On-the-ground help for ranchers in Grand County is on the way under an agreement with the Middle Park Stockgrowers Association and the Colorado Department of Agriculture to help ranchers fend off wolves during calving season.
The agriculture department says it will spend $20,000 on nonlethal deterrents, including nighttime patrols and herd protection in a region where two wolves have killed six cows and one wolf is thought to be pregnant or with pups in the same region.
Additionally, the department and Colorado Parks and Wildlife are expanding their permanent wolf conflict mitigation programs to support producers implementing non-lethal predator control measures through funding in the recently passed 2024 Long Bill.
Kate Greenberg, agriculture commissioner, reached out to affected Grand County ranchers after wolves that were transplanted from Oregon in December started killing cattle, asking them how the department could provide support. She said the Middle Park stockgrowers felt range riders, who guard cattle and disrupt wolves’ hunting patterns, were “the tool that could really be helpful,” but added the $20,000 grant “will give them flexibility to use other nonlethal tools if they feel they should be useful.”
Merrit Linke, a Grand County commissioner and vice chair of the stockgrowers association, has concerns about the efficacy of range riders, who are used in other states with wolves.
In a phone call Sunday, he said the stockgrowers “are willing to give it a try, but what we’re hearing from other states is that it’s really ineffective, because wolves kill at night. Unless you’re there 24/7, how can you see them? Then, logistically, where would you put this range rider? Grand County is 1,846 square miles and in a 5- or 6-mile radius circle there are probably 3,000 or 4,000 head of cattle.”
Jeff Flood, a wildlife conflict specialist for Stevens and Ferry counties northwest of Spokane who sits on the board of the Cattle Producers of Washington, which funds a range riding program, shared Linke’s sentiment. He said the wolf population in Washington has grown from a few that wandered in from Canada and Idaho in 2009 to 270 at last count. Washington spent $1.6 million on wolf conflict management in 2022.
Northern Colorado ranchers have been lobbying the governor and state agencies to step in and kill the wolves that have been preying on their cattle. Jeff Davis, Parks and Wildlife director, declined, saying killing wolves would be at odds with the voter-directed goals of wolf reintroduction. A bill introduced March 27 to the House Agriculture, Water & Natural Resources committee requesting $1.2 million to help rural communities with conflict prevention and coexistence strategies was also shot down, leaving ranchers to continue fending for themselves in some ways.
Flood said wolves are smarter than any nonlethal deterrent, such as fox lights, radio activated dark boxes, fladry or turbo fladry. “And if they have no negative stimulant from a human, a blinking light or a flag isn’t going to do very much good for very long,” he added.
“Range riders is sold as a program that keeps wolves from killing cattle,” Flood said. “But I don’t believe that to be true. I mean, it does sometimes break up some of these interactions, but if I’m a range rider and I’m successful at running wolves off John Smith’s ranch but they fall over on George Whoever’s ranch and kill his calves, did I really save anything in this process?”
Range riders do solve the problem of a few people trying to find wolves in places where “cattle are scattered to the four winds,” he added. “It allows more people on the landscape to find these issues in a timely fashion to where we can say, yes, wolves did this or no they didn’t.”
The only way to stop wolves from killing cattle, he said, is to “stop it before it gets started.”
“Hopefully, a range rider can go out and say, yeah, these cattle are really spooky. I see a lot of wolf signs,” Flood said. “Maybe I found a calf or two that are bit up but aren’t dead yet. We need to get in here and address this issue.”
But range riding won’t be successful “unless you have an equal partner in it, and an equal partner, in my mind, would be your state agency sharing information with the range rider (such as) where wolves are and their collar data,” he said. “Otherwise how will the range riders know where to go to spend the least amount of money and be successful?”
Flood said funding for range rider programs will be a big issue going forward. In Washington, funding is earmarked through the agriculture department. He said $180,000 supports eight riders covering 2,200 head of cattle for a year.
Olga Robak, communications director for the department of agriculture, said the legislature has allocated $580,936 for three full-time employees for the Colorado wolf conflict resolution program, including a program manager.
Flood said one way the state can be a good partner to ranchers is by letting them pick their own range riders.
Linke said that’s what the Middle Park stockgrowers are doing.
But Flood added the only way to assure wolves won’t continue to prey on cattle like they have in Grand County is to kill them.
“You know as humans, we’ve got to manage wolves,” he said. “It just is what it is.”