Sue Lani Madsen: Ranchers need proper tools to fight predators
There’s a mouse in the house. He’s left signs on the counter and chewed the apples in the bowl. Dirty, disease-carrying varmints – time to get out the traps. It’s one thing to see field mice at the edge of the garden, but when they invade my space I draw the line. The sonic deterrents are plugged in and we’ve done our best to seal up the house, but they sneak in anyway.
Maybe your nemesis isn’t mice, maybe it’s spiders or snakes or mosquitos. Unless you’re an ascetic Jainist or an evangelical vegan, there’s some critter you are willing to stomp, trap, slap or kill to protect your family and your territory. And why is that? You have a rational fear of pain, disease and economic loss.
That’s how ranchers feel about wolves, cougars and grizzly bears – except the reaction is visceral, a punch to the gut when contemplating the consequences. I’ll be attending the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Eastern Washington forum to share one rancher’s perspective. The department’s news release indicates they want “people to share their views on the values and priorities that should drive WDFW over the next several years,” all part of an initiative “to help ensure WDFW programs and services meet the public’s needs.” For ranchers, that includes facing the reality of living with the big three predators.
Every wolf article includes a flattering mugshot of a single wolf looking like one of the UW’s Husky mascots. What you don’t see, except occasionally in the agricultural press or shared among ranchers, is a pack of wolves lifting bloody muzzles from the barely alive body of a hamstrung calf. Wolves are beautiful, but they are killers. Wolves are apex predators who cause pain, disease and economic loss.
The disease and economic loss are readily quantifiable. University studies document tapeworms and Lyme disease in the gray wolf and the role of wolves as a vector to spread these diseases to both wild and domesticated animals and potentially to humans. The economic loss is measurable in numbers. When a Stevens County rancher loses 33 sheep to confirmed wolf kills and over 300 sheep unaccounted for and presumed killed in 2014, it doesn’t take a university study to understand the severe economic blow to a family business with a tight profit margin.
Pain is a harder loss to measure. Every rancher has a story about caring for hypothermic calves in the bathtub or bringing lambs and kids rejected by their mothers into the house to bottle feed. It rarely makes economic sense, but it’s a duty to the animal. Unless you’ve raised livestock, it’s difficult to understand the pain of losing animals that aren’t named Fluffy or Fido. It feels like failure. We’re responsible to nurture and protect, and when we can’t … yes, it’s personal and it’s painful. Finding dead animals in the pasture is deeply discouraging.
The myths add to the pain. Wolves and cougars don’t just hunt to eat, they hunt for the joy of the chase the same way my dog instinctively chased my cat until the cat taught him who’s boss with a swipe across the nose.
And it’s not just old and sick animals that get picked off. We lost nine goats to cougars this summer in one incident near Leavenworth, a mix of healthy does, yearlings and this year’s kids. I shared my experience with a sheep rancher from the Walla Walla area, who described her own reaction to losing 15 young, healthy animals in one night to cougar attacks. No feeding, just neatly snapped necks on animals bedded down for the night. Cougars are tidy and efficient killers.
Most ranchers understand predators are once again part of the natural ecosystem, while environmental groups publicly undervalue or dismiss ranchers as part of the ecosystem. We just want to defend our territory, our families, our livestock and our pets. We need the tools to do it. Simple nonlethal deterrents are a great place to start, but not the complete answer. Sometimes it takes a lethal swipe across the nose.