Wolves are not an endangered species

[Gallstones]

I still think that ranchers using public lands to graze livestock have to assume the risk that some of the public's predators will kill some of their livestock. Livestock is a guest on public lands and ranchers can't get rid of the furniture because it doesn't suit them. Assume the risk or don't ranch near or on wilderness.

Maybe the public should have the right to cull ranchers who threaten our wildlife?

[Seth]

I don't get the ranchers' position. If I raised cattle, I'd just factor in the loss to the wolves as part of the natural cost of operation.

A wolf in a herd of sheep is like a tornado in a field of corn. The "loss" to factor in is the total loss of the crop, which means economic destruction for the farmer or rancher. Every rancher factors in predation losses, but the more wolves (or coyotes) there are in a given area, the few wild sources of food they have (because they kill the deer and elk in increasing numbers) and the more likely the wolves are to take up killing domestic livestock.

When the balance between natural prey sources like deer and elk and predators like wolves and coyotes is adequate, most wolf packs stick with their natural prey. But when the population of wolves begins to grow too large, the natural sources are predated in increasing numbers and they begin to dwindle, which causes the wolf packs to seek other food sources, and domestic livestock are high on the menu. That's why it's necessary to actively manage wolf packs to keep the numbers of wolves in an area in balance with the natural food sources available to them. That requires transplanting and killing of excess wolves.

I'd be proud of feeding them, as a matter of fact.

You only say that because you're not a cattle or sheep rancher. You'd feel differently when it's not only your sole source of income to feed your family, but it's your horses, your dogs, and potentially your children.

If my cattle ranching wasn't profitable enough to keep me fed, I'd raise rabbits on the side and release them to keep the wolves off my herd.

Yeah, like that's going to work.

The ranchers are just lazy, greedy, dimwitted, narrow-minded, unimaginative fucks, IMO.

Of course, you don't actually know any ranchers, so it's easy to malign them in your abysmal ignorance.

We need every kind of animal that nature has produced if we're to maintain the ecological balance that has nurtured our own existence.

You mean we need dinosaurs to maintain the ecological balance? Really? Don't be dense. Man affects the ecological balance and always has. Indeed, recent research indicates that man is responsible for the extinction of megafauna like giant ground sloths and mammoths. And yet the ecosystem still exists, as does man and lots of species of animals, which have, amazingly, evolved to deal with changing ecosystems.

We don't "need" wolves, as was proven by the fact that we got along fine without them for about 75 years after the extermination efforts that ended in the late 50's, when wolves were almost completely eliminated from the lower 48 states. There was no ecological collapse without wolves. The ESA is based on the false presumption that the extinction of a species is going to cause a "tipping point" that will collapse the ecosystem. Problem is, species go extinct every day, and have done so for millions of years. And yet life goes on.

If something goes extinct without it being the result of our own desire to own ever-bigger and louder pick-up trucks, so be it.

Ah, the "human as maleficent alien species" argument. Sorry, humans are part of nature, and we have as much right to change the ecosystem as any other animal or natural force. We became the top of the heap organism on the planet by adapting nature to our needs, and I see no reason to change that. You want to be prey for some other animal, be my guest.

But when our greed means wiping another species out of existence, then we're the problem, not them.

Of course, the point of the article is that wolves are not "wiped out of existence" nor are they in danger of being "wiped out of existence." There's plenty of wolves in the world, and there's too many in Montana and Idaho. But I don't really expect you to understand that nuance.

[FBM]

Seth. I grew up on a cattle farm in Mississippi. Then I moved to one in Tennessee. Reconsider your position in light of that info, please.

[Seth]

I still think that ranchers using public lands to graze livestock have to assume the risk that some of the public's predators will kill some of their livestock. Livestock is a guest on public lands and ranchers can't get rid of the furniture because it doesn't suit them. Assume the risk or don't ranch near or on wilderness.

In this, I agree. Public lands belong to the public, and if the public decides that it doesn't want to lease out its lands for livestock, I'm fine with that. But the ESA doesn't affect just public lands. If it did, I'd not have a problem with it. Unfortunately, it also intrudes on the rights of private property owners to manage predators on their land. Well, it used to. Now, ranchers on their private property can shoot wolves that threaten their livestock, which is the appropriate way to manage the issue.

