We are bringing this post back forward simply due to its appearance of truly being effective.
Biofence and Wolves
Gray wolves (Canis lupus) can conflict with livestock production throughout Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Generally, wolves that prey on domestic livestock are killed by management agencies or private landowners. These actions typically stop depredations for producers in the short-term but are not a lasting solution because wolf packs generally fill the recently vacated territory within 1 year and livestock predation often continues. Most tools currently available for non-lethal control of wolves are short-lived in their effectiveness or require constant human presence. Wolves, like most canids worldwide, use scent-marking (deposits of urine, scat, and scratches at conspicuous locations) to establish territories on the landscape and avoid intraspecific conflict. We tested human-deployed scent-marks consisting of scat and urine (i.e., “biofence”) to manipulate wolf pack movements in Idaho.
We deployed 64.7 km and 64.8 km of biofence within 3 wolf pack territories in central Idaho during summers 2010 and 2011, respectively. In 2010, location data provided by satellite collared wolves in 2 of the packs showed little to no trespassing of the biofence. Sign survey at predicted rendezvous sites in areas excluded by the biofence yielded little to no recent wolf use of those areas. We also opportunistically deployed a biofence between a resident wolf pack’s rendezvous site and a nearby (1.6 km) active sheep grazing allotment totaling 2,400 animals. This pack was not implicated in any depredations in 2010. In 2011, however, location data indicated some individuals showed little aversion to trespassing the biofence. Our study provides evidence that wolf movements can be manipulated by human-distributed scent-marks but not all individuals respond strongly to the biofence. Importantly, it appears that wolves’ response to biofencing diminished between years of our study suggesting that one would need to maintain a biofence continuously to ensure effectiveness. We believe more frequent refreshing of the biofence, year-round presence once the biofence is established, an adequate buffer distance from the area to be excluded, and the use of howlboxes may fortify biofenceing, but further study is needed to test this.
Learn more:
Ausband, D. E., M. S. Mitchell, S. B. Bassing, and C. White. 2013. No trespassing: using a biofence to manipulate wolf movements. Wildlife Research 40:207-216. PDF
Source: Biofence and Wolves – Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit – University Of Montana
Comments
This was a good nonlethal conflict preventor to re-emphhasize.
Right now, the political climate is highly toxic, and it’s the extreme vulnerability of wolf individuals and families is the real issue; Such long-term necessities as removing public lands grazing can’t be accomplished without wide-scale ecological education and familiarity of the public with the essential need for wolves.
I really hope you’ll continue to comprehensively cover this latter issue, to better inform the public:
We’re seeing a LOT of Chronic Wasting Disease, a highly transmissible prion disease related to mad cow, Creutzfeld-Jakobs.
It’s going on in Missouri up to the upper Great Lakes were te largest wolf population lives. It’s also been detected in Wyoming now, as well as having reached Colorado before wolves have been able to reestablish themselves.
Other disease can only be adequately addressed by native wild predators and carrion-eaters. Understand that because carnivore populations are extremely tiny compared to omnivores, that the likelihood of “species-jumping” by viruses and even prions (these are reproducing proteins without having nucleic acids (DNA or RNA, in short) is Far smaller than that of microorganisms crossing the varied immune system barriers.
THe very few hundred wolves in any western state are nothing compared to the human populations of almost any small town. Although immunology in canids is still primitive, it’s notable that they are adapted to handle some organisms really virulent and deadly to us. Their stomach acids alone are far stronger breakers of protein molecules. Even if it were not so, wolves are light-years better at identifying and removing afflicted ungulates than are mere humans no matter what we imagine about our technology and diagnostic capability.
I’ve already mentioned the +wolves = – Coyotes= + foxes, the most efficient canid rodent predator.
Audubon Societies , like myself, would prefer to see the once-astonishing flights of birds that human habitat arrogation as eliminated. Those birds, along with wild carrion and full suite of trophic guilds (c’mon! You HAVE to understand basic ecological language to make a case for wolves!), are necessary to help bring back the two eagles, the buteos and accipiters that will also diminish “crowd disease” spread in the rodents that humans are FOREVER incapable of reducing (prairie dogs are another issue, as they are essential for restoration of the huge aquifers humans are draining from under deserts and the entire west. Hydrology is another related thing to understand, as it’s intimately involved with habitat persistence, vital through the trophic cascade right up to wolves and golden eagles, once common.)
So , while in the sort term helping ranchers through nonlethal conflict prevention and convincing them that they also do NOT want really deadly communicable disease that only predators/wolves can effectively counteract (In WY i think an elk was found with CWD), the real necessity of restoring recognition of ALL who constitute the sacred earth is certainly your goal (I have very little intimate interaction with most of humanity because I have carried this recognition since earliest memory, and have only noticed a partial return in response to my adamancy with intimate relatives).
This goal will take all possible knowledge. Even then it will be long in coming.
But each wolf’s life, each momentary turn toward respect by any human, are many steps on this journey.