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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.

LIE DOWN WITH WOLVES: PARTS ONE & TWO

Learn about an experimental program to keep wolves away from sheep using non-lethal methods.
by ADAM COTTRELL, Boise State Radio

Click Here to Listen to Part One of This Story
In the west few issues carry as much emotional baggage as wolves. Idaho has far more bears and mountain lions than wolves, but it's wolves that can start fistfights and bring protestors out in packs on all sides of debate. However you look at them, the fact is wolves are now off the endangered species list. Today the top dogs at Idaho Fish and Game are meeting to set hunting quotas for the formerly endangered predator. But there are people who think the wolf and the lamb can lie down together in peace, or at least share the same eco system. Boise State Radio's Adam Cotterell takes to the mountains to report on an experimental program to keep wolves away from sheep using non-lethal methods.

Click Here to Listen to Part Two of This Story
Idaho's hunting season may reduce the number of wolves in the state by as much as twenty five percent, but removal from the endangered species list and a hunting season does not change the relationship between ranchers and wolves. Ranchers still can't shoot a wolf unless they catch it in the act of attacking their animals. That means there will still be many places in Idaho where livestock and wolves live in close proximity. Yesterday on Morning Edition Boise State Radio's Adam Cotterell brought you a report on a project that experiments with methods to keep wolves away from sheep using non-lethal means. Today in part two of that report Adam talks to the people who judge the success of the project, the ranchers.

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