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Posted on 12/21/2023 6:37:56 AM PST by george76
Two wolves released on Dec. 19, 2023, in Grand County, Colorado, 2302-OR, a juvenile female, black color, 68 pounds, and 2303-OR, a juvenile male, gray color, 76 pounds, come from the Five Points Pack. According to Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Livestock Depredation Investigations, Five Points pack wolves injured one calf and killed another in separate depredations in July of 2023; killed a cow on Dec. 5, 2022; and injured a 900-pound yearling heifer on July 17, 2022.
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On July 21, OFW authorized the killing of up to four wolves from the Five Points Pack after two attacks on livestock within a week, which were the second and third depredations in the area within eight months. USDA employees killed two adult females, one adult male, and a yearling female from the problem pack by Aug. 4.
CPW Director Jeff Davis and his staff testified before the House Agriculture Committee on Sept. 12, 2023, that they would do everything possible not to bring “problem” wolves to Colorado. An email to CPW asking why they released Five Points pack wolves from the chronically depredating pack have not yet been returned.
According to John Williams, the co-chair of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association Wolf Committee who serves as the Eastern Oregon Wolf Committee Chair. He has been involved with the association’s Wolf Committee since its inception in 1996. Williams retired from a long career as an Extension agent at Oregon State University. He was an associate professor in the Department of Animal and Range Sciences at OSU where he worked for over 31 years. He began in 2008 conducting wolf/cattle interaction research and continued that work with a cadre of researchers until his retirement.
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Colorado Parks and Wildlife released five gray wolves onto public land in Grand County, Colorado on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023.
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Williams said there is controversy whether removing a specific problem wolf from a depredating pack will stop the depredation. He said there is no research to support that, and the findings on the ground do not support the theory. Rather, he said, wolf pack size has some bearing on whether a pack depredates livestock.
“Once a pack starts to depredate on livestock, they tend to include livestock in their diet in the future,” he said. “It does not say they always eat livestock but it’s more like they acquire a taste for it, they like it, and they stay on it and they may not.”
VISIT TO COLORADO
Williams visited the Gunnison, Colo., area and said the release sites are very close in proximity to private lands and with wolves traveling hundreds of miles over the course of a week, the scale of wolf territory is sizable. To answer the question of what wolves are going to eat, he said, isn’t unlike a group of six teenagers in a car driving down a street filled with restaurants.
“To answer the question what they’re going to eat is just like that group of teenagers,” he said. “One of them will pipe up and say they’re hungry and the next restaurant they come to is the one they’ll likely turn into unless the alpha male, the driver in this instance, says they’re going somewhere else.”
He said over-analyzing what a wolf will eat next is just that: over-analyzing.
“That’s a long answer to your short question of will these wolves that were sent to Colorado going to depredate on livestock,” he said. “The answer is yes. Right away? I don’t know.”
In Oregon, Williams said the highest depredation incidences tend to be during times when cattle are concentrated from gathering in the fall in August through December. Depredations slow when cattle are close to the ranches and elk are readily available.
“The simple answer is once a pack of wolves recognizes that steak is good, they will include that in their diet in the future,” he said. “The Five Points Pack had four wolves removed because they were chronically depredating in July and August.”
Williams said one of the ranchers who experienced depredation losses from the Five Points pack reported a 28% decrease in conception rates and also reported about 20 head of calves missing when pairs were gathered in the fall. Those calves are likely wolf kills, but the calves were never found, something that isn’t uncommon.
Dead cows and calves, he said, is not the ranchers’ biggest issue. Reduced conception rates, weaning weights, drops in body condition scores in the cows, increased management costs, he said, are the greater impacts.
“The confirmed kill list is a small piece of what’s actually happening out there on the ground,” he said. “The Five Point pack is a problem pack and has been. They have taken four wolves out of it and it sounds to me like someone tried to convince (CPW) that they took the four wolves out and they haven’t depredated since then or haven’t been seen depredating since then, that the problem has been solved in that pack and that’s just not the case.”
