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Putting up fladry in Big Wood River, ID
Photo Credit: Suzanne Stone

Learn more about the nonlethal methods to protect livestock from wolves utilized on the Big Wood River Project

LIVESTOCK AND WOLVES: PREVENTING CONFLICT WITH FLADRY

For hundreds of years, ranchers have had to address issues of protecting their livestock from natural predators, sometimes forced to do so in a lethal manner. When wolves prey upon livestock, the social tolerance for the number of depredations and the presence of these animals decreases.

Fladry, a line mounted along the top of a fence from which strips of fabric or some other material are suspended have been used to deter wolves from traversing a fence-line for centuries. First developed and used by hunters in Eastern Europe to funnel wolves into an area, once caught in the fladry trap wolves were reluctant to cross the barrier and were shot. Currently, fladry is used to confine wolf movements to certain areas and constrain their depredations on livestock through creation of barriers that wolves don’t like to cross or otherwise impair their predation ability.

A prevalent societal goal across the West is to protect valuable livestock from carnivores, reducing depredation losses, creating an eco-system where both domestic and wild animals can co-exist. Fladry can play a role among a suite of preventive measures available and offers a cost-effective mitigation tool for the problem of wolf predation on livestock on a local scale.

IDAHO FISH & GAME PROVIDES CLARIFICATION ABOUT ELK NUMBERS

Idaho Fish & Game corrects previous story about elk numbers in Idaho
by ED MITCHELL, Idaho Fish & Game Department

IDAHO FISH AND GAME
HEADQUARTERS NEWS RELEASE
Boise, ID

Date:	February 10, 2009
Contact:	Ed Mitchell (208) 334-3700

A recent Associated Press news story recently included misleading information about the effects of wolf predation on elk numbers in Idaho.

Elk are managed in 29 zones. In most of those zones, elk numbers are within management objectives. In a few, the numbers are above objectives, and in three zones, numbers are below the objectives.

The numbers in the AP story should have referred only to elk in one zone, the Lolo zone in the upper Clearwater drainage. Here elk survival rates have declined, and herd numbers are going down about 13 percent per year.

See Fish and Game's Web site for detailed information on elk numbers: http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/cms/wildlife/manage_issues/ung/.

This story first was released by Idaho Fish & Game on February 10, 2009
http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/apps/releases/view.cfm?NewsID=4775

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