Colorado wolf reintroduction to move forward | Hacker News Reader

Colorado wolf reintroduction to move forward

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138 pointsPaulHoule226 comments

I'm a resident of Estes Park, Colorado, what is essentially Rocky Mountain National Park, and my partner in life is a biologist in RMNP where she tracks and monitors elk and moose populations. This has been on the forefront of our minds for awhile. While I’ll leave my personal opinion out of it, I do want to add a couple of notes.

Wolves have been crossing the boarder into Colorado for some time - the state is not completely void. Additionally, they have already released a handful in the last couple of weeks that were brought in from the PNW.

The topic of reintroduction is extremely complex and has led to heated and polarizing debates with residents across the state - even stretching into Wyoming politics where hunters are using electronic calls to lure them back across the border for hunting. This has resulted in a lot of confusion as to what the research outlines.

If anyone is curious, I have found this paper to be a great introduction to the topic. https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/csp2...

Please remember that this is an extremely complex issue that is worth having constructive discussion on. I have faith that HN can keep it civil where other platforms have failed to.

Thanks David. I'm just a few miles downhill (Masonville) and I agree that it's a complex issue. The intentional introduction of any species raises many ethical questions. Humans have completely altered the ecosystem by removing wolves over the last 100 years. We understand this now, and the "reintroduce wolves to restore the ecosystem" reaction is a very reasonable public response. But it's only a start, let's not get distracted by charismatic megafauna.

We cannot pin ecosystem health on the presence/absence of a single species. This is not ecosystem restoration, it's a political accounting trick to manage species counts ... and pretend that's a proxy for a balanced ecosystem (without understanding habitat fragmentation and loss, energy and nutrient cycling, climate change pressures, etc). So the challenge is, can we sustain an ecosystem to support new wolves and ourselves?

To those of us who want to produce the land for economic gain - I applaud you, homo economicus. But when our market demands every last watt of productivity be directed to human markets, there's not much room to allow wolves to roam amongst livestock. If you're competing in the modern financialized agriculture markets, you're already under debt pressure and committed to a full-scale unconditional war against every non-human species - reintroduction of wolves is a direct attack.

I'm not for or against wolf re-introduction. I'm for ecosystem restoration and a sane economy. I'm for humans taking care of the land, meeting our needs AND carving out areas where wolves and other large mammals are allowed to "make a living". And that goes much deeper than just busing a few wolves into Colorado.

> remember that this is an extremely complex issue

Hmph. No possyfooting. Apex predators are essential for properly functioning ecosystems. We know this know, there isn't any doubt. Want an ecosystem that isn't on the verge of collapse? Introduce some appropriate apex predators. There is no argument. Is the issue complex? Yes, because humans don't like competition in their status as apex predators, and god forbid, a human could be hurt by a wolf, or a famer could lose a few heads of lifestock.

Remember, 97% of terrestrial vertebrate biomass is humans and their livestock. If don't do what's needed to maintain that last 3%, well, then humans and our livestock will soon be 100% of terrestrial vertrbrate biomass.

It’s not ecologically complex, it’s socially complex. Flat out steamrolling the ranchers just because you can is foolish, and will create generations of simmering resentment. Actual governance involves hearing and recognizing their concerns and, where appropriate, addressing them as possible.

Bearing in mind I’m not American, but isn’t the issue:

- someone wants to be a farmer - we need to destabilise the ecosystem.

One of those is a bit stronger than the other, why is “tough luck, build a fence” not a valid argument? They chose to be out there, they accept the risk and requirements of operating in these conditions. This now includes wolves.

It's not just the building of the fence, it's having to maintain it. Wolves are clever, they can figure out ways around. What's more is livestock need to graze, they can't stay in fenced enclosures at all times, nobody owns that much land. Factory farmed livestock live like that, and we rightly view it as cruel to raise animals that way.

Protecting them would likely require more proactive countermeasures, but that can also be fatal to the wolves which we don't want and will get the ranchers hit with a hefty fine.

The most realistic option is a subsidized insurance or reimbursement scheme if the wolves do take livestock. But then you have all the issues with fraud and perverse incentives to worry about.

Colorado already has a program like you describe

> Introduced with bipartisan support, the SB23-255 Wolf Depredation Compensation Fund appropriates $525,000 over the next two years to cover livestock losses.

> Under the state’s final plan, ranchers will be compensated for vet bills to treat injured animals, including herding dogs, with up to $15,000 for animal deaths.

Montana has a similar program, which paid out for 97 head last year. Montana is home to over 2 million cattle.

Part of the problem is the ranchers don’t have good tools to repel the wolves. They can’t kill them. Wolves get around fences, kill guard dogs, etc. They are persistent, smart, and learn, so they can learn to defeat traps, and quickly lose their fear of non-lethal deterrence.

You might be tempted to say, ok tough luck then, ranching is just over. But the public does like the product (beef), and ranchers will fight all the harder if your proposal is an existential threat to their way of life.

With time, the loss program, and involvement with wildlife management, hopefully good methods will be found.

If it was as simple as build a fence and tolerate a little risk, we wouldn’t be stuck in this debate.

True. But financial markets produce a strong incentive to consume that last 3% as fast as possible, and that's exactly the problem. It has nothing to do with individual farmers, it's a systematic problem.

Last numbers I know (12/2022) are 4% wild, 96% humans and livestock. Not trying to pedantic but if you have another source than this one can you share it ? Those numbers are so close that they seems to consolidate each others.

https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass

The 97%-3% numbers came from the top of my head from an article I read some years ago (so slightly outdated) and obviously these kinds of estimates have a significant error bar, but also the ourworldindata page you link to talks about something slightly different; they talk about all mammals, which includes marine mammals but excludes other vertebrates, like birds and reptiles. My numbers were, at the time, cited (as I stated) as "terrestrial vertebrate biomass", which would exclude marine mammals but include birds and reptiles. I think all birds would be considered terrestrial vertebrates because even penguins have to come on land to breed.

Thanks for the clarification! That makes sense.

Ya but what if the wolves eat that last 3%?

Is a legit concern, but biodiversity does not work like that.

To start, predators block the spreading of diseases that would kill its preys.

Wolves will also reduce the amount of common preys, creating opportunities for the less common preys, will reduce the number of small predators and probably exile them to the frontiers of its territory, will boost tree grow, and will create new temporary ecosystems based on carcasses.

This last can seem gross, but it sustain thousands of invertebrates and help raptors and small vertebrates to survive winter

The comment you're addressing seems like an ecosystem equivalent to what economists call the "lump of labor fallacy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

"Lump of biomass" fallacy might be a name for it.

As for the carrion bit, apparently when they returned wolves to Yellowstone, it wasn't just the invertebrates and raptors. Even the bears started putting on weight because the wolves were surplus hunters and would leave a lot of meat lying around for the bears to scavenge before winter.

The moose was reintroduced and it has brought havoc to the beaver habitat, especially in rocky. We need wolves or something to balance the moose. It has become a very different park since the moose has invaded

Yes! However, there is some good news I'd like to add - they made some progress on the beaver habitat over the last few years here in Rocky. Still so so far to go but a small win to celebrate.

How did the moose damage the beaver habitat? Do they forage the same plants and outcompete the beavers at them?

That is a big piece of the puzzle - overgrazing of willows.

https://www.rockymountainnationalpark.com/gallery/moose/#:~:....

https://www.nps.gov/articles/beaver-occupancy-in-rocky-mount...

Thanks for commenting David! I’m based in CO too and appreciate your insight.

The best state! In fact, I just went to Estes Park on Saturday for a tour of The Shining Hotel (Stanley Hotel) and our guide went on a bit of a background speech about these Colorado wolves, didn't expect it here - but glad to see a discussion!

