PERC’s Crazy Mountain Virtual Fence Project

Lanie White, and her brother, Harrison White, manage the ranch’s operations.

I’m always a fan of cool conservation technology.. from PERC

PERC is partnering with Montana’s McFarland White Ranch to help implement an innovative virtual fence project for cattle, a cutting-edge technology that could revolutionize both ranching and wildlife conservation.

The project will initially remove 16 of the ranch’s 75 miles of internal barbed-wire fencing and replace it with a virtual fence network that allows the rancher to remotely map and manage livestock through a series of signal towers and GPS collars worn by cows. Barbed wire fences are a key barrier to wildlife migration throughout the West. While other pilot projects and implementations are underway, this is the first to explicitly evaluate the technology for both migratory wildlife conservation and its effect on production agriculture—specifically, economic impact, range, and livestock benefits.

Under the agreement, PERC is funding key infrastructure to implement the virtual fence and clear a path for wildlife migration, including directly purchasing one of six signal towers needed to establish a signal across the virtual network.

Fences are trouble for wildlife and ranchers
Located at the doorstep of Montana’s Crazy Mountains, the McFarland White Ranch is home to 2,000 head of cattle, rough landscapes, and abundant wildlife. Thirty-two bird species of concern including Clark’s nutcracker, ferruginous hawk, thick-billed longspur, bobolink, sharp-tailed grouse, and sandhill cranes are found on the Audubon-certified ranch. Migratory wildlife including elk, deer, and pronghorn are also common, as well as predators such as wolves, mountain lions, and black bears.

Wildlife including elk and pronghorn can get caught in traditional fences, birds often fatally collide with wires, and ecologically sensitive areas are difficult to fence off with any degree of flexibility.

Repairing barbed-wire fencing is a constant worry for ranchers as well.

How virtual fencing works:

Cattle are equipped with a GPS collar that emits a sound when the livestock approaches a virtual boundary, then a light shock if the animal crosses the boundary, which continues for several yards, effectively deterring cattle from entering the areas that the rancher has fenced off. Cattle need only a few days to learn that the sound from the collars means it is time to turn around.
Solar-powered signal towers connect across the virtual network. Each solar-powered tower covers roughly 10,000 acres of range, depending on topography, and costs approximately $12,000.
An app tracks the cattle’s location and sends alerts if the cattle attempt to leave the virtual fence boundary. The rancher can also adjust the boundaries directly from the app.
External fencing will be maintained to prevent commingling with neighboring herds and comply with Montana law.


Benefits for ranchers:

Virtual fencing significantly reduces the need for traditional barbed-wire fences, bringing notable benefits:

The virtual system allows for easily customizable boundaries.
Ranchers can more easily track the location and status of their cattle, helping with predator control and herd management.
Removing bared-wire fences, which require costly and time-intensive repairs, can save ranchers considerable time and money.

And we can imagine tracking wolves at the same time,  and maybe sending drones to scare them off..

BLM Range Whistleblower and Potential Risks of Bundy-Phobia

he Rio Grand River flows on Feb. 16, 2022, near Monte Vista. RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

The Denver Post had an intriguing story  about a BLM whistleblower:

Melissa Shawcroft, who has been a BLM rangeland management specialist since 1992, is facing a two-week unpaid suspension after her supervisor disciplined her over discourteous emails and a failure to follow rules. Shawcroft is arguing that the discipline is retaliation for her insistence that the Bureau take action to stop area ranchers from trespassing by allowing their livestock to graze on BLM property without permits.

The illegal grazing has gone unchecked for years on the nearly 250,000 acres she manages and her pleas for enforcement, which must be authorized by her supervisors, have gone unheeded, she said. Shawcroft has documented damage to the land and riverbanks and has heard repeated complaints from ranchers who pay to use BLM land.

The way the above sentence is written it sounds as if illegal grazing has gone on on all 250K acres. This seems unlikely.

“I’m sick and tired of them telling me it’s my job to solve the problem when I don’t have the authority to do it,” Shawcroft told The Denver Post. “I jabbed at them and they fired back.”

The Bureau has the power to impound livestock or levy fines, but managers are timid because they fear another armed standoff similar to the ones led by the Bundy family in Oregon and Nevada, Shawcroft said. In 2014 in Nevada, Cliven Bundy, his family and an armed militia organized a standoff with federal agents who had come to round up the rancher’s cows that were illegally grazing on federal land.

