Smart Ranching – Good for cows, good for predators, good for ranchers

A BullMooseGazette Special Report

By Ron Moody

The program was advertised as a discussion by experts on non-lethal methods of preventing livestock losses to large carnivores such as wolves with an emphasis on use of ‘Livestock Protection Dog.’

    The real news of the evening, however, turned out to be up-close reports of the strong connection between cow-friendly methods of rangeland management and predator loss prevention - along with a new interest of federal Wildlife Services officials in adding non-lethal methods to their uniformly lethal game book. 

    The discussion took place in Bozeman, Tuesday, October 29, during a program sponsored by ‘Enhancing Montana’s Wildlife & Habitat (EMWH),’ a collaborative conservation project founded by Kathryn QannaYahu of Bozeman. (http://www.emwh.org/ )

    Participating were Representatives of federal and state agencies, private non-profit conservation groups and ‘predator friendly’ livestock producers.

    Commercial cattle herds typically spread out across their available pastures; a natural behavior when not threatened by predators, noted Matt Barnes, a former cattleman and field director for rangeland stewardship at Keystone Conservation. “But this makes them vulnerable to being killed by large carnivores.”

    When a prey species like cattle, muskox or bison cluster together they are much more able to fend off an attacking wolf or bear and this is an instinctual behavior among wild ungulates, Barnes said. “Can this be used on domestic livestock to reduce conflicts with predators?”

    The answer is yes, according to Barnes, and, in a happy coincidence of interests, training cattle to graze in close groups, rather than loose dispersals, opens other opportunities to the livestock producer for better rangeland health and high profits through higher stocking rates on the same amount of acreage.

    But training cattle to an unfamiliar new behavior initially requires extra effort on the part of the livestock producer, Barnes added.

Low Stress Stockmanship

    Advocating ‘low stress stockmanship,’ Hilary Zaranek, is a range rider working for an experimental ranching project near Yellowstone Park. She is one of those tasked with doing the extra work of teaching cows to herd together.

    “There is real labor, some significant work, at the beginning. But it really pays off as you go along,” she said.  “At first you have to move the cattle every day; but soon they learn the new routine of staying close where you put them and that becomes what they want to do. Then you can put them up on the hill where the best grass is and they will stay there for several days.”

    In terms of a lower predator-loss pay off, Zaranek cited the experience of six cattle herds in her program.  “Of the six, the three herds handled most often lost no calves to predators. The three herds handled least all lost calves.”

    And then there is the financial reward of low stress handling to the rancher.

    “Scattered cattle creates the need for high-stress handling methods,” she said. “And stress in cows means lower weight gains and lighter calves.” Weight translates into cash when the rancher takes his or her product to market.

    In this context training cattle to herd close “has nothing to do with wolves,” she added, “it’s just good business.”

    Both Barnes and Zaranek pointed to training cattle to herd close as essential for making modern rest-rotation grazing plans actually work to improve forage quality and rangeland health. 

    Long rests and short, intense grazing periods are key, Barnes said. Doing that means being able to quickly move cattle between pastures – a benefit of training the stock. A rest-rotation properly done can allow higher stocking rates because the plants are able to come back faster and stronger after being grazed.

Going To The Dogs

    As planned, the Tuesday EMWH program went to the dogs as the discussion progressed.

    The Wildlife Services Division of APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) is famously identified with killing animals deemed pests to agricultural interests. In a dramatic departure from its routinely lethal activities, the federal agency is engaging in extensive research into non-lethal methodology by use of guard dogs, according to APHIS officials at the meeting.

    APHIS Researcher Julie Young described the efforts by her agency to import new strains of wolf-grade guard dogs from their native European countries and test them in American landscapes. “We are focusing on ‘Adaptive Protection Management,” she said.

    The ‘adaptive’ part, she said, refers to changing predator behavior, changing cow behavior, and, perhaps most importantly, changing human behavior. 

    Use of guard dogs to protect livestock from predators is now a widespread practice in the Rocky Mountain West. “Dogs are one of the most accepted non-lethal methods of reducing predator losses, and also one of the most effective,” said Michael Marlow, head of APHIS research in use of guard dogs.

    But there is a down side with dogs getting into conflicts with humans – particularly in the West’s expanding urban-rural interface, according to Marlow. He cited a case in California when a cyclist was attacked by a guard dog while riding through a herd of sheep – an activity the dogs apparently viewed as a threat to ‘his’ sheep.

    He also described conflicts with pets in neighboring subdivisions and even cases where hikers picked up guard dogs and turned them into local animal shelters as lost.

    “Public education is crucial to making use of guard dogs more successful and conflict-free,” he said.

“Leave Them Alone”

    Professional dog trainer Peggy Duezabou of Canyon Creek introduced the audience to two of her Akbash dogs, Azor and Colt, both of whom appeared capable of competing with wolves in the heavy-weight division.

    “When you see one of these dogs out on the landscape, leave it alone,” She urged.       “The dog is at work doing its job.” And above all don’t do anything the dog could interpret as an attack on the livestock it is protecting. 

