- Our next speaker is David Ruid
from, uh, USDA-APHIS.
And he's gonna talk about
integrated predator management concepts.
Thank you, David.
- Thanks, Otto.
Thanks for having-- having me here today.
Thanks for coming here today.
Probably the bluegills are moving up
into the shallows right now, and...
[audience groans] [laughing]
[indistinct chatter]
It'd be a good day to be out there.
I want to recognize my colleague Eric Fromm.
Eric Fromm does
the lion's share of wolf and bear work
in northwest Wisconsin, including Washburn County.
So, Eric, raise your hand. Thank you.
Yeah, so we'll get going, uh, lickety-split.
So when we're talking about livestock predators
in the state of Wisconsin, primarily we're dealing
with wolves, black bears, and coyotes.
Very rarely we'll have bobcats maybe kill
a lamb or domestic fowl, but typically speaking--
this is Cow-Calf Workshop,
when we're talking about cow-calf wildlife predation,
we're dealing with wolves, black bears, and coyotes
in the state of Wisconsin.
And I'm primarily gonna talk about gray wolves today
and-- and our program
in dealing with-- with gray wolf conflicts
in Wisconsin.
This is a-- this-- this map of the U.S. represents--
those green areas represent what most people feel
is suitable wolf habit in the 48 states.
The black polygons represent those suitable habitat areas
that currently are occupied by wolves.
And most recently, what we have seen is,
there is now a breeding pack of wolves
that have moved into California.
Eastern Washington, Oregon
have recently been colonized by wolves.
So we're getting upwards of ten states
that have wolves in them, and there is
some unoccupied suitable habitat
that still exists up in the Northeast.
But as you can see,
our population of wolves is contiguous
with the three states.
And keep in mind, from a biological perspective,
our gray wolf population is classified
as a federally endangered specie.
Remember, this is a contiguous population of wolves
that extends to the Arctic Circle.
That population is 70,000 to 80,000,
maybe 90,000 animals
that exists from central Wisconsin
up into the northern latitudes of Canada and Alaska.
So we-- we'll talk about nonlethal abatement techniques
to try to resolve predator-- predator problems,
and one of-- you go back in time,
this isn't a relatively recent phenomenon.
You go back to 1717;
in the Cape Cod region of Massachusetts,
there was a proposed wolf fence
to protect livestock from predators,
and that would have been bears, wolves, and coyotes,
but in 1717, people were thinking about,
"How do I exclude my livestock from predators?"
And interestingly enough,
this proposal that was put forth,
it failed from complaints
from the unprotected neighbors outside the fence
who didn't want the wolves shut out on them,
and the proposal was a six-foot-high board fence.
Another technique that was used was vegetation management.
Woods burning was used
to reduce vegetative cover near livestock.
There's an example of that in the literature from 1928,
uh, in Arkansas.
And I would imagine a lot of these techniques--
they were used in conjunction with lethal control,
but nevertheless, these were some nonlethal efforts
to separate livestock from predators.
Some of the most early scientific literature
pertaining to this topic was
from the USDA Forest Service in 1908
when they developed a predator-proof fence
in Oregon on a 2,500-acre pasture,
and their results found that
they could successfully fence livestock
from pre-- from coyotes, but it was unsuccessful
in dealing with grizzly bears and black bears,
and I would suspect that this
was probably in an era
when wolves had likely been extirpated
from this particular region.
And how about this for a farm labor rate?
Um, three bucks a day per eight hours.
[indistinct chatter]
And what we've seen, folks,
when wolves began to colonize the state of Wisconsin,
they colonized some of the best suitable wolf habitat
in the state, and these were big blocks
of contiguous public land
that had very, very little agriculture in it,
and there was very little conflict
between wolves and livestock
in this earlier era of wolf recovery--
recolonization in Wisconsin, you know,
which was occurring from 1980 to, oh, the mid 1990s.
But what we started to see is, this wolf population expanded.
They started to set--
establish territories in areas
that were becoming more fragmented.
It wasn't the big blocks of contiguous forestland.
As you can see-- this black polygon represents
a wolf pack territory,
and those open areas, that's agriculture.