“They come right out and tell me we don’t want another Bundy situation,” Shawcroft said.

Steven Hall, the BLM’s Rocky Mountain communications director, said the agency does not comment on personnel issues, but the agency takes unauthorized grazing seriously and is adopting measures to better enforce the rules, he said.

Under federal law, livestock may graze on Bureau of Land Management property when a rancher holds a permit authorizing the land use. Permits are passed down through families and rarely become available for purchase.

The permits determine how many cattle, sheep or horses a rancher can place on federal land and which months the animals are allowed to feed on it. Those rules protect the land from overgrazing and give grass, brush and water time to recover throughout the year.

Shawcroft manages rangeland along the Rio Grande River where property on the east side is private and cows and horses are crossing the river to the federally-owned Rio Grande Natural Area on the west side, she said.

If it’s true that BLM managers said that.. is Bundyism (fear of armed conflict) a real thing, or an excuse?  Reminds me a bit of the FS claiming escaped prescribed burns were due to climate change.  Bundys are a thing. Climate change is a thing.  But both things can also be used as excuses for not doing better.  When we read these things, we need to think about which is which.

Interestingly, the ones who are most irritated are .. other ranchers.. who apparently are not going All Bundy on the law-breakers.

Area ranchers who pay for the permits are complaining that law-breakers are ruining the land for their livestock. It’s such a problem that “chronic livestock trespass” was on the June agenda for the BLM’s Rocky Mountain Resource Advisory Council meeting.

At that meeting, Dario Archuleta, the acting field manager for the BLM’s San Luis Valley field office, said there is a “fine-tuned administrative process they believe will be vastly more effective than the criminal approach,” according to minutes from the meeting.

Archuleta told the meeting’s attendees that the process for impounding livestock is lengthy and complicated and that courts have been lenient on violators.

The BLM has assigned up to 14 employees to address unauthorized grazing through site visits that require a minimum five-hour time commitment, including travel, Hall told The Denver Post.

The agency also has implemented a new GIS tracking tool to collect data such as identifying livestock and the improved documentation has resulted this year in trespass notices being issued, Hall said.

Shawcroft is represented in her complaint by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a non-profit that works with public employees who want to point out government wrongdoing.

………..

The Bureau of Land Management named Shawcroft its range management specialist of the year in 2012 and she’s only had one other disciplinary action taken in her 31-year career, Jeff Ruch, PEER’s Pacific director said.

“She doesn’t mince words and apparently some of her male supervisors took offense,” Ruch said. “The idea that you’re being hit with a heavy sanction when you use words like ‘gumption’ in an email strikes me as an overreaction.”

Now, having been involved in a variety of different personnel difficulties, I am sympathetic to everyone involved, and especially the HR and Labor Relations who I’m sure are trying to sort things out. I wonder what the maleness of (some) supervisors has to do with it. Perhaps this is intended to imply that male employees can get away with more acerbic statements? Curious.

Here’s what PEER says:

On July 28, 2023, Melissa was served with a proposed 14-day suspension without pay for a series of four emails dating back to December 2022 in which she expressed consternation at BLM’s hands-off posture on grazing trespass. In one email, she questioned the agency’s lack of “gumption” and in another whether the agency would “live up to the task of taking care of our resources.” For those emails, she is charged with “discourteous” behavior.

IF this is all it is.. I would say I have read many snarkier emails in the FS about FS activities. On the other hand, when it comes to personnel issues, there are at least two sides to every story.

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Cattle Free by ’93- A Thirty-Year Retrospective and Discussion

BLM photo

Thanks to John Persell, in his comments on Les Joslin’s multiple use post,  for reminding me that this has been on my list.   Rebecca Watson’s comment today on sustainable mining also reminds me of the two common dichotomies (or threads or ??) in our work. 1. Don’t do it (or not on some lands) and/or 2. Improve the practices.

Anyway, I thought a good kickoff to the discussion would be an undergraduate honors thesis from 2019here by Cloe Dickson. I tried to contact the author prior to publishing this, but was unsuccessful. There’s much good stuff in this 77 pages and I only excerpted a few bits below. She begins:

Three distinct questions will guide my study of the public lands ranching issue:

(1) What were the motivations of ‘Cattle-free by ‘93’?
(2) What were the direct and indirect outcomes?
(3) What does the formation of the ‘Cattle-free by ‘93’ movement tell us about the nature of rancher/environmentalist conflict?

