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The Center for Biological Diversity reports via Common Dreams
Killing predators such as wolves, mountain lions and bears in order to protect livestock may have intuitive appeal, but a rigorous review of multiple studies that was published today shows little or no scientific support that it actually reduces livestock losses. In fact, in some cases it even leads to increases in livestock loss. These conclusions directly counter the reasoning behind the common practice of killing predators in response to livestock depredations--as carried out by the secretive federal program, Wildlife Services, and many state game agencies.
"This study [paywalled] shows that not only is Wildlife Services' annual killing of tens of thousands of wolves, coyotes, bears, bobcats, cougars, and other animals unconscionable--it's also ineffective", said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Our government should ground the aerial snipers, pull the poisons and remove the steel leghold traps in response to these findings."
The unexpected finding that carnivore killings can increase depredations is likely based on disruption of the predators' social dynamics--namely, by removing dominant animals that maintain large territories, these killings release sub-adult animals that are less-skilled hunters and thus more likely to target domestic animals.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 04 2016, @07:06PM
From the article:
“Our government should ground the aerial snipers, pull the poisons and remove the steel leghold traps in response to these findings.”
So which wolves were killed? The ones actually killing livestock or random ones in the forest that might not have been killing livestock? If it's the latter then there's the problem. That's as indiscriminate and stupid as killing people randomly in a town because a minority are murderers/terrorists. Killing everyone would work, killing a high percentage might reduce it too but are they really doing that, or just randomly killing about 10%?
Wolves aren't stupid and different ones have different preferences. Some might prefer rabbit to chicken[1]. If you are trying to select for wolves that don't hunt livestock, what you should do is keep killing _all_ wolves that approach farms, livestock or human homes and only those, while leaving unharmed those that stay deep in the forest. If you do it effectively and consistently, after a number of generations very few are going to come close. That's assuming you start with enough wolves with diverse preferences and behaviour to include a preference for avoiding humans and livestock and preferring other areas and prey.
[1] Take giant pandas for instance, a few do eat meat every now and then, but most of the crazy animals strongly prefer eating bamboo despite having a digestive system that doesn't digest bamboo well. FWIW deer and cows often eat other animals when they have the opportunity to.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday September 05 2016, @04:26AM
So which wolves were killed? The ones actually killing livestock or random ones in the forest that might not have been killing livestock? If it's the latter then there's the problem.
When I was living in alaska about 10 years ago, they were shooting wolves from planes to protect the caribou herd. So it was pretty much the same wolves in the wild that were doing the killing.
Few if any cattle ranchers were around.
The political push for this wolf control at that time was the Alaskan Native population and a few other hunters complaining about the dwindling herd. At that time the Porcupine Caribou herd (sub species of Caribou in parts of Alaska and Canada) was in decline, and the subsistence hunters, (preferentially Natives by law) were having trouble getting enough meat for the winter.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.