I think Diane Boyd said it best: wildlife management is people management. However, we need to find a balance between healthy, thriving and growing wildlife populations (of species recovered from near-extinction and/or extirpation), and the needs of communities living in close proximity with large charismatic predators such as wolves and grizzlies. I doubt that ranchers will ever grow to love wolves in their midst, even if the impacts on livestock are minimal. The best remedy seems to be what American Prairie is doing with Wild Sky, and what the Northern Jaguar Reserve is doing with Viviendo con Felinos: namely incentivizing ranchers and landowners to encourage wildlife on their property. Compensation for livestock lost also goes a long way towards easing tension.
Most folks would agree that more wolves and grizzlies on the range is inherently good for the landscape, and that abundance within nature's own system of checks and balances will and should prevail. I guess we often do not know how to react to a good thing, or good news for that matter.
As always, another interesting, clear-headed and thought-provoking article from Conservation Works - always a delight to read.
Thanks Aaron! Well put re: people management ... heartily agree with you and Diane Boyd. The "pay for presence" model holds a lot of promise, I think, and the Wolf Advisory Group has come up with a proposal to pilot it in Washington — it was on the agenda for discussion last month but the group decided that producers' more immediate frustrations with WDFW had to be dealt with first.
On compensation, several ranchers said that they often didn't apply for it, either because the process is too cumbersome or they just didn't like the idea of being compensated for dead livestock (there seemed to be a range of reasons for this — some wanted to focus on preventing deaths, others didn't like the idea of getting money from the government). That's not to say compensation isn't a good idea — I think it's an essential part of the puzzle — just that, like most things, it gets very complicated on the ground.
The narrative of scarcity is pervasive in so many ways. "The market" creates scarcity because there's no profit in abundance. Must conservation adopt the same narrative? Thought-provoking, Michelle, thanks.
Thank you, John — and yes, interesting analogy — scarcity certainly "sells" in conservation much as it does in other marketplaces, which may be one reason we're slow to talk about abundance (and the problems that come with it). Thanks for continuing to read and comment.
Thanks for this post. All very good points. Do any of these ranchers use guardian dogs? Are their animals free range on public lands? I'm very interested in dogs as a potential solution. Communities in Europe have seen a lot of success at preventing depredation using old breeds.
Thanks, Amanda! Yes, some do use dogs, and yes, some do graze their herds on public lands ... on both public and private lands the "free range" herds are often accompanied by range riders (cowboys on horseback, essentially, whose presence discourages wolves).
What I could have said more clearly is that there are a lot of good strategies and technologies out there for promoting coexistence, and many of them are being used in Washington. The frustrations at the meeting made me think about the bigger-picture problem: living with predators is a new thing for *everyone*, producers and conservationists alike, so there's a ton of trial and error (even strategies that worked in the past still have to be adapted to current conditions). The challenge is for those involved to work through the frustrations together, without alienating those whose support is key to predator persistence.
I think Diane Boyd said it best: wildlife management is people management. However, we need to find a balance between healthy, thriving and growing wildlife populations (of species recovered from near-extinction and/or extirpation), and the needs of communities living in close proximity with large charismatic predators such as wolves and grizzlies. I doubt that ranchers will ever grow to love wolves in their midst, even if the impacts on livestock are minimal. The best remedy seems to be what American Prairie is doing with Wild Sky, and what the Northern Jaguar Reserve is doing with Viviendo con Felinos: namely incentivizing ranchers and landowners to encourage wildlife on their property. Compensation for livestock lost also goes a long way towards easing tension.
Most folks would agree that more wolves and grizzlies on the range is inherently good for the landscape, and that abundance within nature's own system of checks and balances will and should prevail. I guess we often do not know how to react to a good thing, or good news for that matter.
As always, another interesting, clear-headed and thought-provoking article from Conservation Works - always a delight to read.
Thanks Aaron! Well put re: people management ... heartily agree with you and Diane Boyd. The "pay for presence" model holds a lot of promise, I think, and the Wolf Advisory Group has come up with a proposal to pilot it in Washington — it was on the agenda for discussion last month but the group decided that producers' more immediate frustrations with WDFW had to be dealt with first.
On compensation, several ranchers said that they often didn't apply for it, either because the process is too cumbersome or they just didn't like the idea of being compensated for dead livestock (there seemed to be a range of reasons for this — some wanted to focus on preventing deaths, others didn't like the idea of getting money from the government). That's not to say compensation isn't a good idea — I think it's an essential part of the puzzle — just that, like most things, it gets very complicated on the ground.
The narrative of scarcity is pervasive in so many ways. "The market" creates scarcity because there's no profit in abundance. Must conservation adopt the same narrative? Thought-provoking, Michelle, thanks.
Thank you, John — and yes, interesting analogy — scarcity certainly "sells" in conservation much as it does in other marketplaces, which may be one reason we're slow to talk about abundance (and the problems that come with it). Thanks for continuing to read and comment.
Thanks for this post. All very good points. Do any of these ranchers use guardian dogs? Are their animals free range on public lands? I'm very interested in dogs as a potential solution. Communities in Europe have seen a lot of success at preventing depredation using old breeds.
Thanks, Amanda! Yes, some do use dogs, and yes, some do graze their herds on public lands ... on both public and private lands the "free range" herds are often accompanied by range riders (cowboys on horseback, essentially, whose presence discourages wolves).
What I could have said more clearly is that there are a lot of good strategies and technologies out there for promoting coexistence, and many of them are being used in Washington. The frustrations at the meeting made me think about the bigger-picture problem: living with predators is a new thing for *everyone*, producers and conservationists alike, so there's a ton of trial and error (even strategies that worked in the past still have to be adapted to current conditions). The challenge is for those involved to work through the frustrations together, without alienating those whose support is key to predator persistence.