She traces the relationship in the Sierra Club between zero-cut (remember that?) and zero-cud policies. She also tracks the extremism of no-cud and Cattle-free to being an impetus for efforts at collaboration between ranchers and environmentalists like the Malpais Borderlands Group and the Quivira Coalition. Her view is that the dialogue has shifted.

Cattle-free by ‘93’ has evolved significantly in the last 25 years. Widespread exurban development on and near western rangelands has dramatically changed the way in which people view the public lands ranching debate. The fear of habitat fragmentation from the environmental community, coupled with the desire to continue the western ranching tradition in the face of the ranchette and dude ranch phenomena, may prove to be an area of compromise between the once divided respective camps. In formal and informal arenas, the ‘Cows Not Condos’ campaigns marks a significant shift away from the cattle-free mindset that once dominated the western range.

I thought these arguments about social justice were interesting..

When viewed in an environmental justice frame, the public lands ranching issue becomes much more complex. Atencio argued that, “this is more than a ‘cows versus condos’ argument. And it is more than an argument of cows versus the loss of mere lifestyle or profession choice. It is an argument of a unique culture and communities that have endured in this region for 400 years. It is an argument of environmental justice” ( 2004, p. 23). It is not just about removing ranchers from public lands; the ‘Cattle-free by ‘93’ campaign directly interferes with many components of the culture of the rural American West. Atencio argued that viewing cattle ranching as a profit-motivated industry forces environmentalists to think that the only way to stop the damage done to rangelands is to outright remove all livestock. He warned that the “…the danger of straight and narrow economic thinking is that it fails to take into account the less quantifiable, though no less important, issues of social well-being and cultural vitality” (Attencio2004, p. 23). Atencio’s claims prove valuable in understanding the responses generated by ‘Cattle-free by ‘93’ and how broader anti-ranching rhetoric was received in the 21st century.

If you are a fan, as I am, of Justin Farrell’s book “The Battle for Yellowstone”, that might resonate with some of his observations that in the debates around Yellowstone, issues that are actually values and culture-based are treated as if they were really scientific and economic. Which gives folks much funding to generate more info, but does not address peoples’ real differences. As we used to say in planning, sometimes you need more analysis, but sometimes you just need more dialogue. Which may be why local collaboratives are more successful at finding middle ground.

Another topic Dickson discusses is why the Clinton Admin backed off their original Range Reform package. Seems like they lost the fire in their belly, they didn’t have the votes and or ????

I know many TSW readers were involved in all this. I’d be interested, as I’m sure future students will be, on your perspective on all this history.

And are the strategies of “just say no” and “fix the practices” in some sense complementary? Does emotional intensity developed in a “make those pesky ranchers go away” campaign get transferred in political capital that can be used to improve practices? Not sure that it has worked that way for “no-cut”.

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Final historical question:

In the paper..

Preservation, or the notion that wilderness must be put aside for its own sake, has long been a source of division within the natural resource management community. When Congress passed the Forest Management Act of 1897, forest reserves were opened up to logging, as well as mining and livestock grazing (Wuerthner 2002). While conservationists like Gifford Pinchot was a proponent of this move, John Muir on the other hand remained adamant that livestock grazing threatened watersheds and wildlife, as well as negatively impacting the ecology of the overall forest ecosystem (Wuerthner 2002).

I was under the impression that grazers and loggers, in different places, had been there first. For example in this history of the SW Region of the Forest Service

By the time the first forest reserves were proclaimed in 1891, the free use of public lands by cattlemen and sheepmen had become a way of life. They knew nothing of grazing capacity and there was no fund of technical knowledge about forage management to rely on. Overgrazing could not readily be recognized until in an advanced stage. Thus, when the Forest Service came into being February 1, 1905, the most complex problems facing southwestern foresters related to grazing rights and range management. Instructions to foresters in the Use Book regarding grazing responsibilities were very simple: “Inform yourself as to what sheep and cattle men graze their stock upon your district, the number he actually owns, and whether or not he confines himself to the range described in his permit.” [12]

What was actually going on on the land before the federal reserves were established? Does this vary by area?