> While I’ll leave my personal opinion out of it, I do want to add a couple of notes.

What's your opinion, if you don't mind me asking?

Personally I can't believe anyone is against this project. It's a complicated issue but the removal of wolves has had damn near catastrophic impact on pretty much everyone east of California from deer to ticks to elk. Even the ranchers are better off in the short run and especially long term.

(I lose livestock every year to mountain lions so I'm no stranger to the cost of keeping apex predators around)

I've been pretty consistent with leaving my opinions out when discussing the topic, mainly because of how polarizing it is here, and instead encouraging people to establish their own viewpoints based on solid sources. With that said, I'm heavily in favor of reintroduction. I believe the pros of intervention outweigh the cons of not doing so significantly and that the threat to Colorado ranchers is exaggerated - I'll leave it at that.

The people against this have valid reasons. For example, ranchers who don't want their livestock eaten by wolves that they can't defend against, legally.

Ranchers are compensated for livestock lost to predation. In Montana, 137 livestock were lost to grizzlies, wolves, and mountain lions in 2023. [1]

For comparison, roughly 25000 cattle are lost to cold every year in Montana.

[1] https://liv.mt.gov/Attached-Agency-Boards/Livestock-Loss-Boa...

Are livestock lost to cold also compensated? Because that seems like it would create a perverse incentive not to build shelter (i.e. barns) for your livestock.

The common method in Europe is just to move or left the carcasses out, so they are scavenged by several animals. After a week wolves appeared and left traces, so it was paid as "wolf kill". This was known because some people put hidden cameras.

When bear kills started to being paid by an ecologist group there was an awful lot of scam attempts also. I think that paying for predator damage are counterproductive at best, and at worst "fossilize" as a system to scam taxers and reinforce scammers.

Is not much different than expecting to be paid if you go for a beach day and you are stung by a jellyfish, or it rained that day. There are old proven solutions to reduce drastically this loses, is just that farmers choose not to use them.

> For example, ranchers who don't want their livestock eaten by wolves that they can't defend against, legally.

I recall listening to NPR one day on this topic, and they pointed out that ranchers lose several orders of magnitude more livestock due to other preventable causes that are mostly in their control. It's not likely they care that much about their livestock.

On the other hand this is sort of like saying, you already spend hundreds of dollars on unnecessary entertainment and other discretionary spending so you shouldn't be complaining when a new mandatory "entertainment tax" is established. Whether a business (or a person) is accepting of any given set of losses does not obligate them to be accepting of further losses.

Quite an unrelated point. This isn't asking them to spend more on what they're already spending on. It's about them claiming something that isn't true. The data indicates they really don't care that much about their cattle.

> further losses

Losses that are generally compensated by the government

Eminent domain requires the government to compensate you for your losses too, that doesn't usually make people happy about the losses.

Sheep are generally fungible, land and real estate not so much

Like I said I have to deal with the same issue thanks to mountain lions. I don't think it's a valid reason, it's a supremely selfish and shortsighted one.

The regulations on wolves are different. You can only get permission to use legal force on a case by case basis if they are attacking livestock (or if you catch them in the act).

You can use force against a wolf attacking a working dog or yourself, but not a pet.

In all other cases, you must use non-lethal detergent methods.

I live in California so the only minor difference is that you can use lethal force if a mountain lion is attacking a domestic animal but the CDFW will be on your ass and you better be sure it was the only option or you'll get prosecuted for poaching. (I just shoot a shotgun into the air which scares them off)

Otherwise you need a depredation permit that are "must issue" if you have evidence of a mountain lion attacking your livestock but only one in ten applicants are granted a lethal depredation permit. The rest must use non-lethal deterrents because lethal force is only authorized if there's a genuine threat to public safety.

For a rancher or someone living in a rural area, lethal permits are rarely issued. In several parts of the state like the Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountains permits are no longer issued at all.

In a different post, someone mentioned that livestock lost to wolves receive compensation. Is it the same for mountain lions? That seems like an excellent way to reduce requests for "depredation permit". (LOL: What a term!)

No, but mountain lions aren't pack hunters that can really threaten commercial livestock. They usually only predate solitary animals on smaller farms and even though it's far more traumatic for us than a rancher losing one head of cattle out of hundreds, we don't want to kill them. The state doesn't have to bribe us. They're basically sacred in this state and some like P22 even become mini celebrities.

(The term depredation comes from military attacks on helpless villages so the term is very fitting, both in terms of the mountain lion attacking livestock and humans hunting mountain lions)

Wow, thank you to share about mountain lion P-22 from Los Angeles valley. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-22

Livestock predation is a common threat around the world. Are ranchers in Colorado uniquely unequipped to adopt any of the solutions used by ranchers elsewhere?

Colorado ranchers absolutely are uniquely unequipped to deal with predation. In fact, I heartily suggest that you meet one in person and try suggesting it.

> Colorado ranchers absolutely are uniquely unequipped to deal with predation.

Zero trolling: I don't understand this sentence. Are you saying that ranchers in other states have different options to deal with apex predators? If yes, can you please explain. I am curious to learn more.

They are making a joke that ranchers in Colorado are trigger-happy cowboys and will murder someone like me for suggesting that their current ranching methods are bad and need to be updated.

The joke is based on a very Hollywood-informed idea of what this region is like (think Wild West movies and TV shows). It is not a reflection of reality.

Not being in or from the region, my impression from brief interactions with the lobbyists they send up to Washington has been that many of the ranchers are, themselves, trying to cosplay a Wild West fantasy. But this is probably largely overrepresenting the "gentleman ranchers" (who are actually just heirs to oil money or something) who own a ranch as a lifestyle aesthetic rather than a livelihood.

However, it does seem that these guys have a dramatically outsized influence in political representation around these interests unfortunately.

Untrue but I genuinely like your prose style

A previous commenter asked “Are ranchers in Colorado uniquely unequipped to adopt any of the solutions used by ranchers elsewhere?”. I interpret this as snark and was answering in kind. Here in the western USA ranchers have been very, very adept at dealing with predators, human and otherwise, for 150+ years. It’s the stuff of movie and TV legend, most recently in shows like “Yellowstone”.

The options are restricted mostly by law and local custom.

> A previous commenter asked “Are ranchers in Colorado uniquely unequipped to adopt any of the solutions used by ranchers elsewhere?”. I interpret this as snark and was answering in kind.

It seemed like an honest, innocent question, not snark at all. The response seemed dismissive and snarky, though.

This is a good reason to not try to get revenge for what you believe to be "snark": you might be totally wrong in your judgement. Best to just respond honestly and straightforwardly.

You’re probably right. Rereading it still feels like snark to me, but that’s not a great reason to reply as I did. Thank you for pointing it out.

Shepherd dogs, enclosures and buildings are very effective defending cattle.

And government can promote the common good, saving all taxers millions, even if this means that one farmer will lose a thousand. This is how being in a society works. In a recent study, European Wolves attacked around 0,063% of the total sheep. A really small price to pay for reducing your chances to die in a deer car crash, or catching lyme disease.

> even stretching into Wyoming politics where hunters are using electronic calls to lure them back across the border for hunting

I think there's an argument to be made if the hunting method extends into the state where it's illegal (sounds waves traveling) then you're in violation of that state, since the lil would not have happened if the hunting method didn't traverse state lines.

Enforcement is perfectly impossible. Source: lived in Wyoming.

It’s hard, not impossible. We need enforcement like we enforce endangered rhinos in Kenya from poachers.

I have a sound localization project that can help with that

https://github.com/hcfman/sbts-aru

You need to be able to hear the sound from three or more recorders. And normally localization is better within the polygon of microphones but there’s an area of better localizability extending outside of a vertex.

Do we really? Elk herds are fine. Seems like a waste of resources to have rhino-like enforcement for elk. Colorado has almost 300,000 elk.

