Living with predators – adaptation

“Grizzlies won’t be a problem for livestock. They’ll prey on hikers.”

So said the wildlife conflict specialist from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife at a panel discussion on “Living with Predators” at Central Washington University.

He also advised students majoring in wildlife biology to take a double major and study political science or the psychology of human behavior, because it’s the humans who have a hard time adapting.

The panel agreed on a long list of wildlife often in conflict with humans, and it’s not all cougars, wolves and bears.

Steve Wetzel, the wildlife conflict management specialist, said he has more problems with ungulates who adapt too well to human habitat. Deer and elk are a nuisance for home gardeners, who at least have the option of fencing, and can cause significant damage to commercial crops.

But it’s the apex predators that draw the most attention. Cougar populations have rebounded, wolves have reclaimed their range in Eastern Washington and grizzly reintroduction is being discussed for the North Cascades.

The panel included a rancher and an environmentalist both currently serving on the Wolf Advisory Group, commonly called the WAG.

Shawn Cantrell, from Defenders of Wildlife, described how his group has heavily invested in supporting nonlethal measures to avoid conflict. WAG members have worked to find compromise, and he’s adapted his views to accept the science supporting lethal removal of problem wolves.

But the environmental community is not monolithic. In working to reconcile extreme views on each end of the spectrum, from no wolves to all wolves, it’s easier to move ranchers toward the middle by demonstrating management that works than to budge the wolf worshippers with science.

Ranchers already deal with unpredictability, from weather to market prices, in raising the cheap food Americans have been trained to expect, and wolves add one more variable in a business with thin margins. As Wetzel put it: “Everybody wants to see wolves but nobody wants to pay.”

He suggested the intensive nonlethal methods like range riders are economically unsustainable and said society needs to quickly move to managing wolves as a normal predator similar to cougars.

The rancher’s perspective was articulated by WAG member Molly Linville, a wildlife biologist by training. She is co-owner and primary operator of the 6,000-acre KV Ranch in Palisades (near Wenatchee), which has been in her husband’s family since 1910. Linville is the one physically out on the range in all weather, every day. Raising cattle is her job.

Linville frequently moves her cattle between pastures as part of a restorative grazing plan for the ranch. The KV Ranch provides good wildlife habitat, and cougars are currently the No. 1 predator. WDFW recommends livestock guardian dogs to reduce human-to-wildlife conflict. Linville adapted her management practices, and the big dogs have done their job, roaming the open range with the cattle herd and reducing cougar kills to zero.

It is, or rather was, a textbook example of a rancher adapting to coexist with wildlife.

It’s harder to coexist with humans.

The ranch was established 40 years before the county put a road up the Palisades Canyon, bisecting the ranch. It’s an attractive, scenic route for bicyclists. The dogs aren’t a hazard to the cyclists, but any unidentified mammalian creature moving fast in the vicinity of the herd gets their attention. Large dogs escorting cyclists through the ranch led to complaints of loose dogs and a threat by the county to remove them. The dogs, that is, not the cyclists.

Linville adapted again. She’s keeping the big dogs locked up during daylight hours and letting them out to protect the herd after dark. Except during calving season, when she needs those livestock guardians on patrol full time and an encounter with an early spring cyclist is a risk she has to take.

Adaptive nonlethal wildlife conflict avoidance is lost to human rigidity.

Wetzel suggested the grizzly enthusiasts from West Side counties probably don’t fully understand the impact grizzly management will have on their recreational access to North Cascades hiking trails. Complaints about loose grizzlies will get the recreationists excluded from trails. The humans will be forced to adapt.