    Becky Weed of Belgrade, a woolgrower who had used ‘predator friendly’ methods including guard dogs for 18 years, concluded the program with first-person insights into the new livestock producing landscape. 

    “Wildlife Services is doing research on non-lethal methods,” she said. “But it is hard to do rigorous, scientific research on something like livestock losses to predators.

    “The whole business of being ‘predator friendly’ is about adaptation to change. It means reading a complicated code of relationships between cattle, wild animals, people and dogs.

    “In the end, if you want something to work you can make it work,” Weed said.

WILD BISON ON THE MONTANA PRAIRIE? MAYBE. BUT WHAT IS WILD?

A BullMooseGazette Special Report

By Ron Moody

September 29, 2013

Whether or not returning wild American bison to some meaningful presence in Montana outside the Yellowstone area is politically possible was debated during a two-day conference convened in Lewistown last week, Sept 26-27, by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.

FWP Director Jeff Hagener emphasized at the beginning the meeting was not to be a decision-making event rather a “good discussion of opportunity. Can we explore some common values or are we at a dead end?”

By the end of the session on Friday, however, at least one agreement had evolved to a virtual decision. There will be no free-roaming bison in Montana for any foreseeable future.

A debate ensued on what it means for bison to be ‘wild’ but not free-roaming. This raised the question of fencing and other containment methods. 

The most frequently mentioned location for an initial bison re-introduction in the prairie region is within the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. Refuge Manager Rick Potts reported to the group that the Department of Interior wants no more ‘high fence’ management areas in its wildlife refuge system. “They create more wildlife problems than they solve,” Potts said.

This does not mean, however, that U.S. Fish & Wildlife would not consider other, more natural, methods of containment, Potts added. He also emphasized that the federal agency will do nothing about bison restoration without the leadership of the State of Montana.

Another extended discussion revolved around the question of whether bison should be managed as wildlife at all or as livestock regulated by the State Department of Livestock. The trend of debate, however, moved in the direction of talking about bison as public wildlife simply because private owners of livestock bison are not affected by FWP rules and are already free to manage their animals as they see fit.

Participating in the discussion were ranchers and farmers, MT Stockgrowers and Farm Bureau, two county commissioners both of whom also are ranchers, four state legislators - three with ag interests, representatives of three environmental organizations, two FWP commissioners (one of whom also spoke as a tribal member and the other as a rancher) and state and federal agency personnel. 

No sportsmen were included in the panel and one place set for a tribal representative was vacant. The absence of a hunter representative is ironic since sportsmen license dollars evidently financed the event.

The three environmental groups were the Wildlife Conservation Society, The National Wildlife Federation and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.

The discussion among interest-group participants was uniformly cordial. The temperature level, however, was considerably higher during the public comment period Thursday afternoon.  Ranching groups had urged members to show up and speak out. Several dozen did so with passionate denunciations of the whole idea of bison restoration with particular venom toward the idea of free-roaming bison and out-of-state meddling. “Fix Yellowstone First” was a common theme.

Only three public commenters identified themselves as hunters, and two others spoke for the tourist industry value of viewing bison as wildlife.

Working under the direction of Facilitator Ginny Tribe the participants developed recommendations for topics of future value should FWP decide to continue with an effort to develop a bison conservation plan for Montana.

First was to offer ideas for a ‘pilot’ or ‘test’ project for bison restoration somewhere in Montana’s prairie counties. Second was to create a set of possible guiding principles that would set the limits of FWP’s decision space in moving on bison conservation. Third was to identify mutual agreements or constraints on what a bison restoration proposal should look like. Fourth was the question of what roles the often conflicting public interests in bison should play in any future process.

A pilot (test) project, according to the first work group, should evaluate restoration and management of bison as wildlife.  Some debate over the choice of names ensued after St Senator Jim Peterson asked that it be called a ‘test’ rather than a ‘pilot’ project because the word ‘pilot’ implies the project would lead to subsequent projects. 

The project, they said, also should have a defined territory, time limit and number of bison involved.  An ‘adaptive management’ method should be used with qualified research and management. Landowners should be involved along with incentives for landowners.  The group also listing other elements: a public hunting opportunity, compensation for property damage, annual reporting, cost accounting and a reliable funding source. Also cited were: Exit strategy defined and determination of what qualifies as success, and a contingency plan for catastrophic conditions.

Guiding principles proposed for any FWP bison conservation process were offered by a work group. First was that expectations of the project on the part of the public should be carefully managed. Other principles included: adherence to laws, respect for private property rights, show how any unanticipated problems will be solved and local working groups should be used to flesh out a specific plan in a given location.

Other principles proposed were that desired outcomes are clear with open, honest communication and commitment. The plan should manage bison as wildlife.  A FWP plan should target a population of bison at least partly on public land that is available for public hunting.

