation in Siskiyou, Lassen, Plumas, and Tulare counties.

Gliatto received two years of partial compensation to pay a range rider to patrol the herd at night, “but the funds ran out, so now it’s out-of-pocket,” she said.

In 2024, the state appropriated another $600,000 for the CDFW to continue the Wolf-Livestock Compensation Program, but the program no longer subsidizes ranchers for the cost of deterrent efforts such as range riders and is limited to compensation for direct loss only.

CDFW spokeswoman Katie Talbot said California’s wolf population is estimated at between 50 and 70 in total. The agency has confirmed that 163 cattle and six sheep have been killed or injured by wolves since 2011, when the first collared wolf from Oregon entered California, Talbot told The Epoch Times in an email.

Debbie Bacigalupi (front) and her mother, Donna, tend to a calf at Cold Springs Ranch in Siskiyou County, Calif., in May 2024. The family shares a fence line with Table Rock Ranch and has also lost calves to suspected wolf attacks. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

She said that of the initial $3 million Wolf-Livestock Compensation Program fund, more than $2 million was paid out for direct loss and deterrence efforts to ranchers in Siskiyou County, while those in Lassen and Plumas counties received about $490,000 and $476,000, respectively. About $16,000 went to Tulare County. Since October 2024, the average compensation per head was $2,870, Talbot said.

Examining Expenses

A recently released study by University of California–Davis professor Tina Saitone, a livestock and rangeland economics specialist, found that one wolf can cause between $69,000 and $162,000 in direct and indirect cattle losses, from outright attacks, lower pregnancy rates in cows, and decreased weight gain in calves.

Saitone’s research team used motion-activated field cameras, GPS collars, wolf scat analysis, and cattle tail-hair samples to show how the expanding protected gray wolf population is affecting cattle operations, “leading to millions of dollars in losses,” according to the study.

The research showed that during the 2022 and 2023 summer seasons, 72 percent of wolf scat samples from the Lassen Pack—in western Lassen and northern Plumas counties—contained cattle DNA. It also found elevated hair cortisol levels in cattle that ranged in areas with wolves, indicating an increase in stress.

Aside from the financial effects, Gliatto said the wolf issue has been emotionally taxing on ranchers who’ve witnessed continual attacks on their herds and “hypocrisy” over what is considered humane treatment of cattle.

Ranchers are afraid to brand their cattle because some animal rights groups view the practice as inhumane, but, she said, “you can have a wolf literally tear your animals apart while they’re alive and eat them, and people just turn a blind eye.”

According to Gliatto, wolves wouldn’t be thriving in the wild without heavily supplementing their diet with cattle, which, in some cases, is their primary food source.

The wolves have created fierce competition at the top of the food chain because there aren’t enough deer and elk to feed them and other predators such as mountain lions, bears, and coyotes, she said.

“We have a huge predator bubble,” Gliatto said.

CDFW reported that there were seven documented wolf packs in California in 2024, along with evidence of other wolves in the state.

A game camera captures a gray wolf from the Lassen pack among a herd of cattle in July 2022.

Return of the Wolf

The first wolves showed up at Gliatto’s ranch in 2020.

A lone male wolf, OR-85, collared in February 2020, left his natal Mount Emily pack near La Grande, Oregon, crossed into California, and found a mate from another pack from southwestern Oregon. The pair formed the Whaleback Pack and have produced 21 pups since 2021, according to CDFW.

Tracking showed cluster points of OR-85 near an elk herd on ranchland that the family leased, but the pack doesn’t feed on them, Gliatto said.

The elk herd, often spotted at Grass Lake, stopped going there, she said.

“They just moved away from the wolves, and the wolves didn’t follow them,” Gliatto said.

Instead, she said, the wolves have become habituated to preying on cattle at her family’s ranch, which typically has more than 1,500 head, including cow-calf pairs, and replacement heifers.

Table Rock Ranch borders timberland at the forest-edge of a mountain range, so when wolves descend into the valley, her cattle are the first meal they see. Hence, from a wolf’s perspective, it makes no sense to go farther down into the valley, where there are more people and less cover, Gliatto said.

Amaroq Weiss, an attorney and the senior West Coast wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said some cattle herds are hit harder than others.

“You constantly have animals that are vulnerable because they’re not being checked on,” she told The Epoch Times. “They’ve eaten poisonous weeds, they’ve gotten wounded for some reason, they’re having birthing complications. All those things are going to draw wolves in.”

Wolves aren’t targeting the closest ranch or the first cattle herd they encounter, and they will often roam through pastures filled with cattle “and just keep on going out the other end of the pasture to hunt wild prey,” Weiss said.

The Whaleback Pack, and some others in California, cover immense territories compared with most wolf packs in other western states that have more elk and deer, because “they’re looking for a food source,” she said.

Siskiyou County wolf liaison Patrick Griffin, who investigates suspected wolf kills for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the 44 confirmed kills at Table Rock Ranch “sounds accurate,” noting that it has been the hardest-hit ranch in the state.

More than 80 “confirmed” or “probable” cattle kills have been attributed to the Whaleback Pack, Griffin told The Epoch Times.

Read the rest here...