The north end of the wolf pack was forested public land,
and the southern fringe of that particular pack,
um, started to-- [stammers]
It was fragmented and had livestock production,
so around the mid to late '90s, we were starting to see
wolf packs establishing in these areas,
and we really started to see a consistent trend
in wolves killing livestock annually.
And then, as late as 2010, 2013,
this is an actual example
of a wolf pack territory in Marathon County,
and you can see, predominately,
that pack's territory is agricultural land,
a lot of it being row crop,
but there is livestock production included in that.
So as this-- as this
really suitable habitat has been saturated,
we're starting to see wolves spilling out
of the northern forest, central forest,
and establishing territories in this--
what we would call unsuitable habitat,
because generally speaking,
when we do see wolves colonize areas like this,
there's going to be conflicts with livestock.
When we're investigating wolf complaints,
we have to put these complaints into four categories.
And this comes from the--
the Wisconsin Wolf Management Plan,
and state law drives compensation in the state,
and so we have to package wolf complaints
that we received from you into these four categories,
and they're confirmed, probable,
confirmed non-wolf-- that would--
a confirmed non-wolf complaint would be, for instance,
a farmer calls us out about wolves killing a calf,
and the evidence suggests it was coyotes
that caused the depredation.
Or unconfirmed.
It doesn't mean we don't know the reason the calf died.
It just means we know wolves didn't kill the calf.
The interesting thing about this photograph,
if you notice, there's a magpie in it.
Eric took this picture with a trail camera,
and it has a magpie in Douglas County.
- [chuckles] That is rare.
[indistinct chatter]
- So when we're investigating complaints,
if you call us out to investigate a wolf complaint,
the policy says: Call you back in 24 hours,
and if there is a livestock animal
in reasonable condition to examine,
we have to investigate it within 48 hours.
Generally speaking,
by the time we receive a complaint
and we have boots on the ground
looking at whatever it is that was called in
is within the day-- oftentimes,
less than three to four hours.
In the summer months, especially now
when things are starting to heat up,
it's very, very important for us to get there
as quickly as possible so we can assess that evidence
before decomposition is occurring.
Scavenging-- you know, eagles and ravens and crows,
they consume an awful lot of a depredated livestock animal,
and every time they consume that carcass,
we're losing evidence to classify it
into one of those four categories.
So every complaint has a very detailed report
that accompanies it.
And while we're out there, we have to make sure
we're actually looking at predation.
You know, was the calf stillborn
and simply scavenged by predators,
or was it born alive and killed?
So things we're looking for is manure on the hoof,
maybe its ear tag,
it has a emasculating band,
so we know that the animal was born alive
and we're actually dealing with predation
and not just scavenging.
'Cause producers aren't paid
for wolves scavenging on livestock,
only if they depredate livestock.
While we're there investigating complaint,
the evidence we're looking for,
you know, are-- are wolf-- or predator tracks.
Wolf tracks, generally speaking,
they're 4 inches long by 3 1/2 inches wide.
Coyote tracks are much smaller.
Uh, wolf scats-- there's a big difference
between wolf scat biomass and coyote scat,
and generally speaking, when we're dealing with bears,
there's a lot of vegetation in bear scat
and not so much in predator scat.
You know, we're looking at where the animal was attacked.
The calf on the right,
bitten dorsally over the vertebrae,
that's very classic of wolves killing young livestock,
calves that are, you know, less than three months of age.
Coyotes typically won't do that.
The calf on the lower left with that ventral neck bite,
that's pretty signature of where coyotes
might attack a livestock animal.
And the calf on the upper left,
that was-- that was a newborn beef calf--
Red Angus calf that was attacked by coyotes
in the flank region,
and they-- they simply killed the animal
by stress, blood loss, shock, and trauma.
So the-- I mean, when we're out there
and we're looking at dead livestock,
these are the things that we're--
that we're looking for and looking at
to make sure we classify it correctly.
We also look at the canine puncture space
in the hide of a depredated animal.
The lower right, you can see the spacing of that
is about a inch and 1/2, inch and 3/4.
That's very signature of a wolf bite.
Fairly large diameter puncture holes--
3/8 of an inch generally speaking.
Inch and 1/2 or greater is--
is very signature of a wolf bite,
and you can see all the hemorrhaging
and shock and trauma and blood loss.