We Still Don’t Understand What’s Killing Cow and Elk Calves in Colorado: and Draft Wolf Reintroduction Plan

It’s fascinating to me that scientists are thought to be able to predict movement of wildlife populations in fifty years due to climate change, but we don’t actually understand what makes them tick (or not, in this case).  In my view, better models are built from understanding what makes animals tick.. physiology, behavior, genetics, diseases, predation, and so on.

Mysterious Deaths of Cattle Near Meeker Colorado

This has attracted the attention of media across the country and in Britain.

The best one I’ve read for those interested in the details of biology, was written by the Klinglesmith family who owns the dead calves.  It’s an interesting story of how the ranchers, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Wildife Services, and various diagnostic laboratories  have worked together to figure out what happened.  The article even has references.  Apparently the cause is till  not clear. Warning: some of the photos are graphic.

This whole process has taught us that these investigations will require a lot of time and effort on the part of CPW staff and landowners in rural Colorado. We promise to continue to work with the local staff here in Rio Blanco County to figure out whether wolves are present or if there is another explanation for the apparent stress and trauma these calves suffered.
As a multi-generational ranching family, we are committed to running a progressive livestock and wildlife operation. However, we are also committed to working with those in our state and keeping them updated on our scenario.
Bridging the gap that exists between urban and rural is important to us. The future of livestock production in our state remains equally important. We understand this is a highly contentious issue, but hopefully we can agree on the fact that collaboration is key to working toward a solution. The relationship between state agencies, livestock associations, the Colorado public, and ranching families is crucial in moving forward with the process of coexisting with all wildlife on our landscape.

Colorado Draft Wolf Reintroduction Plan Coming Out

Comprehensive story on CPR here. Worth a read for those interested. CPW seems to have really engaged with the public on this one, certainly not an easy task.

Adding More Wolves to Colorado, Why?

So you may wonder why Colorado is adding more wolves when it already has them. Here’s a bit of history to give context.

You’d have to ask the folks (mostly urban) who voted for the state ballot initiative to reintroduce them.  At the time there were two schools of thought, one that they were coming in naturally, so why mess with Mother Nature, and the other.. I guess they felt Mother Nature needed help. But isn’t that unnatural? Oh well. Here’s where the $ came from.  Sorry about the ad in my screenshot.

 

Here’s the county votes..green came out for and red against the initiative.

The vote ended up being very close, Now a ballot initiative is an interesting critter. It’s a simple vote, so there is no analysis of say, impacts to communities.  Effectively, and unilaterally, urban areas are able to impact rural communities.  Even though the urban areas may have higher incomes, which in other contexts might trigger social justice concerns. In fact, Catholic moral theologians could probably have an entire conference devoted to whether this kind of decision-making follows the social justice principle of subsidiarity or not.

But it is what it is, and the CPW folks seem to be doing their best to honor the views of those impacted.

We Still Don’t Understand About SW Colorado Elk Calves

Interesting article by Bruce Finley today in the Denver Post.  There may be a paywall.

But in southwestern Colorado elk have been decreasing for two decades from more than 140,000 to around 122,000 – raising concerns.  Elk calf survival rates south of Interstate 70 are estimated at 30 or so per 100 cows,  compared with rates in northwestern Colorado near Craig and Steamboat Springs around 58 calves per 100 cows.

Going back to the previous article, northwestern Colorado is the area potentially planned for wolf reintroduction, and already has wolves moving in.

CPW crews also are conducting research into why more calves aren’t surviving.

The forces impeding elk survival include loss of habitat and degradation due to roads, traffic, energy development, and increased residential and commercial construction along migration routes. Surging recreational activities in western Colorado also complicates elk survival.

State and federal ecologists point to climate warming as a factor, favoring hot and dry conditions that reduce vegetation elk in southwestern Colorado need. Aridity in some areas is shrinking vegetation that elk eat and that provides cover for calves facing predators: coyotes, bears and mountain lions.

Now it seems like we know what elk eat, and what they use for hiding cover for their calves,  thanks to observations and generations of researchers.  And it seems like different years are wetter or drier. For example check out this map of Colorado’s water year 2022. where many parts of SW Colorado seem to be doing quite well. So if it were climate warming, then CPW or someone could compare calf survival in years with more grass and less grass, or even elevations with different physical conditions.  Perhaps that’s what CPW is looking at.  Looks like there have been calf declines in other places as well. , in this example South Dakota. Maybe those folks figured out what was going on?