I believe the previous poster meant that the wolves should have the rhino-like protections.

Spend a significant amount of time in the state and get back to me about what's possible. I'll wait. Note you're talking about an area only slightly smaller than New Zealand with roughly identical population numbers to Santa Barbara County, 1 third of whom are either students at UWyo or migrating roughnecks with no dog in that fight. Ignoring the handful of millionaires clustered around Jackson Hole the rest of the population of the state are (taken in aggregate) heavily armed and utterly disinterested in the federal government's position on anything. You send a handful of well-intentioned game wardens from out of state into that mess and you're gonna have folks start disappearing.

I don't know how that would work or if there's any precedent for that. Generally states enter into agreements and different laws about enforcement. Or they sue each other in federal court (eg cannabis issues recently).

I guess a precedent would be noise pollution laws. You can create sound waves on your own property but be prosecuted for their effects outside of it

To my knowledge that doesn't extend across state lines. I wanted to see precedent of someone doing something in one state and being criminally prosecuted for that act in a different state.

As a counter example, it's extremely common for people to hunt (or fish) on the legal side of boundaries with a restricted area using calls (or scents, bait, chum) to lure game to the area they can legally be in.

Any case law for shooting a bullet across state lines and hitting someone?

I assume you would still run into jurisdiction issues If it is legal to call in Wyoming, and the hunter is in Wyoming.

Disagree. I'm vegan and anti-hunting, but I don't think states should be able to enforce their laws outside of their states. That would lead to some real crazy stuff.

Any sort of cross border crime is regulated by the feds. Like if you steal a car and drive across the state border, it becomes a state offense. The feds could make cross border hunting illegal as well, but they would have to put in resources to enforce it.

> if you steal a car and drive across the state border, it becomes a state offense

Tiny nitpick: Did you mean to say "it becomes a federal offense"?

Yes.

Right. Colorado law should not be enforced in Wyoming. An animal call in Wyoming isn't hunting in Colorado.

I was also vegan for years, but not anti-hunting. While not a vegan today, my meat consumption is down by ~98% from childhood. Why are you anti-hunting? Usually, hunters are strong environmentalists. Plus, they are taking animals from their natural habit, instead of crowded feed lots.

I haven’t found it to be the case that hunters are environmentalists except for some post hoc rationalization. It really just reduces to a hobby of killing animals at least with anyone I ever hunted with in my teens. And they were all right wing Texans, definitely not anyone who would sign on as an “environmentalist” except when in cases where they can glamorize their hobby.

> hunters are using electronic calls to lure them back across the border for hunting

What does this mean?

It's legal to hunt them in Wyoming but not in Colorado. The wolves don't know this, so the hunters are able to lure them across the border so they can shoot them.

Do you have any opinion on the recent reintroduction of coyotes from Arizona into the area?

off topic, but how is living in Estes Park?

It only seems complicated in-so-far as ranchers who are making millions off running cattle at least partially on public lands are concerned they may take a 5% hit in their profits to the occasional cattle lost to wolves (which could be prevented by actually having staff following them vs just letting them roam).

Other than “but I want to make even more money” I haven’t heard a lot of arguments against.

This is wildly over-simplifying the issue. Obviously you'd not be ok with me releasing wolves into your back yard, the difference here is only one of population density. The issue has subtleties and soundbite reductiveness does nobody any favors.

I’d be perfectly fine with it, I would scare them off and that would be it. These aren’t grizzly bears. Wolves aren’t hunting humans unless they have literally no other options. I have no doubt they’d happily feast on deer vs finding out if the warning shot was a bluff.

We have wolves in my state. I’ve never once been concerned about my safety when it comes to wolves.

Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. The GP comment did a great job of avoiding this, which is what other commenters should do too.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Note these:

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

Plenty of ranches (privately owned) use livestock waste for farming and to improve the soil. You're arguing that we should allow wolves -- that the government introduces -- to wipe out the main component of their ranch (livestock). In my eyes that's an insane proposition and it directly benefits the big industrial operations that frequently compete with these newer styled ranches. In the end you'd have more run-off and more pollution and a lot more carbon because the soil would be shot (thanks to monocrop farming).

> to wipe out the main component of their ranch (livestock).

Wipe out??? Do you think they’re introducing 40k wolves or do you just have no idea how wolves work?

There is literally 0 chance the livestock is wiped out, even without any management by the government. And there will absolutely be management of the population.

> to wipe out the main component of their ranch (livestock). In my eyes that's an insane proposition

In my eye this claim you’re making is more than insane. Wolves are not going to wipe out anything. We can spend time coming up with totally unsubstantiated imaginary scenarios like this but it’s not really helpful.

Wolves are extremely skittish animals who are only really willing to come near humans when they are desperate and starving. A few guard dogs and/or other commonly used approaches are perfectly sufficient to deter them in 99%+ cases

Yep, also the free range and organic ranchers are the ones who are hardest hit, which makes it more expensive.

This issue is just way more complicated and nuanced than most people want to make it. As an environmentalist I have a natural reaction against the ranchers, but having dove into many of these types of issues, I've been amazed at the complexity and second, third, and fourth order impacts and unintended consequences. Hot takes on HN are aggravating to read for someone who is actually informed on this and other issues.

> even stretching into Wyoming politics where hunters are using electronic calls to lure them back across the border for hunting

I wonder, in a Hannibal Lecter sort of way, what would be the essence of the mindsets of such hunters.

Trophy hunters are like stamp or coin collectors. They search and search for the rarest animal (record setting whitetail deer being the most common) to kill and hang in their wall. People don’t like it but that’s about what it is, rare collectibles.

I’m not a hunter, but I can picture myself doing it. Hunting something I couldn’t eat does seem off though.

I've seen people go completely apeshit when elk hunting. It's just an awful selection cycle for people with low self esteem, rarity, FOMO, needing to prove something, and being far from consequences most of the time. Not all hunters are like this, but hunting naturally selects for people that are the most like that because it's the only blood sport left, really. And elk are the biggest thing. It's not unheard to pay $30,000+ for a "sure thing" bull elk hunt.

Most hunters are responsible and care deeply about wildlife imo

I'd agree but it's not like 99%/1%....more like 80%/20%. Bad encounters are basically gauranteed to happen if you hunt.

That’s fair and I’m sure that just a few can do a lot of damage

"While I’ll leave my personal opinion out of it, I do want to add a couple of notes."

Do you believe that humans and (packs of) wolves can coexist in the same space ?

I am genuinely curious to hear what you think of an area inhabited by packs of wolves - would you engage in hiking/camping/recreation in that area after dark ?

I am in favor of wolf reintroduction, in general, and think it is a noble goal.

However, I believe that my support of wolf reintroduction is creating zones of non-habitation for humans. This is because my reading of the history of wolf/human interactions - throughout European and North American history - supports this very traditional view.

What worries me is that many people may not understand that their support of wolf reintroduction creates an exclusion zone for humans. Certainly after dark. It is possible that not everyone would accept that trade-off the way that I have.

> I am genuinely curious to hear what you think of an area inhabited by packs of wolves - would you engage in hiking/camping/recreation in that area after dark ?

My personal answer to this is yes - I have hiked / backcountry skied on multi-day tours in areas with active wolf populations. I also currently live in a small mountain town with an active mountain lion population that regularly makes its way through our roads and yards.

I am more concerned with people, moose, and avalanches than I am either of those two. Of course, not everyone is going to have those same views.

Same here. The notion of wolves as a safety issue has literally not occurred to me until this person asked. I'm very alert to grizzly, moose, and mountain lions. Is there evidence that I should add wolves to that list?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wolf_attacks

For those that want to dig into these numbers more, there was a study completed by the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research on global wolf attacks between 2002–2020.