That's evidence that obviously this animal was alive
when it was bit.
And that just represents the canine tooth spacing
of a wolf right there in that image.
It's about an inch and 5/8.
Another technique that we've used--
sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully--
we can collect saliva or tissue
around those canine puncture holes,
and submit it to our National Wildlife Research Center.
And they can actually try to get genetic material
from the saliva and classify by specie
what saliva that has came-- what sal--
what specie that saliva came from.
It's been used successfully. It's not 100%.
I would say right now, it's about 50/50.
Carcass location, consumption, drag trail,
how much of the animal was consumed.
If we know when it was killed,
we know when you found it, how much of it was consumed?
Is it improbable for a coyote
to have consumed that much, or a bear?
Or how big-- how large of an animal is it?
And was it dragged?
I mean, coyotes don't have the ability
to drag carcasses as well as wolves or bears,
and maybe it was cached.
It's not uncommon for bears to cover prey items.
Maybe it was a fawn or a livestock carcass...
[stammers] Or, uh, a roadkill.
They'll drag a roadkill deer off the edge of the highway
and then cache it with vegetation.
Wolves occasionally will do that
but fairly infrequently.
So when wolf recovery... [clears throat]
Was occurring from the '80s into the-- into the '90s
and the early 2000s
is when we started to see
the number of wolf complaints increasing.
Those blue bars represent
wolf complaints we've received
in the state of Wisconsin
where we actually went out and investigated.
Those red bars represent those complaints
that we classified as confirmed or probable.
And obviously, the black line
is the trend of the gray wolf population.
So there is a very strong statistical relationship
that says, as wolves recovered
and their population increased,
so did complaints and verified complaints.
Some people have argued that necessarily more wolves
does not mean more complaints.
In the state of Wisconsin,
there's a strong correlation that it does mean that.
But-- this is important.
These are the confirmed and probable
wolf complaints we've received since 2003.
So 2003, we have 35 verif--
confirmed or probable wolf complaints.
In 2003, the wolf population,
the minimum count was about 350 animals.
And today, in-- last year, in 2015,
we had 91 confirmed or probable wolf complaints,
but if you look at roughly a ten-year average,
that trend is beginning to stabilize somewhat,
but there's nuances to this because there's been
on again/off again management scenarios
based on the federal status of wolves,
and also the new-- the state had the authority
in '12, '13, and '14
to have a recreational wolf harvest season,
and we had an integrated program where we were--
had the authority to lethally remove wolves
that were causing depredations on farms.
So in 2015, while investigating wolf complaints,
we confirmed 46 of those and another 10% as probable.
So over 50% of the investigations
that we conducted
were classified as confirmed or probable,
and 17% of those were confirmed as non-wolf.
And generally speaking, when it's a non-wolf complaint,
it's usually, coyotes have killed a beef calf.
These beef calves are fairly vulnerable to coyote predation
that first day or two of their life.
And resource categories--
while we're investigating complaints, beef cattle
makes up the majority of it by over 50%.
50% of the conflicts that we're looking at
relates to cow-calf producers.
Dairy cattle is a fairly significant portion at 12%,
and then the next biggest component
is dogs and hunting dogs.
Someone asked about a map
of wolf conflicts in the state.
You know, I get this is kind of a wide scale,
but in 2015,
those larger red dots represent
those confirmed and probable conflicts.
The smaller dots represent the confirmed non-wolf
or the unconfirmed complaints in the state.
And as you can see, it's mostly a northern forest system
in the northern wolf harvest zones,
uh, some in the central forest,
and then some scattered out.
Notably is Crawford County in southwest Wisconsin.
A pack of wolves has established themselves
down there, and they have depredated livestock
two years in a row now.
Um, in 2015,
we investigated wolf complaints in 35 counties.
And we verified or classified them
as confirmed or probable in 23 counties of the state.
You know, this is-- this is an important statistic
that we really keep track of in our program,
and that's the number of farms in the state
where we verify wolves have killed livestock.
[clears throat] This excludes fowl.
This is looking at sheep,
cattle-- dairy cattle, beef cattle-- possibly horses.