Moo calves disco up the Green River, griz and wolves not invited: from Wyofile

 

Somewhere along the lines of discussing prescribed fire and slash burning, someone raised the point of “don’t our technologies allow us to monitor hot spots better?”  Which reminded me of this “cool technology to help reduce environmental conflicts.”

It’s about flashing lights that help protect livestock from predation, thanks to Wyofile.  This is not the ultimate solution, as mammals can adapt fairly readily, but perhaps will work for a while. Check out the video.

Nevertheless, even substandard prototype flashtags were effective when they were first tried out in summer 2021. One goal of that trial, attempted with a sheep herd near Stanley, Idaho, was to see if the motion-triggered flashing bothered the livestock.

“We actually would go out at sunset and sunrise and collect behavioral data on the sheep, to see if they were behaving differently than the ones that weren’t wearing the tags,” Young said. “We weren’t seeing any differences.”

At the same time, the LED lights did seem to afford some protection against predators. About 75 of the 300-member Idaho sheep herd got the flashtags, and although just 25% were lit, the whole population held up.

“Every year that same herd suffers depredation by wolves,” Young said, “and last summer there were no depredations by wolves.”

Some early results from a much more extensive trial in 2022 are equally promising. That one involved a Utah woolgrower who was experiencing “severe” coyote depredation on his small herd, Young said. All seven sheep that remained in that band got the flashtags.

“One of the sheep stuck its head through a fence and ended up ripping out the ear tag,” Young said. “And that was the only sheep that got killed by a coyote since we put the ear tags in.”

For his dissertation, Utah State University PhD student Aaron Bott, whom Young is advising, is investigating how wolves use human-dominated landscapes in order to mitigate conflicts. One chapter looks at the flashtags, 4,000 of which are being deployed in Arizona, New Mexico, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Wyoming after Amazon.com’s car rim lights were cleaned out.

Conservation in Cow Country: Guest Post by Toner Mitchell

Here’s a post by Toner Mitchell. I always like to share stories of people working together to solve problems rather than enemizing and castigating.  But who is working with recreationists to reduce their impact?  And, when is tolerance a good thing (e.g. seeing cows)? Here’s a link to this story on the TU website.

In New Mexico’s Jemez Mountains, TU and ranchers are working together to keep streams healthy and improve range productivity.

On our way to inspect his grazing allotment, Manuel Lucero and I pull over next to a tree where some campers have left their trash in a neat and organized pile of boxes and tied up plastic sacks.

Lucero notes this as a common occurrence after most summer weekends, especially on this one dirt road, perhaps the busiest thoroughfare connecting Albuquerque to its playgrounds in the Jemez Mountains.

“They actually believe they’re being responsible,” he says. “Someone else is supposed to pick up after them, and they’re trying to make it easy. Tonight, the bears will drag all this down to the creek, and the trash will eventually float into our ditches and fields.”

Manuel Lucero working on well to provide off-stream watering.

In the years I’ve known Manuel, I’ve never seen him without his black cowboy hat on. He takes guilty pleasure in watching the TV series “Yellowstone” and in dropping the occasional irreverent joke. As president of the San Diego Grazing Association, however, this rancher in his thirties is dead serious.

Manuel runs cattle on about 96,000 acres of the Santa Fe National Forest, and he embraces the responsibility of stewarding so much land.

Some of the land he grazes provides habitat for native Rio Grande cutthroat trout and several listed wildlife species, as well as water for small farming communities downstream. With these realities in mind, Trout Unlimited reached out to Manuel’s grazing association in 2015 to explore the possibility of simultaneously improving riparian habitat and range productivity.

Healthy riparian habitat means happy trout streams. And in the Jemez mountains, a recreational haven serving three of New Mexico’s largest cities, healthy riparian habitat increasingly means happy ranchers, who try to avoid conflict with other public land users when possible.

Since their partnership began, TU and the San Diego Grazing Association have joined forces on fence repairs and renovations of water lines and drinkers. We’ve shared expenses on a mobile corral, a water storage tank, and battery-powered chainsaws to clear fallen timber from fences during fire season.

Through these and other actions, this partnership has succeeded in distributing grazing pressure more evenly across the San Diego and neighboring Cebolla-San Antonio allotments.

Drinker drained by weekend campers and filled with trash; empty drinkers push cows to the creeks.