Here is an excerpt from the text regarding Yellowstone but there is a lot of good information so I suggest taking a peek if this interests you.

--- After many decades of absence wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and 1996. Wild Canadian wolves were used as the source, and animals were only exposed to minimal human contact before release. Since their release the population has rapidly expanded, and wolves have been surprisingly visible to tourists from the park’s road network. With over 4 million visitors a year the wolves of Yellowstone must be among the wolf populations in the world with the highest exposure to humans. Most wolves display a high degree of tolerance to humans, especially those on the road, but most do not approach people, and will keep a distance if people approach. Since reintroduction a total of 55 wolves have displayed behaviours that park authorities refer to as “habituated” (Anon 2003), implying that they approach people or do not move away when approached. Of these, 17 only displayed the behavior on a single occasion. 38 others were subject to hazing, or aversive conditioning, actions that ranged from loud noises to rubber bullets and cracker shells. In almost all cases this hazing changed the behavior of wolves such that problems ended. For two wolves however the park had to intervene and shoot them. Both appeared to have become food habituated, associating humans with food, with one wolf ripping open some hikers’ backpack to access food and another chasing a bicycle. Most of the wolves which needed hazing were yearlings, a life cycle stage when individuals are most prone to learning new habits. Despite the large wolf population and the huge numbers of visitors there have been no attacks on people (Smith et al. 2020). ---

REF: (PDF WARNING) https://y86aca.p3cdn1.secureserver.net/wp-content/uploads/20...

If you'd like to look up the PDF on your own, the title is "Wolf attacks on humans: an update for 2002–2020"

Attacks around the world: “Presumably a wolf ate a small boy, never to be seen from again”

Attacks in the US: “A wolf approached a hunter who shot it to death, no injuries.”

In all seriousness. I lived in Colorado for a long time as well. Up in the bowls of Silverthorne and Loveland. Boulder and the Estes Park region. Wolves will have the same safety precautions as bears, moose, and mountain lions. I’m more afraid of mountain lionesses than I am a wolf. At least with a wolf you’ll hear it coming.

Wolves seem somewhat scary in a different way in that they can work together. I just posted that link since someone asked. I would be inclined to guess this won't be a big issue while the numbers are relatively small and there is plenty of non human food for them.

In Montana, where this is a very hot issue, I have never heard of any concerns about the safety of humans around wolves, even from very vocal anti-wolf parties. The conflict arises from wolves' impact on our hunting and ranching interests. They also kill domestic dog breeds (coyotes do this as well).

That would be a wonderful outcome, if so. We need to protect our ecosystems from humans if they're to survive.

However, it won't happen because of wolf attacks. The big bad wolf is a fairy tale... Moose are orders of magnitude more dangerous to humans than wolves, and their reintroduction in Colorado does not keep humans away from wild spaces.

FWIW, there are multiple wolf packs in Glacier National Park. There is mandatory grizzly safety education and you are required to carry bear spray when venturing into the backcountry. Nobody ever said a word about wolves.

I hike around mountain lions, bears (including grizzlies), venomous snakes, etc... I think this argument is compelling only to someone who doesn't go outdoors in the first place.

Replace wolf with bear. Do you draw the same conclusions? This already exists in many places in North America.

I remember reading that the introduction of wolves into Yellowstone had a much bigger positive impact than expected. I’m sure this is an oversimplification of a complex ecosystem-wide impact, but my understanding is that the effect is mostly that it forces deer and elk to stay on the move, making it easier for certain types of plants and trees to survive.

> I’m sure this is an oversimplification of a complex ecosystem-wide impact, but my understanding is that the effect is mostly that it forces deer and elk to stay on the move, making it easier for certain types of plants and trees to survive.

After most of the wolves were wiped out we discovered the concept of keystone predators [1] that keep other predators and herbivores in check so that they don't go through catastrophic boom and bust cycles. Part of that is moving them around more but also just plain population control.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_species#The_wolf,_Yel...

It’s annoying to find the best source on mobile but I’m pretty sure the Yellowstone wolf claim has been debunked with the paper even being retracted by its authors. Worth doing the cursory google search.

Seems most fitting than ever to post this. How wolves change rivers is probably one of the most fascinating videos on YouTube [1]

1: https://youtu.be/W88Sact1kws

I wouldn’t be surprised if the ecological niche once occupied by the wolf has already been taken over by coyotes perhaps. The context of the environment and food resources available in modern colorado are certainly much different than in the time the wolf roamed, probably furthering favoring the efficiency of coyotes.

Many years ago, in college I took an elective ecosystems course from a wildlife biologist whose family raised sheep in Montana after the wolf reintroduction there. He was a big fan of the wolves, on the basis that while they did take a few sheep every year, they also virtually wiped out the local coyote population, who took a lot more sheep than the wolves did.

It hasn't. The prey populations in that part of the state are out of control and causing issues, which is one of the reasons these predators are being re-introduced.

Part of the reason prey populations are out of control is the abundance of food available to them. You’d probably be able to support more wolves than historically there ever were with such populations. Hard to say if this will lead to a significant dent or not all that being said, reintroductions don’t always play out as expected. Every time you go up a “level” of the food web e.g. from plant to plant eater to predator, in the best cases the absolute numbers are 1/10; eg 100 plants can support 10 rabbits and 1 predator. If there are now 100 rabbits theres probably 10x as much food as before. Having that many rabbits means whatever is around that eats them e.g. coyotes or bobcats population as also went up 10x in that time. Therefore even if the wolf entirely displaced all bobcats or pumas or coyotes or whoever, the amount of prey being eaten might not change really. Who eats them might change, but maybe not their absolute numbers.

I would imagine that Coyotes are a bit more opportunistic and rely more on scavenging and hunting smaller pray they can tackle on a solo hunt such as rodents and rabbits, but occasionally doing the big game pack hunt. For Wolves I would thing the pattern is opposite.

So while their ecological niche somewhat overlaps, it does so in a complimentary way, that is—and this is me being an armchair ecologist—the presence of Coyotes may only encourage the Wolves even more to go after the large gracing pray in packs as the competition is too tough for scavenging and the easier solo hunting of small pray.

Honestly, I'd be very surprised if coyotes filled the niche formerly occupied by wolves. Coyotes rarely exceed 40-50lbs and they primarily eat small prey like rabbits and squirrels with the occasional fawn. Wolves are 2x-3x as large -- they do hunt some of the small game but they'll also take deer, elk, and small bison.

I was just thinking about how well a wolf would do against a bison. Maybe these ranchers should consider making the switch from cattle to bison. Harder to wrangle, sure, but much more evenly matched against natural predators I imagine.

Eastern coyotes are often over 50 lbs and will sometimes take small deer. Or cats and small dogs in an urban environment...

That should keep the beef lean...

>The lawsuit alleges the government agencies violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to prepare an environmental impact statement about the wolves while renewing a cooperative agreement between the two agencies about conserving endangered species.

There's some severe irony to ranchers using this argument..

Not really. Thats mostly what that act is used for, dragging out change and protecting the status quo.

Environmental review lawsuits have gotten so insane that even recommendations for decarbonization admit that we can't actually build all the infrastructure we need for renewables because it'll get sued to death by NIMBYs cosplaying as environmentalists.

Most of the first world hasgone insane on the environmental front. The kinds of projects that will get approved need to be relatively easily forecastable with a tight cost and time ballpark for the world to function efficiently and environmental lawsuits have utterly derailed that. Theres a healthy balance between utterly laissez faure and the status quo that we need to get back to, ideally withoyt the massive overshoot to the other side of reasonably correct.

The solution is to have a prior regulatory review that cuts off all the bullshit lawsuits at the knees. Say, "if the EPA says this project is environmentally good, you can't get an injunction on the project, you have to sue the EPA first."