Horse depredations are relatively rare,
but, um, in 2010, was the most farms
that we had ever verified wolf depredations on at 47,
and then you can see that trend started to decline
from 47 to 40 to 32 to 28,
and during-- in 2012, '13, and '14,
we had the recreational harvest of wolves in the state,
and our program had the authority
to not only implement nonlethal abatement on farms
to try to prevent wolf depredations;
we had the authority
to set equipment on property,
and any wolves captured would be euthanized.
So in 2012, we had euthanized 57 wolves
that were causing conflict on different farms,
and producers, through shooting permits
and provisions of NR10.02
that allow livestock producers
to shoot wolves that are actively attacking livestock,
you know, there was an additional 17 animals removed
in 2012, in addition to the 57 that we removed.
So we were beginning to remove wolves
that had become associated
with depredating livestock,
and we started to see the number of farms
that wolves were killing livestock on decrease.
2014 was the last year of recreational wolf harvest
and lethal control
for livestock depredation protection,
and that number of farms jumped up to 32 last year.
[stammers] So as a livestock producer,
there's seasonal variation
in when you might expect wolves
to depredate livestock,
especially cow-calf producers.
Beginning in January through March,
it's a relatively rare event.
You don't have many small animals on the farm.
All your big animals are up around the hay ring
near the buildings, and they're just--
they're not very vulnerable.
You know, but what happens, as soon as--
as soon as you start to calve
and pasture greens up,
your herds get dispersed on pasture;
they're in more remote areas of the farm.
You have young animals.
You have wolves on the landscape.
We start to see the uptick in depredation
starting in end of March, first of April,
and then around the middle of May,
end of May, it kind of peaks,
and then it starts to drop off.
And what's occurring is, fawning has occurred,
and we see a decrease
in the rate of wolves depredating livestock
when they switch over
and there's this new food resource that's available
on the landscape, and that's deer fawns.
And so we see this-- this bimodal relationship
where livestock conflicts
get a little slower in June, July,
but as soon as we begin to approach August,
end of July, first of August, middle of August,
the wolf pups are weaned; they're away from the dens.
They're old enough to travel with the adults,
and you can possibly
end up with an entire pack of wolves
that are called "rendezvousing,"
or they have a rendezvous site near your farm.
The bioenergetics of the wolf pack
is increased tremendously
'cause you not only have the two breeders
that need sustenance for survival;
the pups are also old enough to where they're depending
on meat for sustenance,
and we see these depredations increasing
in August and September,
and then towards the middle to end of October,
it starts to decline again,
and, you know, pasture could be
froze off by that point;
maybe your feeder calves have been shipped.
The vulnerability--
the number of vulnerable animals out there
just starts to decline,
and this rate of depredation drops off
to where when we get into November--
late November, December,
it becomes a fairly rare event.
What we have seen
when livestock producers do have wolves
on their farms late in the year
and depredations are occurring,
those can be significant issues for that producer,
'cause those wolves are-- [clears throat]
They're going to spend time at that farm hunting livestock
because they've become acclimated to doing it.
And, you know, what predisposes
an individual farmer to a livestock depredation--
you know, I said earlier, there's 32 farms last year
that we verified wolves killing livestock on.
We know that it occurs more than that.
[clears throat] They may kill a calf,
consume it, and the producer's never aware that--
why the calf is missing; that has happened.
So that number of farms is higher than 32,
but what predisposes a farm to wolf predation
in Wisconsin is, generally, it's a larger farm,
usually has, you know,
50 to a few hundred head of cattle on it,
more remote pastures,
and what happens, these farms are just
positioned on the landscape where they butt up
next to really good wolf habitat.
And this is an aerial image out of an aircraft
flying from Ashland down along Highway 13.
So this would be right around
Marengo, High Bridge,
York area looking south,
and you can see that pastureland right there,
but that blue haze in the background
is the Great Divide Ranger District
of the national forest.
There's county forest land there.
And there's about a half a million acres
of really good wolf habitat
right up next to this livestock production area,
and there's a lot of cow-calf operations
in this area.
And you simply have four strands of barbed wire
separating your animals
from some of the best wolf habitat in the state,
and that's not-- that's not an abatement strategy.
Your fences are designed to confine livestock.
They're not designed to keep predators out of your pastures.
And, you know, farm size can range--
the biggest producer we deal with is--
he's got-- uh, about 1,200 acres.