In 2021, we teamed up with the Forest Service and The Nature Conservancy on an effort to increase grazing efficiency and to discourage cows from loitering in riparian areas. The project, which included approximately $87,000.00 in funding from TNC’s Rio Grande Water Fund, entailed the drilling of two canyon-rim wells on the Cebolla-San Antonio allotment.

The wells will gravity-feed a network of drinking lines and enable the utilization of certain upland pastures with lots of clumpy tall grass. The grass in these pastures is decadent, a result of being left almost completely unbitten by elk and cattle.

With drinking capacity provided by the new wells, these under-used pastures will absorb more pressure (and manure), while enabling heavily grazed meadows to receive some rest.


Ten miles up the road, Manuel and I are parked at the upper end of a long meadow next to a fenced enclosure surrounding a locked well house with a sheet metal roof.

The well supplies drinking troughs across the Virgin, Stable, and Holiday mesas that rise above us to the south—it is essentially the nerve center of much of the San Diego allotment.

Having grazed for their allotted days, the cows have left the meadow for the mesa tops. From Memorial Day until school starts is the season of the weekender, when residents of Albuquerque seek relief from the urban heat and bustle.

Manuel points out thicker stands of forest where RVs can’t penetrate. The grass there has grown about a foot since being eaten. Elsewhere across the camping footprint, the only grass that grows is smashed into dusty ground.

“But if one cow shows up here this weekend, I’ll hear about it on Monday,” Lucero says. “I get it, campers don’t want to see cows, but cows don’t like people either. Cows are smart, but they’re also dumb. They’d rather be up top, but with people all over the mountain they get confused. Let’s be honest, people are everywhere.”

He’s not exaggerating. Scanning the sloping meadow, we see occupied, often illegal, campsites almost any place one can park a car; in ranching parlance, it’s quite a few “head” of people.

Manuel notes the irony in how, come evening, the whole canyon will smell like grilling beef and hot dogs and how the same people bashing his cows will leave their fire rings full of beer cans.

Already this summer, an RV owner broke the lock off the wellhouse and plugged into its power source; campers drained one of his troughs and used it as a trash bin; and on any given year, hikers will invariably bathe in the troughs, oblivious to the repellant effect soap and lotion have on thirsty cows and wildlife.

People cut fences to make way for ATVs. They do donuts in the pastures.

One fine individual used a Sawzall to cut a door in a water tank critical to minimizing cattle presence in riparian areas of the Rio Cebolla. Purchased jointly by TU and the San Diego Grazing Association, this tank was rendered into a suitable dwelling for the vandal and his small herd of goats, and useless for the purpose of watering cattle and wildlife.

Vandalized water tank paid for by TU and rancher partners. Functional watering systems help keep cows out of important riparian ecosystems.

As Manuel talks, I’m impressed by a patience seeping through his frustration, a seeming acceptance of adversity as a part of the ranching life that can drive one toward improvement.

Manuel, his father Mariano, brother Michael, and the members of the association all share common ancestors who settled in the Jemez country in the late 1700s. Back then, everyone was a rancher, a farmer, a hunter, a gatherer and, most important, a neighbor or friend to native Pueblo people already occupying the valley.

Back then the land was definitely public, but in an existential sense. Multiple use was not only a matter of cooperation, but of life and death.

As part of our commitment to protecting and restoring the Rio Grande cutthroat, itself a cultural icon, TU will continue building partnerships with ranchers and other stakeholders in the Rio Grande watershed. Honoring deep-rooted practices will be key to sustaining adaptive stewardship. As Manuel Lucero says, “Our people wouldn’t have lasted this long if we couldn’t find ways of understanding different ways of living.”

The “Grizzlies and Us” Series

Here’s a really interesting series in the Missoulian. It’s it’s a 10- part series comprised of more than 20 stories. Lots of stories and they seem to be visible to those without a Missoulian subscription (thank you, Missoulian! and Lee Enterprises!)

I picked this one as the bikes/grizzlies issue seems to be of interest to TSW readers, but there are many others.. feel free to discuss any.  Here’s one about livestock guardian dogs and technology protecting sheep, and the work of ranchers and the group People and Carnivores.

Grizzlies are expanding their range.. how are people getting along with them?

US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Wayne Kasworm had just replaced Servheen as interim leader of the grizzly recovery effort. Treat’s death crystallized one of his top tasks: Getting people to agree on how much safety they all must give up to coexist with bears.