Maybe the public should have the right to cull ranchers who threaten our wildlife?

They have, and they do, through the F&WS and the Department of Agriculture. But those rules should NOT apply on private property.

My attitude has always been that if the government wants to use my land for wildlife habitat, it can pay me for the privilege, otherwise I reserve the right to kill any animal on my land that I deem to be harmful to my economic or personal interests. If you don't like that, then keep your wildlife off my land.

[Seth]

Seth. I grew up on a cattle farm in Mississippi. Then I moved to one in Tennessee. Reconsider your position in light of that info, please.

They don't have wolves in Tennessee or Mississippi, now do they?

[FBM]

Seth. I grew up on a cattle farm in Mississippi. Then I moved to one in Tennessee. Reconsider your position in light of that info, please.

They don't have wolves in Tennessee or Mississippi, now do they?

Not many. That's why they have thousands of cars colliding with thousands of deer on the highways every year. It ain't good fer neither human nor deer, not to mention the cars or the insurance companies.

Edit: And if we self-regulate for the preservation of the ecosystem that supports us, that would be perfectly natural, too, wouldn't it? (That was a hypothetical question. )

[Twoflower]

Hey Seth I read an article in National Geographic a while ago that said ranchers have been successful in keeping wolves away using I think it was high pitched sound and other non-lethal deterrents. To me, someone who had no experience with ranchers or cattle, that seems like a pretty good solution. What do you think about it? I'll try to dig up the article to see what exactly they said.
Here's the article in full, it's a good read and I thought fairly covered both sides of the issue.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/ ... ick-text/1

[Seth]

Hey Seth I read an article in National Geographic a while ago that said ranchers have been successful in keeping wolves away using I think it was high pitched sound and other non-lethal deterrents. To me, someone who had no experience with ranchers or cattle, that seems like a pretty good solution. What do you think about it? I'll try to dig up the article to see what exactly they said.

Such devices can only be effective when cattle are kept closely confined in herds, where a perimeter defense can be used. The Defenders of Wildlife like to tout their "non-lethal" approaches, but the problem is that some of them work, most of them don't, and virtually none of them work after wolves have become habituated to their presence.

Flagging on fences to deter wolves works for awhile, then it stops working. Electric fences work for a while, then wolves figure out how to evade them. Wolves are very smart about finding ways to get to their prey. It's the habituated wolves that are the most dangerous. When wolves, like coyotes or mountain lions or bears, become accustomed to the sights and sounds of human activity, they lose their fear of humans and begin to view humans, and their livestock, as prey. When that happens wolves will spend a lot of time figuring out how to get to a tasty sheep or calf, and they are usually successful. It is those habituated animals that must be destroyed.

Some aversion therapy techniques have been shown to be useful with bears and mountain lions and with wolves, but it's spotty and not predictably effective.

Moreover, all of these techniques cost way more than a single round of ammunition, and ranchers aren't inclined to waste money "protecting" a habituated predator when what needs to happen is that it needs to be killed in the interests of public safety.

Also, the nature of ranching in the area is not like a livestock feedlot, the cows are set out into enormous pastures or grazing allotments consisting of thousands of acres, and they are left largely to themselves for the grazing season. Mountain cows don't move in compact herds, they tend to scatter and forage in small groups or even singly, moving about the area without much direction. This makes it impossible to use perimeter control methods such as you suggest, even if the wolves don't habituate to them.

The best management plan is to use all available techniques for deterrence that are economically feasible and useful, but to also have in the quiver the authority to simply shoot and kill wolves who are actually predating on livestock on the spot, without having to notify the F&WS and wait for one of their professional hunters to show up. Once a wolf has a taste for sheep or cows, they don't give it up and must be killed. Even relocating them doesn't work, because there's no place to relocate them where there isn't livestock, and you can't just drop a wolf in the wilderness occupied by other wolf packs, as they will attack and kill the intruder.

Hunting seasons help to control absolute numbers, and they also help to keep wolves wary and afraid of humans, which also helps reduce human/wolf conflicts. Such hunts will be strictly controlled and limited in accordance with the 2008 Decision and Final Order, so it's not as if the states are going to start issuing unlimited "kill on sight" wolf hunting licenses. Like any other trophy big game animal, states conserve and manage such resources very carefully, and even more so in the case of wolves, because the feds will be constantly looking over their shoulders.

