The state has revived the California Wildlife Coexistence Program, a statewide service for handling run-ins between people and wild animals, after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1135 on Tuesday, September 29. The program sits inside the Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and is meant to help residents, ranchers and communities prevent conflicts with wildlife without killing the animals. The earlier version lost its funding and ended in 2024.
The law was written by Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, whose office says it takes effect on Jan. 1, 2027. That office also says she helped secure $5 million in this year’s state budget for the effort. Defenders of Wildlife, which co-sponsored the bill with the National Wildlife Federation, says it passed both chambers of the Legislature with bipartisan support.
The signing came alongside other conservation actions at a summit tied to California’s 30×30 goal, which aims to conserve 30 percent of the state’s lands and coastal waters by 2030, according to the governor’s office. Readers who want the exact wording can find the full text of SB 1135 on the Legislature’s website.
What the California Wildlife Coexistence Program is meant to do
The program is built around prevention. According to Defenders of Wildlife, it will educate communities and provide non-lethal tools such as fencing, livestock guardian dogs and noise devices to deter carnivores including wolves, mountain lions and bears. The goal, as the group describes it, is to head off harmful encounters among people, wildlife, pets and livestock.
For homeowners, the emphasis is on making property less appealing to animals before a problem starts. Blakespear’s office says coexistence programs help owners remove attractants such as trash and food, keep a safe distance, and use deterrent methods it calls proven. Blakespear described the law as relying on “thoughtful, proactive strategies that are non-lethal.”
For ranchers in wolf territory, the measure also codifies a wolf-livestock coexistence and compensation program, according to Blakespear’s office. The material HCN reviewed does not explain how compensation will be calculated or who will qualify, so those rules remain to be seen once CDFW starts implementing the law.
Why California is bringing the program back
The previous effort, called the Human-Wildlife Conflict Program, ran for three years before its funding expired in 2024. It deployed trained regional staff to deal with conflicts between people and wildlife around the state. When the money ended, so did the program, and this bill re-creates the California Wildlife Coexistence Program under a new name.
Blakespear’s office says agency and department leaders acknowledged at a January Assembly informational hearing that the gap was being felt in urban, suburban and rural California. It also cites CDFW figures showing that wildlife incident reports rose 31 percent over five years, while calls, emails and field contacts climbed 58 percent. HCN has not independently reviewed the underlying data.
Those figures count reports and contacts, and the sources do not say what is behind the increase. The office pointed instead to recent examples: a bear living under a Los Angeles home, wolves growing used to livestock in Northern California, and a mountain lion that turned up in a San Francisco park.
Who backed the bill, and who has not spoken
Defenders of Wildlife and the National Wildlife Federation co-sponsored the measure. Pamela Flick, Defenders’ California program director, said the group wants to work with CDFW, farmers, ranchers and communities to put non-lethal strategies into practice, and described California as a leader in coexistence policy. That is an advocacy group’s assessment, not an independent finding.
Nearly all of the public commentary so far comes from the bill’s author, its sponsors and allied conservation groups, all of which backed the measure. HCN did not find a published response from ranching, hunting or wildlife-management groups, and will add one if it appears. The Mountain Lion Foundation, which urged the governor to sign, noted before the signing that the program is subject to funding by the Legislature.
What to watch as the California Wildlife Coexistence Program takes shape
The law does not take effect until Jan. 1, 2027, and the material HCN reviewed does not say how many staff the $5 million will support, where regional teams will be based, or how quickly fencing, guardian dogs and other tools will reach landowners. Because the first program ended when its funding expired, whether lawmakers keep funding the California Wildlife Coexistence Program in future budgets will be the clearest test of whether this version lasts.
For another wildlife story where a species’ protected status is part of the picture, see HCN’s report on a two-headed diamondback terrapin hatchling on Cape Cod, a species listed as threatened in Massachusetts. HCN will update this story as California releases more details on how the program will run.