Remember the fable about the wolf in sheep's clothing? A study by the Wildlife Conservation Society turns that tale's conceit on its head: Today's hungry predator needs the woolly pelt not to aid him in his hunt, but to disguise himself from being hunted down. The bad rep of Western carnivores like wolves and coyotes is causing their rapid decline at the hands of federal agents claiming to protect the nation's floundering sheep industry.

The U.S. government has subsidized 8 decades of predator control, investing more than 1.6 billion dollars towards the killing of carnivores believed to prey on livestock. Yet as per data gathered in the WCS study, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Conservation Biology, the effort has failed to stave off an 85 percent decline in the sheep industry since its peak of 56.2 million animals in 1942.

Clearly, the moral of the wolf fable still holds true: Appearances are deceiving. As WCS researcher and the study's lead author Kim Berger has concluded, no wolfish stare or howl in the night is to blame for the long-term decline in sheep numbers. Rather, the culprit is one that can't be controlled by hunting rifles: market forces, which include fluctuating hay prices, a 141 percent wage increase for livestock workers, a 23 percent decrease in lamb prices, and an 82 percent decrease in wool prices.

"If predation losses are responsible for the decline in the U.S. sheep industry and federal predator control has been effective at reducing these losses, then we'd expect to see a strong, positive relationship between efforts to control predators and trends in sheep numbers and that is just not the case," said Berger.

Berger notes that strapped ranchers feel that, unlike with market forces, they have some degree of control over predation, and this can lead to intense pressure on wildlife managers to respond. In 1998 alone, federal agents killed more than 268,000 large carnivores. Coyotes account for 75 to 95 percent of carnivores killed annually, but mountain lions, bobcats, wolves, black bears, and grizzly bears are also removed.

The perception of carnivores as widespread livestock killers represents a major challenge to their conservation worldwide. Given the failure of predator control to protect the sheep industry, Berger urges that federal funding for this program be re-evaluated.



Posted by: Kelly    Source