And generally speaking, on a farm, and, uh--
generally speaking-- there are exceptions,
but the average number of calves killed per farm
using our statistics is around two calves per farm.
There are situations, as you can see,
where one particular farm, we verify--
we verified 12 calves were killed.
That particular producer had a fairly large
missing livestock claim that year also.
[clears throat]
Cattle depredated by wolves.
Um, since they were listed
as an endangered specie back in 1975,
we have verified wolves have killed
661 head of cattle in the state.
Last year, it was 46.
Something that's not talked about
but is very important
are these non-depredation impacts
that wolves can have on livestock production.
And, you know, Mr. Link hit the nail on the head.
The instance-- in 2015,
there was an incident on that particular property
where we didn't have good abatement strategies,
and the best solution was
just to move the cattle off of the--
off of that pasture.
And, to me, when that is the solution,
the program has failed,
because we weren't able to resolve that conflict
using just nonlethal techniques.
We need to have an integrated approach
to resolving livestock depredations from wolves.
But some of these non-predation-related impacts
that wolves have had on livestock production
includes weight loss.
That Ramler et al. 2014 paper
is a scientific peer-reviewed paper
that looked at ranches in Montana
and compared feeder calf weights at the end of the season
on farms that had wolf depredations
and on farms that didn't have wolf depredations,
and those farms that had wolf depredations,
their calf weights were 26 pounds lighter
than the ranches without depredations,
and, you know, that year,
if you look at, you know, 26 pounds per calf
at a couple of bucks a pound,
that adds up to real money really quick.
I mean, and these are impacts that aren't compensated for.
Increased cattle vigilance, that Kluever paper,
looked at cow-calf herds in the Southwest,
in Arizona and New Mexico, that were exposed
to the Mexican gray wolf,
and those animals... [clears throat]
Those animals on those allotments
that had the presence of wolves
spent more time looking for--
presumably for predators
than herds that didn't have wolves on the allotment.
Meaning, they spent more time grazing,
putting weight on.
I mean, that's the goal of cow-calf production.
Cattle-- very difficult to handle,
that have been hunted by wolves.
Cattle have been stampeded through fences.
There's the potential of a disease transmitted
between wolves-- other canids.
Coyotes, farm dogs, foxes, and wolves
can transmit Neospora caninum,
which can result in the cow aborting a fetus.
Um, fence damage,
and time spent searching for depredations.
You know, these are some of these secondary impacts
that folks like you can have
when wolves start hunting livestock on your farm.
So some nonlethal concepts.
Disruptive stimuli-- this is, you know,
an undesirable stimuli to prevent or alter
the behavior of an animal,
to try to frighten it away.
Aversive stimuli--
stimuli that cause discomfort or pain
that's paired with a specific behavior.
When we talk about nonlethal concepts,
these are kind of the two boxes that we look at
when we're trying to prevent wolves
from killing livestock.
And some of those techniques are fladry--
and we'll go over these when we go out to--
when we go out to the Radzak farm.
Fladry, randomly activated lights,
electronic guards, radio-activated guards,
and scare wires.
The image on the left,
that's a scare wire on a cow-calf operation.
It's placed between the ground and the bottom barbed wired,
and it's electrified
with 12-volt fencers, solar Parmak fencers,
or some other fencers.
Fairly high voltage.
It's a technique that we're using
on a particular farm that has
a huge history of wolf conflicts
to prevent wolves from accessing pastures.
The image on the right,
that's some of our staff installing fladry
on a farm in Douglas County
that had wolf depredations in 2015.
In 2015, we had 17 major nonlethal projects.
We installed 16-- almost 16 1/2 miles of fladry.
We put these radio-activated guards--
and you'll see these this afternoon--
out on three different properties,
installed over six miles of electrified poly-tape,
used electronic guards
and various livestock husbandry recommendations.
You know, and some animal husbandry practices
that might help prevent wolf depredations--
you know, changing pastures, night penning,
changing birthing dates, and fencing.
Some other nonlethal approaches
that have been used in the past
has been actually the sterilization of wolves.
They felt if they weren't breeding
and they weren't raising pups,
the energy demands of the pack would be suppressed,
and therefore they wouldn't depredate livestock.
