#istandforwolves

Unlike small mammals who multiply like bunnies or some predators who’s boom or bust depends on said bunnies, large carnivores like wolves keep their own numbers in check. According to a new work published in Oikos, population control is what distinguishes “apex predators” from the rest.

Here

What's wrong with this story?

A cow lives on a ranch in the southwest. A cow dies. Remaining on the landscape, the dead cow draws in predators (like wolves) looking for an easy meal. Scavenging is known to habituate wolves to prey on livestock. A wolf kills a cow. Ranchers are reimbursed for their losses and critically endangered Mexican gray wolf gets killed. Sound fair?

Here's the problem.

There's an imbalance. While livestock owners are compensated for livestock lost to wolves, and offered financial and logistical assistance with depredation avoidance measures, there is NO corresponding requirement for livestock owners to remove livestock carcasses on public lands (or take measures to protect their cattle from depredations in the first place).

When gray wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone and the northern Rocky Mountains, there was a rule stipulating that stock owners must not leave carcasses accessible to wolves.

So where's the rule mandating livestock growers to practice basic animal husbandry (remove dead cows) within the recovery area of a wolf subspecies on the brink of extinction?

Something is rotten in the southwest states...  And it smells like cow

View USFWS's kill authorization for critically endangered Mexican gray wolf F1557 of the Diamond Pack: http://bit.ly/2h7CfVe