“They’re wild animals, and we are not controlling them,” Kasworm said. “What we attempt to do is provide information so people can make reasoned judgments about what is safe activity or not safe activity. We’re trying to get some conversation going, to get people thinking about what is going on out there in the woods.”

To deal with objective dangers in the outdoors, people already self-limit their recreation in many ways. Boaters avoid rivers during spring runoff, or accept the consequences of lost gear, wrecked boats, and possible death. Golfers voluntarily leave the links when a thunderstorm brings lightning over their metal clubs and spiked shoes. Snowmobilers and backcountry skiers check avalanche forecasts and weigh the risks of the day’s adventure.

“We’re trying to get folks to recognize and take on responsibility for their own safety when they walk into known grizzly bear habitat, when grizzly bear habitat is taking over more and more of Montana,” Kasworm told me. “When a bear results in a human safety issue, or it’s killing livestock repeatedly, we remove the bear. But if you’re tooling around on your mountain bike and you bump into the bear and you’re scared, that’s not necessarily a reason to remove the bear.”

Is it a reason to remove the bikes? And what about everything else humans like to do in bear country? Whose interests rule?

Three years to the day after Treat’s death, Flathead National Forest Supervisor Chip Weber declared his disagreement with Servheen’s report. New controversy had arisen over a commercial ultramarathon and a backcountry bike shuttle service in the national forest land around Whitefish, Montana, about twenty miles from Coram.

“I want to start by strongly repudiating the notion that as an agency, we ought not promote, foster or permit activities because engagement in those activities presents risk to the participants,” Weber told the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee’s summer 2019 gathering in Missoula. “The issues around this are much broader than trail use, and grizzly bears and both people and wildlife may suffer if the discussion isn’t expanded.”

As to Board of Review report, Weber told me he had great personal respect for Servheen but “his (Servheen’s) focus is grizzly bear recovery and solely grizzly bear recovery. Mine is serving the American public and the needs they want in the context of many wildlife species and an overall conservation mission that’s very, very broad.”

Individual sporting events like the Whitefish ultramarathon have such minimal impact on grizzly bears, Weber said, they fall under a categorical exclusion from in-depth environmental review. At the same time, those events endear increasing numbers of people to their public lands as the number of users grows year after year.

“There’s a broad public out there with needs to be served and not just the needs of the few,” Weber said. “We think that greater good for the greatest number will be served. That fosters connectivity with wildlands and a united group of people that can support conservation. And the best conservation for bears is served by figuring out how to have these human activities in ways that are as safe as they can be, understanding you can never make anything perfectly safe.”

Grizzly CSI by Angus Thuermer for Wyofile

Wyoming Game and Fish Large Carnivore Biologist Zach Turnbull determines the cause of death on a calf in 2014 (provided Mark Gocke, Wyoming Game and Fish).

Another great article by Angus Thuermer of Wyofile. This depicts the daily life of one of those professionals in the middle- and in the details- of a thorny natural resource/environmental conflict. It also shows how important trust is for people involved in making the policy machinations happen in real life and the role of professional judgment based on experience. There’s also a great deal on the nuts and bolts of the Wyoming Animal Damage Compensation Program.

The entire article is well worth reading, but I excerpted the paragraph about Turnbull’s professional credibility

$1.5 million
On this hot July 18, Turnbull isn’t satisfied he has an answer on this cow until he is done skinning. He drags the hide out from the morass of would-be hamburger and lays it out in the sagebrush and grass.

He examines the underside of the skin, looking for puncture holes from the teeth of a bear or wolf, rips from a grizzly’s claws.

“For being as ugly as she is, she’s pretty clean,” he says. “Clean” meaning there’s no sign of attack. “She doesn’t have a hole in her except where she’s [been] fed on.”

Although he will make his report later, at this point he considers the “more likely than not” standard of predation. “I’d say she’s far below that,” he says.

Turnbull’s 16 years’ field experience from his post in Pinedale has earned him credibility. In 2019 the Green River Cowbelles/Cattlewomen honored him as a Friend of Agriculture for his work. Ranchers called him responsive, responsible and fair.

“I’ve been there on those kills,” says Charles Price, one of the ranchers whose stock grazes near Union Pass. “I have a lot of respect for him.”