It wasn't proven scientifically with wolves,
but it was a technique used in Utah
with coyotes, where they were able
to actually reduce rates of predation on lambs
from sterilized coyote pairs.
Translocation of problem wolves--
that was a technique we used prior to 2003.
There was 33 different wolves
that were caught from farms
that were suffering depredations from wolves,
and we moved these long distances
and released them.
It didn't prove to be a very successful technique
because the majority of these animals died
within the first six months of them being released,
but what it did do is, it stimulated nine county boards
to pass resolutions not wanting us or the--
or the state of Wisconsin
releasing wolves in those counties.
So it-- it was a unpopular technique.
- [chuckles] Yeah.
- That's an image of a radio-activated guard.
It's got a strobe light and some sirens,
and it's activated by the presence
of a radio-collared wolf.
So it's more of an interactive tool.
It's not going off all night.
We know if the stimuli
is going off repeatedly and consistently,
animals will habituate to that fairly quickly.
But this is-- it's an interaction--
it's an interaction based on proximity
between wolves and this box from its radio collar
where it sends a signal, and it activates the device.
Potentially, calving nearer buildings
might be something--
a recommendation that you might consider.
It doesn't prove to be 100% effective.
We've had wolves kill livestock very near buildings,
so to say that this is foolproof
would be inaccurate,
but it's something that you might consider.
And Mike will talk more specifically
about guarding animals.
You know, I've talked about
the importance of having an integrated approach
to resolving wolf conflicts.
And right now,
with the federal classification of wolves
as federally endangered,
we can only try to prevent depredations
for folks like you using nonlethal abatement techniques.
And this is a scenario that happened in 2010
in Douglas and Bayfield County.
This is-- that black line represents
the summer territory of a wolf
that Eric had radio-collared
in an attempt to use
a radio-activated guard,
and I'll just walk you through what happens.
And so the green represents forested cover.
The beige is-- is some type of agriculture,
and the blue's self-explanatory;
in the top of the screen is Lake Superior.
So on May 10th, we had wolves kill a calf.
You know, we applied some nonlethal technique
to try to abate that situation,
try to prevent wolves from killing other calves.
Well, it worked there for a few weeks,
but over on a neighboring farm, they killed a calf.
So we applied some nonlethal abatement there.
It's fladry, flashing lights, or electronic guards.
And then on the 15th of July,
we had a farmer report wolves harassing livestock.
We verified that, so we did proactive nonlethal abatement
trying to prevent any depredations
and these secondary effects
that wolves might pose on a particular farm.
So on the second of August,
they depredated livestock
on the north edge of the summer territory,
so we applied nonlethal abatement there.
And then on 8/19,
they actually depredated livestock on the farm
where we had already applied this nonlethal abatement,
so that didn't prove to be successful.
And then in September,
another depredation on an adjacent farm,
another one a couple of days later.
[stammers]
At this point, we're trying everything that we can try.
This is-- this is the era
when wolves are federally lifted,
and we don't have the authority to remove them,
so...
Another depredation occurs on the 30th of September,
the 10th of Oct-- or the 11th of October,
the 30th of October.
Without the authority
and the ability to have an integrated approach,
that's not successful wolf management.
Spreading the problem
from one producer to another isn't successful.
And at that point, those animals had become so habituated
to these nonlethal techniques
that none of them were being successful.
And I would argue, if you want to talk
about wolf conservation
and these conservation strategies,
that-- that pack of wolves did nothing to support
wolf recovery and wolf conservation
when everybody in the community is having problems with them.
Eric, would you like to add anything
to that experience? - No.
[laughter]
- It was a difficult summer.
- How many of those wolves died accidentally?
- [laughs]
- Pardon me? [laughter]
- How many of those wolves died accidentally?
- Uh, I don't know. - Do you refuse to answer?
- I forget-- that was W-757, and I think--
maybe that winter, it went off of the air.
I forget what happened to it.
But that is-- that is a real-life example.
I think that's a fairly compelling story that--
that trying to resolve these conflicts
with nonlethal abatement strategies--
although, we can select a farm-- maybe it's a single farm.
It's isolated. It's relatively small.
