A federal judge has allowed the reintroduction of gray wolves in Colorado to move forward in the coming days by denying a request Friday from the state’s cattle industry for a temporary delay in the predators’ release.
While the lawsuit will continue, Judge Regina Rodriguez’s ruling allows Colorado to proceed with its plan to find, capture and transport up to 10 wolves from Oregon starting Sunday. The deadline to put paws on the ground under the voter-approved initiative is December 31.
The lawsuit from the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association and The Gunnison County Stockgrowers’ Association alleges that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to adequately review the potential impacts of Colorado’s plan to release up to 50 wolves in Colorado over the next several years.
Probably not because those won’t affect their bottom line as much. Wolves harass cattle herds and run the weight off of them, requiring more workers to protect the herd and also reducing sale price. With wolves reintroduced, the price of beef will increase.
That being said, we definitely still should reintroduce them, they have so many positive effects on the environment. Even if not reintroduced, it won’t be long before the wolves in Wyoming start making their way down anyway.
I farm right next to (within 10km) pristine forest stretching for a few thousand km in a couple directions. I’ve seen plenty of wolves, but they never really come into the farming areas, and even if they do, the cattle aren’t very concerned. You have a couple hundred head together in a field, they aren’t worried about wolves, cougar or coyotes. They’d stomp them into a paste.
We have neighbors that bitch and moan about the coyotes “killing calves”. I’ve seen plenty of coyotes chewing on dead calves, but I feel it’s pretty unlikely to have been them that killed it, they’re just cleaning up a late miscarriage that might have walked around for a while looking for a place to die. It’s almost always calves I’ve looked at and thought they weren’t going to last long.
And there are more than enough deer, moose and elk around for these predators to go after that they would much rather take anyway, rather than risk an angry bunch of momma cows mopping them up.
Frankly, if the price of having a healthy wildlife population means losing a few sick calves to them and a couple tonnes of grain to deer, I’m fine with it. That ecosystem benefits us in a lot of ways.
Speaking of reintroducing species- It’s too bad we can’t convince America (who I doubt we can convince to get off meat entirely in the foreseeable future) to switch from cattle to bison. Not only would it put the fauna we replaced back where it’s supposed to be, I just think it tastes better. You can usually only get it at local places for a premium, but back when I ate meat, it was definitely worth going out of my way for a buffalo burger.
It can’t be that difficult to farm them, because I drive by a pretty sizable (but still clearly owned by one family) bison ranch on the way to my mother’s house on a fairly regular basis and they seem to be doing fine on the same pasture I see the cows grazing on nearby. If anything, there are more bison per square footage than cows and the bison don’t seem to be suffering. Considering they used to be in herds so huge that indigenous Americans would regularly stampede them off of cliffs for their meat and have plenty left to do it again, I’m guessing they can be farmed in greater density.
Bison are quite a lot less feed efficient and a fucking pain in the ass to work with since you can’t get in with them like cattle, or work with horses. Treating them when they’re sick is a good way to get hurt or killed.
But yah, it tastes better. So does elk, but that’s another species that’s better left wild.
That sounds like the same sort of excuse some herder would’ve said about his aurochs back in the day. Better get goin’ on that domestication!
I really doubt 10 wolves will change the price of beef so much you would be even able to quantify it.
Sounds like they should invest in better fencing