Bureaucracy is the sort of thing you can plan for. You can't plan for lawsuits.

It seems that one of the heavier arguments against reintroduction is that it will hurt regenerative farming efforts - produce a negative effect on positive effects of regen farming on environment, and negative financial effect on those farmers.

So, we have:

- a greatly positive option on the environment from a variety of perspectives - reintroduction of wolves

- its negative effect on one activity/group of people

And so those people vote against the greatly positive thing, because they care for the environment and themselves. Wouldn't the obvious option be to vote for the positive option, and press the government to help alleviate the negative effect, instead?

Could the existing compensation schemes for livestock loss not be amended/expanded/adapted? Could the government not financially support different available/new methods of protecting regen farm livestock from wolves?

Why is the obvious option instead to nuke the positive initiative to protect themselves?

> It seems that one of the heavier arguments against reintroduction is that it will hurt regenerative farming efforts - produce a negative effect on positive effects of regen farming on environment, and negative financial effect on those farmers.

Would it even actually do any of those in any significant way, in addition to the wolves just killing a few heads of livestock here and there (which the government compensates livestock owners for)?

I'll be interested to see long term studies on the ecological impact after wolves are reintroduced.

It seems fairly clear that it'd be a net positive, but the exact effects of them coming back after having been absent so long should be interesting.

I read a while ago about the problem of wolf hunting destroying the group knowledge and social structures of the pack. The effect is the pack can no longer hunt effectively and so resort to hunting that requires little effort, like ranches.

Wouldn’t they always hunt whatever is easiest? Why would they play on hard mode? It’s not like they see it as a sport where there’s more to be had by setting up rules to make it “sporting”. Don’t they just want as much food as they can get as easily and low risk as possible?

Effort and risk could be considered two different variables. Ranches represent easy to find and catch prey but the risk of humans with guns and big dogs. Other wildlife might require more tracking and chasing but the animal itself is the only risk.

Yes, this is why it's essential to quickly issue hunting permits targeting packs that start hunting livestock. Tit for tat: "Wolves, you are free to choose your hunting grounds, but if you do not choose wisely, things get dangerous for you."

I agree. We should also issue hunting permits for the wolves to hunt the hunters, along with detailed instructions on which bits are the tastiest.

I'm ok with humans not being the apex predator.

Not ok with issuing wolves firearms. Let them smelt their own iron...

It probably affects what the pack considers 'hard' or 'easy' more than anything else

There's also additional risk with hunting ranches, like guns. Easier but more dangerous.

Ah, a bunch of city dwellers telling making decisions about land they’ve never even been to, cool.

There’s a big cultural divide between urban and rural Americans. It shows up in all sorts of contentious issues, not just this one. For example, urban Americans that would like to limit gun ownership where they live are largely prevented from doing so because of the preferences of rural Americans.

The very concept of government is the people making decisions about how to govern, even if a select very, very few don't like it and claim the decisions were made out of ignorance.

If anyone could veto any law they don't like, obviously no laws would get passed.

The voting map for this bill was hilarious; all of the districts that voted "yes" were in cities, all of the rural areas voted "no".

The city folk are voting to literally release wolves into the rural communities that voted against it.

This urban/rural divide happens all the time. Someone else in this thread mentioned gun laws as one example. My personal example is in Pennsylvania, the state legislature passed a bill[1] appointing an unelected special prosecutor to handle public transit crime. It affects most of the city of Philadelphia (and nowhere else in PA) and overrides the democratically elected DA that state Republicans don't like (and who they unsuccessfully tried to impeach). The yes vote? Mostly rural lawmakers imposing their will on urban voters who have no ability to have a say in who this special prosecutor will be.

[1] https://www.legis.state.pa.us/CFDOCS/Legis/PN/Public/btCheck...

It's almost the year 2024... if there's really no better solutions to keep wolves out of ranchers' properties, maybe this is a business opportunity? And if those solutions existed, maybe ranchers could get a tax break for using them? All I know is solutions have got to be possible.

Most ranchers in western Colorado run their cattle on public land, not private property.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/rangeland-management/grazing/permits...

Sounds like a great opportunity to revisit cattle grazing privileges being freely given versus bringing back bison herds.

Then it sounds like it's their own fault if their cattle get taken by wolves... if they want to avoid the wolves (that are of ecological interest to the public), they can go get some private land to graze on. Oh but wait, that would make livestock not profitable, right? So we should definitely kill the wolves to prop up this unprofitable industry

Isn’t this a net good though? Most people benefit from cattle being as affordable as possible. If we charged ranchers to graze their livestock we’d see the cost passed onto consumers. This is a large reason we subsidize so much farming. It makes food affordable for all. This is a great social benefit for all.

IMO, no, not remotely. The externalized impacts from cattle on public land are extensive and severe compared to the supposed benefit. Beef is also by far the highest impact food source humans use at scale. We should be minimizing it in favor of other, lower impact protein sources. Nobody has to eat grasshoppers either, chicken and pork can be largely fine from an impact perspective (though aren't always today).

Bison are better adapted and require only that we don't kill hunt them to extinction. Seems reasonable to favor them over beef cattle.

There is a solution, guards dogs. Pyrenean Mastiffs, Caucasian Shepherds etc. work pretty well in deterring any wolf attacks. Wolves are very risk averse and will go for easier prey as long as it's available.

There are herds of sheep roaming on public land in southwest Colorado protected by Great Pyrenees. I assume that it's protection against mountain lions mostly. Those dogs are probably the most threatening thing to humans out hiking in those areas though!

> Those dogs are probably the most threatening thing to humans out hiking in those areas though!

Those dogs are quite famous for being not only threatening, but dangerous. People get killed too often by Patous in France, I’ve known at least 2 people who got attacked (one of which _maced_ the dog, I find that hilarious in retrospect)

Dogs need food of the expensive kind: meat. They need shelter, and overall they are expensive and high maintenance.

On the other hand, a llama just grazes along with the other animals, produces good quality fertilizer, has tax benefits, can be sheared for wool, and the offspring can be sold for thousands of dollars. And on top of all that, can be used as a pack animal.

Plus, llamas won't cause you dramas with your kids or other pets or neighbors, won't dig tunnels and escape, etc.

And I have a project that can help with that as well. An early warning system that recently I have integrated a wolf detection model into it. The intention is not to make it easy to shoot wolves but to provide options to protect their livestock. In Europe if you shot one you would receive a hefty fine if caught.

There’s a discussion about it here:

https://wildlabs.net/discussion/ai-monitoring-wolves-netherl...

The solution is for the government to pay compensation to ranchers who lose livestock to predators. In practice the number of lost animals will be very low and the cost insignificant.

For example, Montana ranchers filed claims for 287 animals and received a total of $241 000 in compensation in 2022. https://liv.mt.gov/Attached-Agency-Boards/Livestock-Loss-Boa...

This for a population of approximately 1100 wolves and 2000 grizzly bears versus 2.2 million cattle and 190 000 sheep.

Put yourself in the shoes of a poor rancher. The state wants to re-introduce wolves to your land, you're not legally allowed to defend against them with lethal force, and big tech promises a great business idea that will only cost a few hundred dollars a month for you to implement! Suck it up sunny, farmers are rich - you can afford it!

Sounds like a big L for ranchers who are just able to make ends meet.

Nah. If you lose one or two animals every one or two years while grazing them on public lands for free, you apply to the state, get compensated for the loss, and that's that. You are imagining a storm when the skies are mostly sunny.

>All I know is solutions have got to be possible.

This isn't intended as a personal attack, but I don't find technological advancement to be a compelling justification for blind optimism.

There are a lot of problems with solutions that are simply not possible or economical, independent of time.

Trans muting lead to gold has been a business opportunity for 2000 years, yet is still not possible in 2024.

