Wyoming Livestock Losses

After a rash of livestock losses in Wyoming due to predation on the part of grizzly bears and wolves, I picked up the phone and called Kent Drake, predator management coordinator at the Wyoming Department of Agriculture. "We even have programs to help cattle producers and lamb producers, instead of having a bone pile and bringing grizzly bears down into ranch land, we have a service that actually cleans up the deceased animals and hauls them to a County facility in order to keep the grizzly bears up in the mountains and not down in the low lands. We are trying to do those kinds of things. In Wyoming wolves are protected under the Endangered Species Act and with wolves and grizzlies being protected it certainly results in a lot fewer options for livestock producers. Wolves will kill for the sake of killing, some people say they are just teaching their cubs, but at any rate a lot of times they don't eat what they kill. Are grizzlies the same way? With grizzly bears, it is typically eaten faster, hidden or it disappears faster so a lot of times it is harder to find animals from bear attacks then it is wolf attacks but both of them are in some real rough country where there isn't a lot of people so it is hard to determine some of those issues." In the year 2012, 4500 cattle were killed by predators.