[Twoflower]

That's very insightful Seth, thank you. Where I live in northern Michigan we have a huge problem with an over population of deer and the hunting season is the only think stopping them from being hit by cars or starving to death, I understand where the ranchers are coming from in regards to over population because I have seen it happen with the deer in my state. We could use more wolves around here to take care of the deer population.

[Seth]

That's very insightful Seth, thank you. Where I live in northern Michigan we have a huge problem with an over population of deer and the hunting season is the only think stopping them from being hit by cars or starving to death, I understand where the ranchers are coming from in regards to over population because I have seen it happen with the deer in my state. We could use more wolves around here to take care of the deer population.

I agree.

The people of Boulder, Colorado, being the eco-weenie liberal nitwits that they are, have refused for decades to allow deer hunting in the mountains to the west of town, on the city's mountain parks. As a result, deer are everywhere, like flies on shit, and they get hit by cars every day. Worse, the abundance of deer has attracted, predictably, mountain lions. And the lions have taken to licking their chops at the prospect of spandex-wrapped long pig lately, to the alarm of the aforesaid nitwits.

The Colorado Department of Wildlife has been urging Boulder City Council to open up the mountain parks for years, and now they are refusing to respond to mountain lion sightings IN TOWN, in residential areas, because, well, Boulder has made its bed, now it can lie in it.

The key to predator-based management of ungulates is MANAGEMENT...a careful balance between predators and prey watched over and actively managed by humans to keep things in balance and prevent habituation of dangerous predators, combined with public policies that allow individuals to defend themselves against dangerous predators both by allowing the carrying of firearms, but also the killing of any predator that does not flee at the sight of a human.

It's not about exterminating wolves, and most rancher aren't interested in doing so, for all the hyperbole that one sees from both sides. They just want to be allowed to protect their assets in a reasonable manner without facing 10 years in jail and a $250,000 fine for shooting a wolf that's attacking their livestock.

[JimC]

I don't get the ranchers' position. If I raised cattle, I'd just factor in the loss to the wolves as part of the natural cost of operation. I'd be proud of feeding them, as a matter of fact. If my cattle ranching wasn't profitable enough to keep me fed, I'd raise rabbits on the side and release them to keep the wolves off my herd. The ranchers are just lazy, greedy, dimwitted, narrow-minded, unimaginative fucks, IMO. We need every kind of animal that nature has produced if we're to maintain the ecological balance that has nurtured our own existence. If something goes extinct without it being the result of our own desire to own ever-bigger and louder pick-up trucks, so be it. But when our greed means wiping another species out of existence, then we're the problem, not them.

Spot on!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The best deterrent I've heard of is to simply have a human or two ride with or near the herds. They spend a summer camping, with pay, and the ranchers don't loose nearly as many cattle. The humans are there if a cow gets in trouble, so some of the ranchers are coming out ahead in terms of losses. So, have some tree huggers do the out-riding, and the wolves and ranchers are both better off.

[Gallstones]

I still think that ranchers using public lands to graze livestock have to assume the risk that some of the public's predators will kill some of their livestock. Livestock is a guest on public lands and ranchers can't get rid of the furniture because it doesn't suit them. Assume the risk or don't ranch near or on wilderness.

In this, I agree. Public lands belong to the public, and if the public decides that it doesn't want to lease out its lands for livestock, I'm fine with that. But the ESA doesn't affect just public lands. If it did, I'd not have a problem with it. Unfortunately, it also intrudes on the rights of private property owners to manage predators on their land. Well, it used to. Now, ranchers on their private property can shoot wolves that threaten their livestock, which is the appropriate way to manage the issue.

Maybe the public should have the right to cull ranchers who threaten our wildlife?

They have, and they do, through the F&WS and the Department of Agriculture. But those rules should NOT apply on private property.

Private property has to be an exception. On this we agree.
Private property is going to be easier to patrol and protect.

My attitude has always been that if the government wants to use my land for wildlife habitat, it can pay me for the privilege, otherwise I reserve the right to kill any animal on my land that I deem to be harmful to my economic or personal interests. If you don't like that, then keep your wildlife off my land.

I suspect that there are tangible benefits to having wildlife habitat on one's privately held property. I think a property owner should be able to harvest deer that use one's property to bed or feed without being restricted to hunting season.