I can attest to the strength of the Wildlife Bio major at Colorado State, and it is a WUE school. Montana State also has a great program and is also a WUE School and I believe will cost slightly less than CSU. However, you can’t beat Fort Collins.
But, I think you can definitely find a good program in CA. If you have the stats for Berkeley or Davis, they have well respected (general) programs, but it looks like there are quite a few good programs, I just don’t know the California schools well enough to weigh in on anything.