That’s a deeply flawed argument called a false equivalent.

Guarantee you there are still unexplored areas in predator behavior modification and livestock management using technology that’s worth exploring.

I agree that there's a lot of things worth exploring, but that doesn't mean that success is guaranteed.

I've been on the other side of this for a long time with agricultural animal management, and watched dozens of technological solutions fail, including drones, lasers, sound emitters, and habitat modification.

Those working in the field to have an incentive to come up with a solution and I appreciate attempts to do so.

But I don't appreciate is when people flippantly dismiss the problems of others saying with certainty that there is a solution available. If you're so confident, please make it and people will happily give you millions of dollars.

On the other hand, I've seen lots of people lose their livelihood because someone imposed a problem on them and hand a way of the way of the consequences

Fair enough.

I have been exploring making it or investing in it on this very thread. It’s a novel problem and it often helps to study the problem with first principles as animal agriculture is 40 percent of global output and a key environmental problem is predator mitigation, however it’s done.

I was doing a review of insurance products too. Interesting stuff.

I’m deeply empathetic to the problems and understand some of the complexity involved. I have a fair amount of experience in ag, but not in this area.

I feel like we should continue to innovate until we find solutions that work: that’s what humans do best. It’s important to keep applying new technologies to existing problems rather than entrenching ourselves in previous failures: that’s the root activity of substantive innovation.

The harder part is keeping ranchers on their own property.

Huge mistake, but we will have to make it to show why.

Wolf reintroduction in the alps and Jura mountains is going ok.

One key thing is to have a smooth and efficient system for issuing hunting permits, not one that devolves into lawsuits from animal protection zealots every season.

In our densely populated mountains, wolves do not adapt and keep to themselves without... persuasion. I'm as pro-wolf as they come, but as packs grow and conflicts with humans grow, hunting is essential.

How come there isn’t a predator collar that releases pepper spray when wolves go in for the throat kill? Seems like we should be able to make livestock unattractive targets with some kind of technology like this and do some reinforcement learning to prevent this conflict.

Is this happening? Are there solutions to sustainable coexistence with greater predators to restore the ecosystem while preserving people’s livelihoods? Rabbit hole sure. But I’d love to see some innovation or even hear about efforts in the arena.

Edit: if you are downvoting this please tell me why. What is wrong with readapting predator behavior with a technology-driven solution? There’s a ton of emerging research, plenty of money in this market (livestock contributes 40% of the global value of agricultural output), and I’d love to hear why you think this is stupid. Pretend I’m an idiot and tell me what I’m missing and how all the people who have tried this have failed profoundly please.

> How come there isn’t a predator collar that releases pepper spray when wolves go in for the throat kill?

The wolf collar was invented for this and dates back to Ancient Greece:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_collar

Typically it was/is fitted to guard dogs who would then fight the wolves.

Wow. That’s a history I didn’t know about. Thank you.

Edit: I wonder if it would be more cost effective to put collars on the few hundred wolves we are talking about and near some kind of near field rfid style trigger on protected species. We could just trigger them on USDA tags maybe? Anyone tried this?

Wolf collars imply throat kills which is my understanding of how wolves kill and we already use 15 digit USDA approved ear tags on most animals.

I mean this is a social conditioning program so it could make sense as you wouldn’t have to keep it up forever or completely just enough to change pack behaviors perhaps. It’s the same model skunks use and they’re fairly effective at deterring predators.

You could also cost effectively rfid chip the wolves one time and put lower cost proximity deterrence on prey animals inside the range. This isn’t expensive stuff to implement and many of these animals are already being tagged or monitored by programs.

A blacklist for wolve rfid seems very doable. We could figure out problem wolves that actually need to be removed if we had active data instead of blanket population thinning. That’d probably go a long way towards increasing popular support for ranchers too.

Found a study that shows double digit reduction of predation levels with just a hard collar:

https://www.conservationevidence.com/actions/2448

Also found a government program already doing this for coyote:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-A101-PURL-LPS9980...

So it seems like adding reactivity to this idea could really work.

And here’s another farmer having great success:

https://www.farmersweekly.co.za/animals/sheep-and-goats/karo...

Why I aren’t we having a larger conversation here around this wolf reintroduction?

>How come there isn’t a predator collar that releases pepper spray when wolves go in for the throat kill? Seems like we should be able to make livestock unattractive targets with some kind of technology like this and do some reinforcement learning to prevent this conflict.

Beyond the initial challenges of figuring out how a collar can precisely and accurately predict when an animal is about to begin a specific type of attack and then react before enough damage can be done, you've also then got to be able to refill the pepper spray throughout the animal's life, ensure that each and every animal born into each and every pack gets a collar, etc.

Just seems wildly unviable.

Edit: There's also the nuance around the fact that the wolf has to eat at some point, and usually this will involve killing another wild animal. The collar would have to be able to accurately differentiate between "allowed to kill" and "not allowed to kill", which seems... difficult. I'm not sure that a simple bit of geofencing or whathaveyou would be good enough in these situations.

> ensure that each and every animal born into each and every pack gets a collar, etc.

The collar goes onto the livestock, not the wild animal.

D'oh! I don't know how that didn't occur to me. Thank you for pointing that out.

Edit: Totes happy with my previous comment being downvoted, because it's clearly a bad take in hindsight, but this one? The one where I kindly go, "Oh shit, duh, how stupid of me"? Seriously? Y'all do you, lol...

Does it? Wouldn’t it just need to be economically viable and isn’t that something that could be calculated? Aren’t the losses significant enough to pay for a fairly large program? If not, why is this a concern to ranchers? And wouldn’t most of the collars not be used and be more like insurance which we already have and use on most herds?

Your summary dismissal without consideration and downvote don’t follow common sense. And let me tell you a lot of the biggest market opportunities are found inside of places people tell you you’re an idiot for even exploring. Be mindful. Stripe and Gusto and oceans of others were solved problems.

If it’s a big enough problem to support an insurance industry surely $10 worth of pepper spray and a $50 reusable collar would be in budget.

Edit: regarding your edit, this has already been demonstrated in janguars.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016815912...

Also a meta study:

https://environmentalevidencejournal.biomedcentral.com/artic...

This study has a killer quote:

“Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains… but they seldom came near the village - the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges.”

Please consider being less hasty to dismiss unconventional thinking. Let’s keep HN weird thinking friend?

You're talking about an industry that's unwilling to spend $10 to vaccinate herd animals.

> Please consider being less hasty to dismiss unconventional thinking. Let’s keep HN weird thinking friend?

Friend you're approaching a problem you know nothing about and complaining about being dismissed... by someone who took the time to explain why your tenuously informed idea will never work.

Disappointing response. Don’t make generalizations or confuse explorative questions for broad naïveté.

The issue I take with your approach here is that you’re focused on making the other person feel wrong, on the wrong path and assuming they know nothing (implied: idiot) rather than exploring ideas and solutions to novel problems.

That’s a common pattern in the world (ad hominem), but it doesn’t do much in innovation circles or have much of a place in early stage innovation practice.

I have a fair amount of experience in ag, and ag insurance, but not predator collars.

I’m cool with being downvoted for having an unpopular idea but please be more conscious: not everyone would speak up to your behavior and it’s quite unnecessary. Try to attack what’s wrong with the idea not the person.

You are literally on here telling me that my ideas will never work. It’s a lot cliché and not just a little bit hilarious. Don’t do it. Haha.*

I’m ok being dumb when exploring ideas, and that’s actually ok. Or it should be. At least on HN.

Your comment looks a lot like a common trope on this site: people encountering a problem they know little about, thinking for 20 seconds, and saying “You could just…”

And that’s annoying because it’s arrogant and it invalidates people who have dedicated their lives and careers to that work.

