Washington State University researchers have found that it is counter-productive to kill wolves to keep them from preying on livestock. Shooting and trapping lead to more dead sheep and cattle the following year, not fewer.
Writing in the journal PLOS ONE, Rob Wielgus, director of the Large Carnivore Conservation Lab in the School of the Environment at WSU and data analyst Kaylie Peebles say that, for each wolf killed, the odds of more livestock depredations increase significantly. Read “Effects of Wolf Mortality on Livestock Depredations.”
The trend continues until 25 percent of the wolves in an area are killed. Ranchers and wildlife managers then see a “standing wave of livestock depredations,” said Wielgus.
Moreover, he and Peebles write, that rate of wolf mortality “is unsustainable and cannot be carried out indefinitely if federal relisting of wolves is to be avoided.”