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Comment by throwup238 | Hacker News Reader

> While I’ll leave my personal opinion out of it, I do want to add a couple of notes.

What's your opinion, if you don't mind me asking?

Personally I can't believe anyone is against this project. It's a complicated issue but the removal of wolves has had damn near catastrophic impact on pretty much everyone east of California from deer to ticks to elk. Even the ranchers are better off in the short run and especially long term.

(I lose livestock every year to mountain lions so I'm no stranger to the cost of keeping apex predators around)

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I've been pretty consistent with leaving my opinions out when discussing the topic, mainly because of how polarizing it is here, and instead encouraging people to establish their own viewpoints based on solid sources. With that said, I'm heavily in favor of reintroduction. I believe the pros of intervention outweigh the cons of not doing so significantly and that the threat to Colorado ranchers is exaggerated - I'll leave it at that.

The people against this have valid reasons. For example, ranchers who don't want their livestock eaten by wolves that they can't defend against, legally.

Like I said I have to deal with the same issue thanks to mountain lions. I don't think it's a valid reason, it's a supremely selfish and shortsighted one.

The regulations on wolves are different. You can only get permission to use legal force on a case by case basis if they are attacking livestock (or if you catch them in the act).

You can use force against a wolf attacking a working dog or yourself, but not a pet.

In all other cases, you must use non-lethal detergent methods.

I live in California so the only minor difference is that you can use lethal force if a mountain lion is attacking a domestic animal but the CDFW will be on your ass and you better be sure it was the only option or you'll get prosecuted for poaching. (I just shoot a shotgun into the air which scares them off)

Otherwise you need a depredation permit that are "must issue" if you have evidence of a mountain lion attacking your livestock but only one in ten applicants are granted a lethal depredation permit. The rest must use non-lethal deterrents because lethal force is only authorized if there's a genuine threat to public safety.

For a rancher or someone living in a rural area, lethal permits are rarely issued. In several parts of the state like the Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountains permits are no longer issued at all.

In a different post, someone mentioned that livestock lost to wolves receive compensation. Is it the same for mountain lions? That seems like an excellent way to reduce requests for "depredation permit". (LOL: What a term!)

No, but mountain lions aren't pack hunters that can really threaten commercial livestock. They usually only predate solitary animals on smaller farms and even though it's far more traumatic for us than a rancher losing one head of cattle out of hundreds, we don't want to kill them. The state doesn't have to bribe us. They're basically sacred in this state and some like P22 even become mini celebrities.

(The term depredation comes from military attacks on helpless villages so the term is very fitting, both in terms of the mountain lion attacking livestock and humans hunting mountain lions)

Wow, thank you to share about mountain lion P-22 from Los Angeles valley. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-22

Livestock predation is a common threat around the world. Are ranchers in Colorado uniquely unequipped to adopt any of the solutions used by ranchers elsewhere?

Colorado ranchers absolutely are uniquely unequipped to deal with predation. In fact, I heartily suggest that you meet one in person and try suggesting it.

> Colorado ranchers absolutely are uniquely unequipped to deal with predation.

Zero trolling: I don't understand this sentence. Are you saying that ranchers in other states have different options to deal with apex predators? If yes, can you please explain. I am curious to learn more.

A previous commenter asked “Are ranchers in Colorado uniquely unequipped to adopt any of the solutions used by ranchers elsewhere?”. I interpret this as snark and was answering in kind. Here in the western USA ranchers have been very, very adept at dealing with predators, human and otherwise, for 150+ years. It’s the stuff of movie and TV legend, most recently in shows like “Yellowstone”.

The options are restricted mostly by law and local custom.

> A previous commenter asked “Are ranchers in Colorado uniquely unequipped to adopt any of the solutions used by ranchers elsewhere?”. I interpret this as snark and was answering in kind.

It seemed like an honest, innocent question, not snark at all. The response seemed dismissive and snarky, though.

This is a good reason to not try to get revenge for what you believe to be "snark": you might be totally wrong in your judgement. Best to just respond honestly and straightforwardly.

You’re probably right. Rereading it still feels like snark to me, but that’s not a great reason to reply as I did. Thank you for pointing it out.

They are making a joke that ranchers in Colorado are trigger-happy cowboys and will murder someone like me for suggesting that their current ranching methods are bad and need to be updated.

The joke is based on a very Hollywood-informed idea of what this region is like (think Wild West movies and TV shows). It is not a reflection of reality.

Untrue but I genuinely like your prose style

Not being in or from the region, my impression from brief interactions with the lobbyists they send up to Washington has been that many of the ranchers are, themselves, trying to cosplay a Wild West fantasy. But this is probably largely overrepresenting the "gentleman ranchers" (who are actually just heirs to oil money or something) who own a ranch as a lifestyle aesthetic rather than a livelihood.

However, it does seem that these guys have a dramatically outsized influence in political representation around these interests unfortunately.

Ranchers are compensated for livestock lost to predation. In Montana, 137 livestock were lost to grizzlies, wolves, and mountain lions in 2023. [1]

For comparison, roughly 25000 cattle are lost to cold every year in Montana.

[1] https://liv.mt.gov/Attached-Agency-Boards/Livestock-Loss-Boa...

Are livestock lost to cold also compensated? Because that seems like it would create a perverse incentive not to build shelter (i.e. barns) for your livestock.

The common method in Europe is just to move or left the carcasses out, so they are scavenged by several animals. After a week wolves appeared and left traces, so it was paid as "wolf kill". This was known because some people put hidden cameras.

When bear kills started to being paid by an ecologist group there was an awful lot of scam attempts also. I think that paying for predator damage are counterproductive at best, and at worst "fossilize" as a system to scam taxers and reinforce scammers.

Is not much different than expecting to be paid if you go for a beach day and you are stung by a jellyfish, or it rained that day. There are old proven solutions to reduce drastically this loses, is just that farmers choose not to use them.

> For example, ranchers who don't want their livestock eaten by wolves that they can't defend against, legally.

I recall listening to NPR one day on this topic, and they pointed out that ranchers lose several orders of magnitude more livestock due to other preventable causes that are mostly in their control. It's not likely they care that much about their livestock.

On the other hand this is sort of like saying, you already spend hundreds of dollars on unnecessary entertainment and other discretionary spending so you shouldn't be complaining when a new mandatory "entertainment tax" is established. Whether a business (or a person) is accepting of any given set of losses does not obligate them to be accepting of further losses.

> further losses

Losses that are generally compensated by the government

Eminent domain requires the government to compensate you for your losses too, that doesn't usually make people happy about the losses.

Sheep are generally fungible, land and real estate not so much

Quite an unrelated point. This isn't asking them to spend more on what they're already spending on. It's about them claiming something that isn't true. The data indicates they really don't care that much about their cattle.

Shepherd dogs, enclosures and buildings are very effective defending cattle.

And government can promote the common good, saving all taxers millions, even if this means that one farmer will lose a thousand. This is how being in a society works. In a recent study, European Wolves attacked around 0,063% of the total sheep. A really small price to pay for reducing your chances to die in a deer car crash, or catching lyme disease.

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