HOW LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION NEGATIVELY AFFECTS PREDATORS IN THE WEST
By GEORGE WUERTHNER
POB 3156
Eugene, Oregon 97403
Wuerthne@teleport.com

Citizens concerned about the restoration of predators throughout the West often fail to fully comprehend the multiple ways livestock production (as opposed to grazing) threatens predators in much of the arid West. Livestock production includes not only the cropping of grass, but the growing of farm crops like hay for livestock feed, dewatering of rivers for irrigation for forage production and other less obvious effects.

Livestock production is a problem simply to due to its ubiquitous nature. Livestock production utilizes the vast majority of the West's landscape, including a majority of all public lands. Cows graze 90% of the BLM lands, 69% of the Forest Service lands, and even a significant proportion of the West's national wildlife refuges as well as national parks such as Grand Teton, Great Basin, Mojave and others. Not surprisingly, livestock production is easily the single greatest factor affecting many different species, including many formerly wide ranging species like wolves, grizzly bears, mountain lion, swift fox, and others.

1. Predator Control: One obvious affect of livestock production upon predators is the direct killing of predators to protect domestic livestock. Predator control significantly reduces, or has even led to the extinction of many predator species around the West including the wolf, grizzly and jaguar. And continual predator control threatens recovery of these species where the loss of even a few individual animals can slow or thwart recovery efforts. By keeping remaining populations small and fragmented through continued predator control, the livestock industry is contributing to additional local extinctions.

2. Disruption of Social Interactions: Predator control also impacts species by disrupting social behavior. Most larger predators are social animals, and the removal of key individuals can upset social hierarchies and affect individual survival. For example, loss of a dominant pack member in a wolf group may reduce the pack's overall hunting effectiveness; or make the entire pack vulnerable to territory loss or even death from other wolves. Loss of a dominant animal like a dominant grizzly or jaguar may permit subdominants to move into a vacant territory. Due to their inexperience, such territories then become a mortality sink since young animals attracted to the area may be more likely to kill domestic animals, and thus be killed by ranchers or their government agents. Plus their lack of experience in hunting and lack of territory knowledge also leads to greater predator-livestock conflicts, since young inexperienced hunters are more likely to kill livestock, prompting even more and indiscriminate predator control.

3. Impacts on intra-species interactions: Predator control can also affect Intra-species conflicts. For instance, the extinction of wolves across much of the West has led to an increase in coyotes. Coyotes often kill the smaller swift fox, a common grasslands species. The high density of coyotes in some areas has caused the failure of some swift fox reintroduction efforts.

4. Non-target species losses: Killing of non-target species is another effect of predator control. For instance, the near extinction of the swift fox on the Great Plains is partially blamed on the indiscriminate use of poison and trapping to kill coyotes.

5. Extirpation of prey species: The effect of the livestock industry on the prey of predators is a less obvious, but no less important impact of livestock production. It is well documented that the decline in black-tailed prairie dogs, often killed as "pests" by the livestock industry, has led to the near-extinction of the black-footed ferret. Loss of prairie dogs also affects avian predators as well. The decline in burrowing owls, ferruginous hawks, and other raptors is attributed to loss of prairie dogs and ground squirrels killed by the livestock industry.

6. Forage competition: Livestock producers don't even have to kill anything directly to significantly impact predators. Even "predator friendly" livestock operations are having a significant negative effect upon predator by reducing the prey base available to predators. Domestic livestock often eat the same food species as many wild ungulates, and depending on the species and range condition; diet overlap can be quite significant. On most public lands, and certainly on almost all-private lands, far more of the above ground biomass (AUMS) is being consumed by domestic livestock than wild herbivores. Even in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, often called the Serengeti of the United States, domestic livestock consume more than 10 times the AUMS as all the native ungulates combined-bison, elk, antelope, mule deer, moose, bighorn sheep, and whitetail deer. In most parts of the West the disparity between forage allotment to domestic animals and wild herbivores is even greater. In essence, the mere presence of domestic livestock is taking food directly out of the mouth of predators. Forage competition isn't limited to large predators. For instance, consumption of above ground biomass removes the food that would otherwise sustain grasshoppers, voles, and other smaller animals consumed by birds of prey. While I know of no qualification of this effect, it certainly can be seen in some areas.

7. Riparian habitat loss: Damage and decline in riparian areas is another impact upon some predators. Grizzlies, for instance, depend upon riparian areas for grass and sedges they consume in the spring when other foods are scarce. Livestock damage to riparian areas has been shown to be a direct conflict with grizzlies in Montana. And in the Southwest, early reports of grizzlies showed a strong association with riparian areas. Any opportunities for grizzly recover in the Southwest are thus thwarted by the on-going loss of riparian areas due to livestock production. These riparian areas are also critical travel corridors, providing cover as well as food.

8. Impacts on fisheries: Livestock production has also significantly impacted fisheries around the West, hence directly reduced the food available for fish-eating predators including mink, otter, osprey, bald eagle, kingfisher, and others. There are three ways livestock production has impacted fisheries-hence fish dependent predators. Irrigation has led to dewatering of many streams around the West, reducing overall habitat for fish. Plus in some areas a large percentage of the annual recruitment of trout and other species dies in irrigation canals. Water storage reservoirs fragment stream systems and can led to water quality changes that negatively affect fish and fish dependent predators. Finally, destruction of riparian areas by trampling and consumption of streamside forage destroys habitat quality reducing fish populations, hence fish dependent predators.

9. Social intolerance: Sometimes there are indirect effects upon predators from social intolerance of livestock producers. For example, the current practice of slaughtering bison that leave Yellowstone National Park is a direct threat to the survival of the grizzly bear. Studies have shown that grizzlies consume a disproportionate amount of bison carrion in Yellowstone, and this carrion is essential to their overall survival in the ecosystem. There is plenty of unoccupied public land in Montana and Wyoming within grizzly recovery zones that could support wild bison if state livestock agencies weren't stopping all recolonization by shooting animals that wander from adjacent parks.

10. Political influence: Finally, the disproportionate power of the livestock industry to influence public lands management decisions also negatively affects predators. For example, there are numerous parts of the West that could support wolves, grizzlies, black-footed ferrets, and other predators, but which are vacant due to intense opposition to reintroductions from the livestock industry. By keeping the remaining populations of predators fragmented, and small, they are directly contributing to further extinctions of many species. The recent decision by the FWS to remove a dispersing wolf from Oregon, for no good biological reason, was yet another example of how the political influence of this industry negatively affects predator populations.