But rereading your initial comment, I think it was actually framed as invitation for discussion rather than an “obvious simple solution”.

Don’t let it worry you too much. Sometimes shit just gets downvoted!

Thanks for this.

I am not always full of grace and poise when exploring stuff, as I find it counterproductive to real exploration. People love to just rip you down when you ask why: it’s got to be fundamental to something in human evolution. Nothing pisses some people off than questioning the status quo.

But I’d much rather put one a flame retarding suite and ask basic first-principle style questions and get assumed to be an idiot but actually learn something than try to look smart. Probably because I’m not smart.

I’d also assume that a lot of what’s been done already is smart, but often the incentives aren’t aligned to put something into implementation or regulation keeps smart solutions from progressing to viability. There’s something in almost every market that’s not moving forward just due to poor regulation or mis or under considered incentive misalignment.

I’ve done a lot of work in ag and know something about the insurance side but not much on predator mitigation, but it seems like an area where we could really improve. I don’t believe every innovation worth making in the space is already done so we should keep exploring.

Thanks for understanding the spirit of it.

> make livestock unattractive targets with some kind of technology

There is also a much older technology called guard dogs

These problems will be solved with AGI because it will be able to talk to animals and convince them to stop being predators.

That’s actually a valid argument. Ty.

https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/175cue0/artifi...

Top comment has me in stiches:

Humans: Hello dear animals! How are you doing?

Animals: Fuck you! Leave us alone!

reminder that most ranches are owned by billionaires and have very little to do with actual cattle farming. Michael Bloomberg, Arthur Bank, Ted Turner, Reed Hastings, and Charles Koch all own ranches. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimdobson/2020/09/15/billionair...

most of your cattle do not come from ranches. They come from high intensity factory farms in places like stockton california and amarillo texas.

That a ranch produces any saleable livestock at all is a side-effect. most ranches are owned as vacation property.

the reason this reintroduction is opposed is the same reason you cant plant or remove any trees in Beverly Hills without a dozen lawsuits and a 3 year study to determine the effect. Stratospherically wealthy people revile change at any level and will intentionally manufacture controversy and complexity around the proposal as a defensive mechanism.

It's fun to look through the real estate listings for those "ranch" properties in Colorado and Wyoming, because it feels so far from normal American life. Thousands of acres, tons of buildings, and workers that come with it to keep it all up. It still blows my mind that some people can just decide to buy a mountain and everything around it.

The idea that buying property "comes with workers" feels super gross to me

It is kind of weird, but they get to keep their job and a lot of times their housing. I wonder if they get a chance to negotiate a pay raise after a sale, not really sure how these things work.

Money is a magical invention. Everyone agrees they don't have enough of it but somehow everyone also agrees only certain people should have more than enough.

They can get surprisingly cheap in some areas, mainly if it’s mostly land and not many buildings (and perhaps no workers).

I’ve seen 1600 acres and a nice big house for 1.6 million.

Most of these ranches will be running cow-calf operations. A cow-calf operation is a herd that produces calves which can be sold to a feedlot or backgrounding operators.

In factory farming it’s the calf that is the factory that turn grain into beef. It takes 3 pounds of grain to produce a pound of beef so it’s cheaper to move the calf to the grain than the grain to the calf.

At the same time a cow can only produce one calf per year so it is cheaper to keep the herd of cows that produce the calf on marginal grasslands rather than on the richer farmland near the feedlots.

While these ranches aren’t directly shipping steaks to customers they are more than a vanity project for the wealthy.

Economic incentives aren’t aligned between cow-calf operations and feedlots. There may be a significant difference in feed efficiency between calves. Some may turn grain to meat at a 2:1 ratio and others at a 4:1 ratio but ranchers are paid the same for each calf. A way to cheaply identify calves that are more feed efficient or align incentives would be worth some money.

> most ranches

Those billionaires own ranches, for sure. Maybe even a lot of ranch land by area? But most ranches? Seems unlikely to me.

Yeah, this seems like a really bold claim. Land may be often held by the rich on a per acre basis, but landowners are not rich on a per capita basis. People often confuse the two even tho it is exactly what you would expect from a pareto distribution

This is true. While billionaires are the largest landowners (well, actually Farmland Reserve/Mormon church probably is) and a lot of their land is old ranches they bought up, there's 2+ million cattle in Montana, 1+ million in Wyoming, I think almost 3 million in Colorado.

There are many, many ranches in all those states. There are certainly far less than there used to be, but there are still very many functional ranches. That said, another reason the ranchers don't like wolves is because they get landowner elk tags that they can then turn around and sell private hunts with for 10s of thousands of dollars. Wolves have cut into their ability to find prize elk in recent years (as well as some harsh winters, which have probably don't more damage, but the perception is there for wolves).

People can and do buy products from smaller regenerative farms.

https://thehighlonesomeranch.com/

And I suspect that these ranches could take heavy loses (wolves have been seen killing 15+ elk in a single hunt) and I fully expect that large industrial operations -- packed to the gills with feed lots -- will have a much more minimal impact to their overall operations. And regenerative farms are much better for the environment (less carbon, less run-off). So this , at least in my eyes, is a self-inflicted wound by the government.

> wolves have been seen killing 15+ elk in a single hunt

Perhaps? How is this related? There is plenty of data from areas where wolves and cattle or sheep coexist. Why not cite that instead of something tangential?

Why would wolves attack a herd of cattle protected by guard dogs which have been bred exclusively to deter wolves for 1000s of years. If ranchers can’t afford to get dogs (or use other commonly used methods) then that’s another issue, it would be perfectly reasonable to expect the government to support them with that

>Surplus killings tend to be most common in late winter and may actually represent an effort by wolves to cache food for later use

Let them. Let the animals do this. Wyoming shouldn't be feeding the herds of elk anyways.

Living out in the middle of nowhere, I can appreciate having animals that used to live reintroduced back to their habitat. Except mosquitoes. Mosquitoes can all go to hell in a burning hand basket.

My fear is the "scientific hubris of today". It goes like this: "Yesterday everyone was evil and dumb, and destroyed <insert your personal pet agenda>. Today, we are much smarter, and we are enlightened and know all things that needed to be done. Our intellect is leaps and bounds over those troglodytes from last year."

Then, a few years down the road we find out again that those brilliant minds were not exactly aware of all the details, and have made things worse. (Or, as now it is starting to trickle out, those brilliant minds lied and falsified their studies.)

e.g., you know why we switched to plastic bags from recycled paper bags in grocery stores? Allan Savory in Zimbabwe and saving the forest by killing elephants? Monarch butterflies and the wrong milkweed? The Osborne tire reef?

(Of course, I know I am an outlier. I make weighted matrices with dozen or more rows to decide which vegetable I should ferment next. It is likely going to be green tomatoes, but carrots are mighty close this year.)

Perfect is also the enemy of good. We can't let the fear of knowing even better in the future keep us from making progress against the mistakes of the past, or nothing will ever change.

In a lot of cases, knowing better in the future only happens if we take the step today and learn that we don't yet know everything. If we never take the step now, we'll never have the future knowledge to do even better.

We really do know a lot more than we used to though.

Good.

Personally I'd be happy if raising livestock was banned, so inconveniencing ranchers doesn't seem like a problem.

Hard to blame the ranchers, as this is essentially a wealth tax being unilaterally levied against them. These efforts are driven almost entirely by urban progressives who won't have to deal with it.

Framing it as "rural" vs "urban" sets up a dichotomy, which human minds frequently simplify as a 50/50 split. But only 13% of Colorado residents live in rural areas.

It would be more accurate to frame it as 7 people who want to enjoy a healthy ecosystem vs one rancher who wants to use national/state lands for farming.

If you want a healthy ecosystem than you want regenerative farming: https://www.uvm.edu/news/cals/using-regenerative-agriculture...