We can stop wolf depredations to livestock
with these nonlethal tools relatively efficiently,
but there are these scenarios that occur
where nothing in the realm of nonlethal is practical.
In northern Wisconsin,
we conduct tribal co-investigations
of wolf complaints.
The Menominee, Stockbridge-Munsee,
and the Ojibwe nations
value, culturally and spiritually,
wolves very highly.
If we have a depredation within six miles
of tribal lands-- of these tribal lands,
we will co-investigate the complaint
with the tribal biologist.
So we do an on the ground--
boots-on-the-ground evaluation of the conflict.
So if we're starting to talk about abatement strategies,
we have the tribal biologist on board,
so when we start talking--
potentially, given the era in which we're at,
whether it's federally delisted or listed,
they can be part of the determination
as to what we're going to do to resolve that issue.
We had talked about carcass disposal,
proper carcass--
proper carcass disposal techniques.
The-- the image on the left,
that's an improperly disposed of cow,
and those tracks coming into it are wolf tracks.
That could probably predispose you
to wolf predation, when you start
to calve on those pastures in the spring.
It's-- it's a very important topic,
and it's a very difficult issue to deal with
that you folks have to deal with in the winter months.
Just a time frame of this on again/off again
federal status of wolves in Wisconsin.
You've seen that earlier.
Wolves captured and killed for depredation management
by USDA Wildlife Services and the Wisconsin DNR
from 1974 to 2015.
There's been 397 wolves captured
for conflict management,
and 335 of those animals
were euthanized.
An integrated site-specific
wolf depredation management program
has nothing to do with population level control.
It is not our objective to have any impact
on the overall statewide wolf population.
It is to resolve your conflict,
not to reduce the wolf population.
Generally speaking,
when we have a year of full lethal control,
we will remove between 5% and 10%
of that minimum estimated wolf population
from the previous winter.
I would like to also add to this
that site-specific lethal control
for wolf conflict abatement has had nothing to do--
or has had no negative impact
on wolf recovery in the state of Wisconsin.
You folks saw this image earlier.
I mean, what it speaks to is,
those years when we had the authority
to lethally remove wolves in 2002 through 2008
and then in '12, '13, and '14,
you can obviously see that
the population growth line is increasing
while we had the authority to lethally remove animals.
Some weird wolf conflicts,
you know, some non-predation-related things.
This is a silage bag in Marinette County
that a pair of wolves had ran up the side of,
and their nails had punctured that silage bag.
And you can see where the farmer had taped the bag.
And you all know what that means to you,
when you have a punctured silage bag.
You know, these are right near the barnyard.
Just-- just some non-livestock-related
wolf incidences that--
that do-- that do occur.
Um, you know, so when we go back to 1908,
that first scientifically...
I wouldn't call it peer-reviewed
but an effort to demonstrate
predator management tools back in 1908,
to today, in 2014,
we still have scientists that work both
for our agency and other agencies
that are trying to develop these tools and techniques
to prevent large carnivores--
grizzly bears, black bears, cougars,
wolves, and coyotes-- from depredating livestock,
so there is still effort out there, folks,
that people are spending a fair amount of time on
trying to develop techniques to resolve these conflicts.
And this 2014 just represents another one of those efforts.
Dr. John Shivik has devoted a lot of his career
to investigating techniques
to prevent livestock depredations.
I know that's very quick. It's a lot of information.
We could talk about this topic for a very long time,
but we can go over some of the stuff at the field day
with Eric, but at this point,
before I open it up to questions,
on the back are some magnets,
and if you want, grab one of those.
Those have our 1-800 hotline numbers on them.
And so if you suspect that you have
a wolf or a bear depredation,
it'd be nice for you to have that on your refrigerator
so you know the number to call.
We monitor those numbers
seven days a week, 365 days a year.
If it's a holiday or a weekend, there's someone assigned
to call in and check voice mail every couple of hours
to see if we've received a wolf or a bear complaint.
So it's 365-day-a-year service.
So grab one of those on your way out.
And some of the packages-- packets that you got
on your way in, they just contain
a lot of information about our agency and program,
not only about bears and wolves but some of
the other stuff we do that might be useful for you.
So I encourage you to grab one of those
and take it home.
So at that, I've got a little bit of time,
if there's any questions.
[applause]