Mutual agreements at this point among the conference participants included:

1.     The idea of ‘free-roaming’ bison is impractical and overly divisive and should be dropped from the discussion.

2.     Any bison planning process must include a clear method for adjusting the plan along the way to ensure objectives are met.

3.     Any test project or bison placement must include a containment plan that meet current state law and thus contains some fencing.

4.     Any publicly owned bison being managed must be certified disease free with continuing monitoring to ensure good health.

5.     Comingling of public bison with nearby private bison herds is to be avoided.

6.     Public hunting should be recognized as a public good and as a legitimate primary management tool.

A public process for bison restoration was described by another work group.

The planning process needs a timeline that has a reasonable end point, they said, it can’t go on forever.  Also, more involvement of sportsmen and tribal interests should be included. And finally, that ‘free roaming’ should be removed from the process and ‘containment’ should be included.

FWP Director Hagener, when summing up the meeting, said “important progress has been made. We will now have to take what we’ve learned here and go back and try to figure out how we should proceed.”

WHEN FANG AND CLAW MOVE INTO THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Wild animals with sharp teeth and a taste for raw meat are enjoying uncommon fame among Americans these days.

In two news events this week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the removal of the gray wolf from the endangered species list. And the New York Times published a lengthy feature story on the cougar’s re-occupation of the eastern U.S.A.

In addition, the resurgence of grizzly bear numbers is an ongoing news story in communities of the northern Rocky Mountain.

While griz angst tends to be local, lions in metropolitan suburbs and wolves in the Oregon, Washington, and Minnesota countryside are another matter entirely – a typical voter may actually have one of these fearsome creatures intrude upon his or her status quo.

Once upon a time, people had no cause to fret about their relationship with meat-eating wild animals. Predators were simply a fact of agrarian life and could be summarily dispatched when they became troublesome – or lived with when they didn’t.

After several generations of urban segregation from nature, contemporary Americans seem unable to fathom the realities of sharing their neighborhood with actual predators.  In the absence of real experience or culturally validated information we employ imagination and conjecture to debate how to live with critters whose lifestyle excites emotions running concurrently from delight to dread. Our greatest terrors always are those of what might happen if . . . .

The wolf’s return to the northern Rockies has fueled a 20-year-long public hissy fit among those who imagine horrors of marauding packs versus those who experience spiritual enlightenment at the sound of a moonlit howling. The cougar excites the same conflicted values but the big cats are more secretive, and scarcer than wolves, and they may have hired a better public relations firm.  Anyway, an individual cougar may spark a local uproar but the idea of cougars in people’s minds is much less inflammatory than the idea of a wolf.

Do not let massive rhetorical gas clouds befog one fact, however. These animals are real, and their inaugural presence in the lives of many more Americans will increase the intensity of conflict in coming years.

Hopefully, we will arrive at a socially accepted relationship with carnivorous wildlife just as we have with edible plant-eaters such as deer and elk – a deal that allows continued existence of these animals with sustainable numbers and adequate habitat.  But this is not a foregone outcome.

The same person who is exhilarated by TV video of cougars lounging around Yellowstone Park will feel a different emotion entirely when Ms. Cougar strolls through the back yard where the grandchildren play.

My experience as a state wildlife commissioner included setting the first wolf hunting and trapping seasons for the gray wolf in Montana.  I quickly learned that managing wolves in a human-dominated landscape is a solvable challenge. Give professional wildlife biologists a few years to work out the methods and the wolf will occupy an assigned niche in our homo-ecosystem.

Managing humans in a wolf-occupied landscape, on the other hand, is several magnitudes of greater difficulty. I describe the whole effort as a biological experiment in an anthropological petri dish.

The ‘socially accepted relationship’ I mentioned will have a couple of measurable dimensions: how many animals and where. Decisive un-measurables center on the willingness of people from different cultural tribes to adapt to the values of neighboring tribes.

In his 2003 book, MONSTERS OF GOD, author David Quammen describes the effects on people who must actually live with and bear the burden of predators as neighbors.  “Proximity plus vulnerability equals jeopardy,” he advises.  The light-hearted willingness of distant urban nature-lovers to impose this burden in service to their self-actualized ideals generates fuel for unending conflict.

The other conflictive fuel source is the unwillingness of rural dwellers and recreational hunters to understand why making a sustainable niche for viable predator populations is an urban political demand. Thus they justify resistance.

Both fuel sources should remember that adaptation has a better history of success than does resistance when it comes to surviving a changing environment.

Of all tribes, the hunter has the more complex dilemma to resolve.  From at least the time of naturalist/president Teddy Roosevelt, a duel vision has emerged among American hunters dedicated to restoring wildlife populations.  One vision is pragmatic: wildlife should be restored in order to provide abundant game for the hunter.  The other vision is altruistic: wildlife should be restored because a healthy nature with all its creatures is vital to human well-being in general.

To this day, hunters remain divided as to which vision is the true purpose of our North American conservation system. The return of the big meat-eaters may force the hunters’ hand toward a visionary decision.

  ~~ Ron Moody

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