What you're arguing for would essentially kill off the tools needed to store more carbon in the soil, which would benefit industrial feed-lot styled operations that pollute and push massive amounts of run-off.

Yet another great example of America's 87% telling the 13% how they should live.

The idea that reintroducing an animal is telling someone "how to live" is wild. They existed there long before us, raising livestock can still happen with them there, and ranching existed in Colorado along side wolves long before this discussion.

I live in rural Colorado and raise a small hobby amount of animals (currently a bit over 40 chickens, turkeys, and ducks but the number varies through the year). I've lost plenty of animals to predators. I've had neighbors call me out to their land to shoot others. This is part of rural life with a healthy and functioning ecosystem. Predators exist.

I personally abstained from the vote; I felt like this is something better handled by career biologists and not the uninformed public. But the idea that is this "America's 87% telling the 13% how they should live" its trying really hard to jam this into existing framing of how we view American culture war issues. It'll do us some good to calm down, take a breath and put the topic in proper context. Rural residents and ranchers can still maintain their lifestyle.

>>The idea that reintroducing an animal is telling someone "how to live" is wild.

When the part of the population which is completely unaffected by the proposed change outvotes the part which now has to live with that change, it is only fair to call it what it is. This has nothing to do with wolves it could be about any other issue where the same pattern occurs.

13% shouldn’t get disproportionate say in how things are run just because they live in a different place

Don't a lot of these ranchers use public land? It seems like the public should have a say in how the land is used.

" No. Don't screw with nature, it doesn't end well. " You, 57 days ago. We screwed with nature, and this is putting something back into place.

>Framing it as "rural" vs "urban" sets up a dichotomy, which human minds frequently simplify as a 50/50 split. But only 13% of Colorado residents live in rural areas.

The US is not governed by simple majorities of the overall population. We have things like the house of reps for a reason. Land matters. If the 75% of Americans who live in urban areas were able to completely dictate terms to the other 25%, the union would have (and almost did) dissolve long ago.

The Civil War was not a rural-urban war. Both sides were primarily agrarian; trying to glean modern urban-rural culture war talking points from a war principally about slavery is not going to be productive.

(It’s also worth noting that we have the House of Representatives for the exact opposite reason than you’ve stated. I think you meant the Senate, which is meant to provide an aristocratic and/or rural “check” on the urban hoi polloi.)

> Land matters

But they don't own it. The majority of it is owned by the urban population. Why are you claiming that rural ranchers are supposed to have a stronger claim to public land just because they can graze their cattle there while paying subsidized prices for it (at the cost of the people who don't own any cattle or graze them on their private land).

If land matters, and as stated in another thread these ranchers are running the cattle on public lands, not their own, why do the ranchers even get a say?

Land doesn't matter; political subdivisions do.

The pro-wolf side won by 50.4% of the vote. So a tie.

But the folks who voted for it won't have to live with the consequences of their vote.

They'll have to cover the legal costs and have to keep listening to the people you keep opposing/protesting this. Seems about even (or maybe even worse) than the insignificant consequences for the ranchers (who are already being subsidized by being allowed to use public land for low fees).

Given the consequences of the reintroduction of wolves to the ecosystem, I think literally everyone will be living with the consequences to some extent. Unless by “the consequences” you’re specifically referring to wolves attacking the livestock of billionaire (in many cases) “ranchers,” then maybe not because I’m assuming those billionaires ranching on public land aren’t voting against their pecuniary interests (as billionaires do not seem to do) and thus are not in the 50.4%.

If you want to fight climate change you want to not release packs of wolves into regenerative farms: https://www.uvm.edu/news/cals/using-regenerative-agriculture...

And many of these ranches are losing money for years (sometimes a decade) before they can get out of the red and see the benefits of regenerative farming systems...The more I look at this wolf situation the more depressed I get.

Your link is from Vermont, not Colorado. I don’t think anyone is advocating for the release of wolves into Vermont.

I did a search of regenerative agriculture in Colorado and can only find a single farm that has tried it. Given that it seems tenuous to suggest that wolves will destroy regenerative agriculture in Colorado?

Regenerative Ag seems to be focused on agriculture, as the name implies. The people upset about wolves are ranchers who stand to have their livestock attacked by wolves. I am not seeing the connection between wolves and the destruction of regenerative agriculture.

The style of farming is the same in Vermont as it is in Colorado...I found three in that state:

https://indianridgefarm.org/ https://www.flyingbbar.com/ https://thehighlonesomeranch.com/

And regenerative Ag is ranching. They are some of the innovators in grass-fed beef (I've been a vegitarian since 2005) and use the natural animal waste to improve soil conditions (integrating animals into crop farming).

I checked into those links, very interesting! Thanks for sharing.

Regenerative farms are a joke that will do zero to slow or stop climate change. They are overwhelmed by factory farming that they have no chance of reversing. Looking out for the "little guy pretending to help" is just silly.

Doing this would sure tip the scales in favor of massive feed lots and industrial farming. Tens of thousands of people are buying products from these farms. it's a viable option. This odd artificial reintroduction of an animal that's known to decimate (I'd argue they could do even more than 10% damage) these sorts of operations is bizarre and the fact that it greatly harms your number one cause (climate change) is even stranger. I'm 100% against this nonsense as should any sane individual that's reading between the lines here.

You would want wolves nearby though, so that the farm doesn't get picked clean by dear and elk

Is it really so simple?

Hasn't human action had detrimental consequence for the environment? And as such aren't efforts to mitigate or undo those consequences a positive?

If that's the case won't the ranchers just pass along the increased cost of doing business to the consumers so we're all ultimately gonna pay for the actions of people a long time ago, which for better or worse, is just how it goes.

If conservatives could dump nuclear waste in streams to save a penny, they'd do it. Asking them to think about their impact on the environment, and how it might come back to impact them, is a non-starter.

It depends on the kind of conservative. In blue states, some of them will shout and hollar about, say, how the new nuclear plant is going to pollute the streams with nuclear waste.

I’m a big conservationist and I think it’s much, much wiser to pick and choose the battles. Dogmatism like

> Hasn't human action had detrimental consequence for the environment? And as such aren't efforts to mitigate or undo those consequences a positive?

is too often a tool to steamroll other people.

Sure, that may be a good general sort of viewpoint, but does it apply in this situation?

That's pretty much Colorado in a nutshell. Lived in the Front Range for quite a while and voted progressive, and it's pretty crazy how purple that state is.

Yeah it’s all repetitions of the pattern of greely exercising it’s god given right to smell bad vs everyone being upset by the smell.

It's been almost a year and I can still smell it when I see the word Greeley.

And all the direct and indirect subsidies for them are not a tax on urban populations?

What else is a "is essentially a wealth tax" on ranchers? They graze their cattle on public land yet so much of it is taken up by unproductive and useless national parks (just to entertain the urban progressives on their days off). It would be much fairer to convert them into productive pasture land.

Its a non-issue. The number of ranchers that could posisbly affected is minuscule at best, and the law permitting the release of these Wolves also allows for any rancher that loses a cow to a wolf to be reimbursed by the state for their loss. A vast majority of these "ranchers" are millionaires and billionaires in the first place, and the loss of a cow to a wolf will be insanely rare. These animals will hunt deer, rabbit, and elk whose populations are literally out of control.

Most of the noise opposed to this release is generated by wildly ignorant or malicious people who don't even live in Colorado to wind up other reactionary, low-information people and make it look like liberals are releasing dangerous predators into a "red" part of the state to harm them.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Billionaires?

> These animals will hunt deer, rabbit, and elk whose populations are literally out of control.

Hard to predict what will happen over time. Over here, in a much, much smaller country, there are only a few wolves, and they do attack sheep at a pretty large scale, without actually eating them.

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