If the saying misery loves company is true, Colorado ranchers should be in contact with ranchers in California who have had enough of wolf depredations.

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times says that wolf depredations have gotten so bad that officials in Modoc and Sierra counties have declared emergencies and leaders in Siskiyou and Lassen counties are asking the state to do something to help the ranchers. Some ranchers are pleading with the government to let them shoot the “bad actors” to keep the rest of the pack from attacking their herds.

As in Colorado, California wolf proponents are convinced that the wolves would eat other wild animals keeping their numbers in check or culling sick animals. But that hasn’t been the case.

According to the LA Times article, “In 2022-23, researchers from UC Davis analyzed more than 100 wolf scat samples collected in northeast California from the so-called Lassen pack. They found that 72% of the samples contained cattle DNA, and every wolf had at least one sample that contained cow, said Kenneth Tate, one of the researchers.”

Tate said the packs are not settling in the wild or in the mountain peaks, but are in the valleys where cattle graze in the summer.

To read more about this University of California, Davis study, see Rachel Gabel’s story at https://tinyurl.com/2n29ruu2.

Patrick Griffin, a “wolf liaison” for Siskiyou County, talked about the Whaleback pack that has been responsible for a lot of the damage to livestock. “The Whaleback pack is teaching its young to hunt cows. And when they head off to claim their own territory and start their own packs, they’ll take those lessons with them.”

Griffin said he had hoped that non-lethal hazing methods would prompt the wolves to prey on an elk herd ranging just north of the ranches in his county but that hasn’t happened.

“An elk is a lot more intimidating than a cow,” Griffin said. “Which would you pick?”

Like Colorado ranchers, California ranchers are using hazing methods and range riders, which they are not compensated for, but the ranches cover vast areas and wolves are not being deterred by hazing. And, like in Colorado, money for ranchers to compensate for wolf depredations has run out and the checks that ranchers get doesn’t cover the stress, weight loss and calf loss damage caused by the mere presence of wolves.

The UC Davis researchers estimated that, over the course of one summer, each wolf in their study cost ranchers between $70,000 and $163,000.

It’s time for ranchers, from states where wolf depredation has taken a toll, to get together to fight the endangered species designations. There is a reason that these apex predators were nearly exterminated. Livestock producers should not be expected to just stand by and watch their herds decimated by these predators.

Makes me wonder why so much time and money is spent on low-stress livestock handling systems and methods in feedyards and slaughter plants, while wolves are allowed to harass and savagely maim and kill the animals while they are grazing in pastures.

This is how Torees described a wolf kill in the LA Times article, Once they bring a cow to the ground, the pack will “kind of pick around a little bit, eat the good stuff” — particularly the rectum and udders — “and then just leave them and go on to the next one,” said Joel Torres, a farmer and rancher in Siskiyou County, California.

There’s no saving them. Their intestines often spill out through their hindquarters, and Torres shoots the cows to put them out of their misery.