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backroad-life · 1 month
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Credit: Backroad-life
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Don’t Kill Wolves - Just Keep Them Away
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You’re operating a farm or ranch. What do you do when wolves are killing your livestock or pet dogs? Trap them and shoot them, right? That’s what farmers and ranchers — and government agencies — have been doing for decades.
Now there are new, nonlethal alternatives. Even better, these solutions are more permanent than lethal methods. Kill a wolf, and there’s another wolf behind him, eager to attack. Keep a wolf away, and the rest of his pack will stay away too. They may even help keep other packs away.
“We don’t believe that hunting wolves on a broad scale necessarily will help mitigate livestock depredation,” says Brian Roell, wildlife biologist and wolf specialist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
“It’s not the wolf population that’s the reason for an increase in livestock depredation,” Roell says. “It is the pack of wolves at a much smaller scale. So, if you have a hunt and you don’t affect the wolves that are the ones causing the problem, you won’t change the depredation.”
The goals of Michigan’s wolf plan include minimizing conflicts with livestock and pets and looking after the state’s wolves in ways that are “science-based and socially responsible,” he adds.
A Michigan project
Brett Huntzinger is applying more effective, nonlethal techniques to prevent wolf depredation in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. And it’s working. Prior to Huntzinger’s project, most of the farms had wolf depredation issues. In FY2022, there were no confirmed depredations due to large predators.
Huntzinger is a federal Wildlife Service employee who earned a master’s degree doing wolf research with Professor Emeritus Rolf Peterson at Michigan Technological University. During 2022, he worked with 10 farmers who are raising approximately 900 livestock. He helped them install fencing, fladry — which is temporary fencing with flapping flags attached–lights, sound devices, and multi-strand electric fencing around carcass burial sites and in predator travel routes near livestock.
When he installs radios to use sound to keep wolves away, he tells his kids: “I’m setting up all-night cow disco parties.”
Every farm he has worked with presents unique challenges. “I tell my kids that sometimes it’s like the crime/murder investigation shows on TV, and we are the detectives, Huntzinger says. “You never know what you will find.”
Huntzinger uses trail cameras to monitor predators’ travel routes. “I often find there are more predators around than people think,” he says.  
Rolf Peterson, his former teacher and ongoing advisor, has high praise for Huntzinger. “Brett is extremely good at this, and he’s devoted to solving problems that wolves might pose,” says Peterson.  “He is the type of person who can easily relate to farmers and landowners, as he lives on a farm himself and has several horses.  He also has very extensive field experience from his MS thesis work at Michigan Tech, when he tracked wolves for hundreds of miles on skis to find out what they were killing in winter.”
According to Huntzinger, nonlethal wolf depredation prevention techniques are not only effective in the short run. They can have an unexpected long term benefit: turning predators themselves into livestock guards. “If you can teach a resident wolf pack to not attack livestock, they will defend that area against other wolves and predators,” Huntzinger says. “In a way, the resident packs act like guard animals for the farms inside their territory. The trick is to use the nonlethal methods to keep the individuals in the wolf pack from starting to attack livestock.” 
In 2022 Congress increased the Wildlife Service’s funding for depredation prevention to $2.5 million, up from $1.38 million in FY2020 and 2021. Michigan’s funding doubled from $60,000 in FY2021 to $120,600 in FY2022. With this additional funding, Wildlife Services in Michigan was able to stock many types of nonlethal equipment available for loan, including 1,800 yards of electrified fladry, fencing supplies, posts and solar fence chargers. The agency can also provide 100 solar-charged flashing LED lights and other types of motion- activated flood lights and alarms, as well as three solar-powered radios with deep cell batteries for use as an audio predator deterrent.
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Sunday coffee ☕️
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usarmytrooper · 5 months
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admiraltx · 9 days
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It rained just enough we couldn’t get trailers in any pasture, so we kicked cattle into the road and went where we needed to go
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pookpookums · 7 months
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Rough day?
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agelessphotography · 3 months
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Rancher Robert O. Anderson (right), Artesia, New Mexico, USA, Paul Fusco, 1963
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steamdrive · 7 months
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Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan Canada
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Sometimes writers reveal they know nothing about an industry in the funniest way possible. Like in Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders the villains proclaim they're supplementing the income from their illegal mining operation by selling off the cows they stole from the locals as part of their ruse.
But like selling a cow is a whole fucking thing. That creature's almost certainly branded or tagged. You know these nerds aren't sitting at a cattle auction or filling out the paperwork.
Do they know a guy who will look the other way and slaughter them on the down low? Is there a local farmer's market or health food store unknowingly buying fenced beef? Is it an fda approved slaughter house?
The mining gold illegally from government lands is the least of their crimes here. There is absolutely another person involved in this operation. I need answers.
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nmnomad · 2 months
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Lonesome highway across San Augustin Plains. The plains extend roughly northeast-southwest, with a length of about 55 miles and a width varying between 5–15 miles. The basin is bounded on the south by the Luera Mountains and Pelona Mountain (outliers of the Black Range); on the west by the Tularosa Mountains; on the north by the Mangas, Crosby, Datil, and Gallinas Mountains; and on the east by the San Mateo Mountains.
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tpeakphotos · 27 days
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While walking along the trails of the Table Mountain Ecological Reserve in Butte County California with my lovely bride I saw this heifer grazing near this small seasonal stream. I watched her for about 10 minutes waiting for her to give me a pose I liked and she finally obliged by getting a drink from the stream. I think it makes a wonderfully pastoral image with the spring wildflowers in bloom on the beautiful April morning.
n my Etsy shop: https://buff.ly/3S1j94E
Prints and merch on demand: https://buff.ly/3U5i4LQ
#springiscoming #springtime #ruralamerica
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backroad-life · 1 month
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Credit: Backroad-life
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rusty-ford · 1 year
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Happy Friday the 13th.
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bygracealonegirly · 2 months
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admiraltx · 6 months
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This colt bucked this kid off, very violently, first thing Monday morning. He bounced up, caught his horse, and rode him all week. I wished I still bounced like that
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