Year of Award
2010
Document Type
Professional Paper
Degree Type
Master of Arts (MA)
Department or School/College
School of Journalism
Committee Chair
Nadia White
Commitee Members
Clem Work, Martin Nie
Keywords
wolf depredations, wolves and livestock, wolf depredations in the Northern Rockies, wolves
Abstract
Since U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced gray wolves into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in 1995 and 1996, conflicts between wolves and livestock have increased as the wolf population has grown and expanded. Ranchers in wolf country face a changing ecology that now includes wolves as a keystone predator, and failing to adapt to the change has meant hard losses for some ranchers. In other cases, ranchers have found ways to compensate for the reintroduced predator. These ranching situations, both the unchanged and the changed, offer lessons to livestock producers who can anticipate wolves becoming part of the landscape. And the values most likely to make the transition from ranching without a viable wolf population to ranching with a viable population as painless as possible, the ranchers say, are communication and cooperation between themselves, their neighbors, wildlife managers and government trappers.
Recommended Citation
Grant, James Wilson, "Ranches with Wolves: How straight talk is the salvation of open range in the Northern Rockies" (2010). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 794.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/794
© Copyright 2010 James Wilson Grant