Warding Off Wolves

Surveying his pasture from the cab of his Toyota pickup truck, his Australian Shepherd Griz by his side, John Hanson bears the appearance of a quintessential Montana rancher, which he is, having grazed cattle on this land north of Marion for decades. Since the early 1940s, his family has raised grazing livestock on this postage stamp of pale prairie grass, and the Hansons now own nearly 300 acres, leasing an additional 15,000 acres of grazing rights from Weyerhaeuser...There is something that sets him apart from established ranching practices, however — he’s adopted a progressive approach to curbing livestock depredation by wolves, a common problem for ranchers, which Hanson has resolved through uncommonly alternative means. “I’ve always said the only thing that can stop a wolf is a bullet,” Hanson said. “I was a total skeptic at first.” The source of his skepticism centers on a centuries-old technique called fladry, which today consists of employing a barrier of orange flags suspended from a single strand of electrified cordage to exploit wolves’ innate fear of new objects in their environment. Fladry has proven to be an effective deterrent, even in a calving pasture covered in afterbirth and brimming with wobbly-legged baby cows in their most vulnerable state, the effect of the orange ribbons dancing in the wind apparently confusing the remarkably keen canine. The flagging, coupled with the electrified wires, keeps the wolves at bay and is cheap to deploy and maintain. It’s an odd technique, and nowhere near as intuitive a solution as a bullet. So when Ted North, a wildlife specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, approached Hanson about using fladry to fortify his 40-acre calving pasture, where he was losing up to seven calves a year due to wolf predation — about 10 percent of his 70-head of Black Angus cattle — he was understandably reluctant. “Ted was pushing fladry on me and I was doing everything I could to resist. It just didn’t add up,” Hanson said. “But finally I gave up and they came out and put it up. I haven’t had a loss since.” The “they” to which Hanson’s referring is the nonprofit group People and Carnivores, a Bozeman-based conservation group that promotes a wide array of tools and practices to proactively reduce human-wildlife conflicts on the wildland-urban interface...MORE]

A 90 acre pasture!