The release of five wolves comes just six days after CPW confirmed a wolf attack on a calf owned by Jackson County rancher Don Gittleson. Gittleson attended a CPW meeting in Moffat County following the release. According to Steamboat Radio, Gittleson answered questions from other ranchers in the room. He told the group he is particularly angry with the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center hosting a Wolf Naming Contest among students in grades 5-8. The contest includes an educational script for the teacher to utilize.
“Kids shouldn’t be put in the middle of this,” Gittleson said.
Republican State Senator Bob Rankin said that he planned to put forth a bill in the Colorado General Assembly that would introduce an equal number of imported, not native Canadian wolves into Boulder and Jefferson Counties as Proposition 114 will into Moffat County.
I do intend to do that, saidRankin.. Then he resigned .
Of the state’s 64 counties, just 13 supported wolves on designated lands west of the Continental Divide..
I hope they released them in the neighborhoods of the Colorado SC.
Can we train them to hunt Ivy League judges and release them in Denver. Maybe the 4-3 “insurrection” decision can be revoted as 2-3.
Wish they would have released them at the Justice Center chambers, downtown.
Lot’s of uninhabited wide open space in Colorado. Also, lots of skilled marksman!😎
What are you? There are lots of options and based on your comment none good come to mind.
There are all sorts of things that are “natural” that are at odds with human existence and therefore need to be managed. Viruses are “natural”, forest fires are “natural”, a whole slew of poisons are “natural”, king cobras and Bengal tigers are “natural”, lightning is “natural”, floods are “natural”, weeds are “natural”, toxic mold is “natural”, and the number one killer creature on Earth, the mosquito, is “natural.”
God didn’t direct Adam and Eve to “preserve” the Earth, He told them to “subdue” it. The Earth and its resources are here to serve humans, not to exist without them, as radical environmentalists fantasize about. We need to manage those resources responsibly, of course, but if humans did not exist, the state of the Earth would not matter at all.
As for your cattle example, they exist solely to provide food (and some byproducts) for humans. They serve no other purpose. It’s not like we’re going to release Bessie into the wild to “be free.”
I understand why ranchers don’t like wolves. What I don’t understand is why we don’t just reimburse them for their loses. Wolves don’t have to be a zero sum game. If we want to bring them back it should not be at the expense of ranchers.
One that’s vegan, I guess
As I understand it, ranchers can get compensated for losses due to wolves, but I’ve also heard that the government tends to A. Deny the claims “prove that a wolf did it” B. Underpay the claims C. Missing cattle (calves especially) are assumed to just have gotten lost so no pay D. Pay very slowly. I have no personal experience- just going by what I read and what know of bureaucracies.
And one other point. Any compensation paid to ranchers comes from the taxpayers ie. in part from the ranchers themselves as well as the rest of us who don’t give a rat’s ass about wolves and think it’s a terrible idea to propagate them again.
What I’d really like to see is a wolf reintroduction bond where wolf enthusiasts have to put up a cash bond say $250,000 per wolf to pay for the damage that they cause, and when that’s used up the wolf fans can either disgorge more money of the wolves get shot.
Yep the wolves don’t pay for their steaks and roasts. If they just hunted elk and deer and antelope it would be OK. But they don’t. They snack on valuable commercial livestock while they contribute nothing, but to give a few ecofreaks something to ooh and aah about while they take a lot from the people who actually feed the rest of us. In so doing they run the cost of food up for everyone.
If it is ok for us to irradicate apex predators in North America then it then ok to eardicate them in Africa too? Kill all lions, leopards etc. Right? Same logic, right?
Do you know how much livestock lions kill in Africa every year? Should lions be eradicated? All of you wolf killers are hypocrites.
I am pro wolf. They lived here long before us.
If you would like more information about what’s happening in Oregon, please FReepmail me. Please send me your name by FReepmail if you want to be on this list.
+1
“Wolves lived here before us”. So what? So did rats, mice, mosquitoes, black flies, etc.
Do you know how much livestock lions kill in Africa every year? Should lions be eradicated? All of you wolf killers are hypocrites.
I was hoping, once released, they would turn on those releasing them.
Would have been more fun than watching the otters released after getting cleaned of oil from the Exton Valdez eaten by prey in front of kids.
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