“He goes through it and looks — there’s maggots crawling, flies, it smells bad,” Price says. “He sits there and does the work. I couldn’t do it myself.”

Price doesn’t always agree with Turnbull’s verdicts and has “bumped heads with him a few times,” he says. But, “most of the time I would bet on his call even when I disagree with him,” Price says. “I support him.”

Fed/State Coordination

Repeat offenders
There’s another aspect to Turnbull’s job. When grizzlies are persistent in killing stock, Game and Fish will move or kill them.

That’s done in coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But Turnbull often makes the first call.

Ranchers seek to avoid depredation. The cattle association has altered its grazing sequence to keep smaller animals farther from grizzly haunts and tried other methods.

“After the 2015 grazing season, the Association worked with an organization to sponsor a number of seminars focused on methods to reduce large carnivore depredation of cattle,” Sommers wrote in his declaration. “Out of these discussions, in an effort to reduce depredations, the Association tried cattle bunching techniques in one pasture system for two consecutive years.

“The goal was to make cattle less susceptible to predation,” he wrote. “[H]owever, the Association did not see any reduction in depredation and has discontinued that practice.”

There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for when to trap or move a bear, Turnbull said. “One strike, two strikes, three strikes — it’s not really how it happens,” he said. “It’s not a really good description of conflict management.

“There are bears that we have captured and removed the first time we have captured them,” he said. “There are bears we have captured several times before we removed or didn’t remove them.”

PERCs Take on Strategies for Eastern Washington Wolves

At one of the WGA (Western Governors’s Assocation) Working Lands meetings, I remember a speaker saying “some people think of ranchers as the enemy, what if we thought of them as partners?”. A number of years ago, I worked with environmental lawyers and others on the regulations around releasing genetically engineered organisms into the environment. It seemed like people who have worked in the polluting chemicals kinds of environmental issues wouldn’t think of Monsanto as a partner. The act of regulating industries should be more or less arms-length (you have to understand their processes, or you can’t be good regulators). But maybe natural resources-related environmental conflicts call for a different, more inclusive, and less adversarial approach. We see that with fisheries management, the sage grouse initiative, and so on.

I was thinking of #EnvironmentWithoutEnemies when I read this summary of a report by PERC. The whole summary and report can be found here. I bolder a few of my favorite statements.

The governor’s letter demonstrates the difficulty of managing the political pressures associated with wolf recovery. Wolf populations have been steadily increasing and are not dispersing across the state as initially expected, creating a high-conflict zone where wolves and ranchers are both heavily concentrated. The weaknesses in the state’s approach to managing this conflict are being magnified, and there is a need to adjust the existing management strategy.

Additionally, as WDFW begins planning for post-recovery, there is an opportunity to examine the current strategy and determine what changes should be made to protect the livelihood of ranchers while ensuring that wolves continue on their path to full recovery and delisting throughout the state.

Ensuring there continues to be a healthy ranching economy is a matter of fairness, economic strength, and environmental sustainability. The counties most affected by the return of wolves have some of the highest unemployment rates in the state, nearly double the state average. Ranchers, range riders, and hunters are also good partners in caring for the land and in funding wildlife stewardship. Successful wolf management that protects the livelihoods of ranchers and farmers while helping wolf populations grow is economically, morally and environmentally responsible.

Based on the history of wolf recovery in Washington and other western states, the best path would combine (1) improved non-lethal management approaches, (2) more rapid lethal removal of problem packs, and (3) expanded compensation programs designed by ranchers and others in the community where conflict is occurring. Some of these tactics are already being used but are not as effective as they could be for a variety of reasons. Additionally, since wolves have not dispersed across the state, the state should delist the species in Eastern Washington, as the federal government has, and focus its recovery efforts on other regions where wolf recovery is proceeding more slowly. The state can also pilot post-recovery strategies in Northeast Washington where the density of the wolf population is at a level that justifies delisting. Those pilot strategies should be developed primarily by the interested parties representing ranchers, conservation groups, and others in the affected communities. The state will always act as a backstop to any agreement, but it should encourage and be guided by a collaborative solution. Doing so would encourage groups to engage cooperatively rather than appealing primarily to the agency or to judges to intervene, which would increase conflict, mistrust and animosity. There is no quick solution, but as the experiences of other western states demonstrate, wolf recovery can be successful while providing ranchers with fairness and adequate levels of protection.