“Follow the money” fails to save wolves from wolf-hating ranchers & hunters

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Defending rural livelihoods” by killing wolves is economically illiterate public policy, yet continues regardless

DENVER, Colorado; DAVIS, California; VICTORIA, British Columbia––Between Memorial Day and Labor Day 2025, more than fifteen million people will visit Yellowstone National Park, Glacier National Park, and other known North American gray wolf habitats in the six northwestern continental U.S. states plus British Columbia and Alberta, Canada.

While most of these visitors will have multiple reasons for venturing into wolf habitat, including also the possibility of seeing grizzly bears, black bears, pumas, and other wild predators, the U.S. National Park Service estimates that the hope of seeing a wolf contributes––by itself––more than $80 million per year to the Yellowstone region economy.

Gray wolves. (Beth Clifton collage)

Regions with most to gain most hate & fear wolves

Rural regions of Colorado and California have recently joined Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, and British Columbia, as places where tourists might see wolves.

The easiest places to see wolves remain Yellowstone, Glacier, and Banff National Park in Alberta, but Rocky Mountain National Park near Denver may soon join the list. Many other National Parks, National Forests, and state wildlife areas offer reasonably accessible wolf habitat, with potential to join the wolf-watching bonanza.

Paradoxically, though, the rural areas with the most to gain from having wolves remain the most adamantly opposed to the presence of wolves.

Gray wolves. (Beth Clifton collage)

Wolves blamed for effects of global warming

Thirty years after wolves were reintroduced to the northern Rocky Mountains, including Yellowstone, there remains little evidence that the recovering wolf population has economically harmed cattle and sheep ranchers, and the regional hunting industry, to an extent even close to the benefits to tourism and habitat.

Yet wolves remain hated, and blamed for much that has actually resulted from habitat change caused by global warming, an easily measured and thoroughly documented climatic effect that ranchers and hunters in particular deny.

Global warming, simply put, means that the carrying capacity of the Northwest for elk, moose, caribou, mule deer, pronghorn, cattle, sheep, and yes, wild horses too, is no longer what it was several decades ago.

With or without wolves, the lost carrying capacity will not come back, certainly not within any living rancher, hunter, or politician’s lifetime.

Buck with CWD.
(Missouri Dept. of Conservation)

Wolves help to control CWD

Wolves, though, are helping to control the spread of illnesses, especially chronic wasting disease, menacing ungulates throughout the northern Rockies. Wolves kill the infected animals––and the digestive systems of wolves and pumas are perhaps the only forces of nature that destroy prions, the infectious agents.

Chronic wasting disease was first identified in 1967, in a captive elk herd at Fort Collins, Colorado, and first found in the wild in Rocky Mountain National Park in 1980.

Colorado remains the epicenter for chronic wasting disease in North America, yet much of the Colorado human population, especially in rural areas, guardedly rejoiced when Colorado Parks & Wildlife on May 15, 2025 disclosed the seventh death of one of the 29 wolves who have been reintroduced to the state in 2024 and earlier in 2025.

Four of the wolves found dead were brought from British Columbia, including two who were shot by ranchers after wandering into Wyoming. Three of the dead wolves were brought from Oregon.

Eric Odell, habitat biologist, Colorado Parks & Wildlife. (LinkedIn photo)

“Mortalities are part of the game”

Calling “mortalities within wolf management part of the game,” pledging to continue to release 10 to 15 imported wolves per year into Colorado habitat to “establish a big enough population to deal with mortality,” Colorado Parks & Wildlife wolf conservation program manager Eric Odell emphasizes that the losses do not “indicate failure for the state’s wolf reintroduction plan,” reported Colorado Sun writer Tracy Ross.

But Middle Park Stockgrowers Association president Tim Ritschard insists, Ross recounted, that “Colorado’s wolf introduction program has not gone well,” with “24 confirmed depredations between three counties” as of November 2024.

Among the 2.65 million cattle and 400,000 sheep and labs in Colorado, the loss to wolves of 24 livestock animals total pales beside losses of 130,000 cattle and 37,000 sheep and lambs to harsh weather in the worst for either species of the last five years.

Tim Ritschard. (Beth Clifton collage)

Ranchers “hope to pause wolf reintroduction”

Ritschard leads a coalition of ranchers, hunters, and politicians who hope to “pause wolf reintroduction,” wrote Ross, “until it met a list of stipulations created to help ranchers deal with their new reality.

“Reintroduction could also stop completely,” Ross mentioned, “if a recently approved ballot initiative calling for an end to it by Dec. 31, 2026, gains enough signatures to be on the 2026 ballot.”

In addition, Colorado congressional representative Lauren Boebert has introduced a bill, HR 845, to remove wolves from the U.S. endangered species list.

The Boebert bill has so far gone nowhere, but Congress did remove wolves in the northern Rockies from Endangered Species Act protection in 2011.

Wolves were returned to Endangered Species Act protection by court order, responding to excessive hunting mortality, in 2022.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Pay for presence”

High Country News writer Alix Soliman in a May 1, 2025 examination of “The hidden costs of wolf conservation” extensively reviewed “Pay for presence,” a political strategy meant to overcome rancher antipathy toward wolves by paying them a stipend for tolerating wolves in grazing habitat, over and above the direct compensation they already receive for verified cattle and sheep losses to wild predators.

While at least some ranchers purport to like the notion of “pay for presence,” at least some wild predator advocates do not. Much of the habitat that would potentially be involved is leased from the federal Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies, at a fraction of the price of leasing privately owned grazing habitat, with the stipulation that the land is designated for “multiple uses,” including conserving wildlife.

Noted Soliman, “The stress of living with predators can cause cows to put on less weight or give birth to fewer calves.

Tina Saitone, professor of Cooperative Extension, Agricultural and Resource Economics. (U.C. Davis photo)

California tested “pay for presence”

“Two years ago,” in 2023, “the California Department of Fish and Wildlife tested the ‘pay for presence’ concept, which attempts to tally — and at least partially cover — these hidden costs.

“Before the program ran out of cash last March, it awarded 27 grants totaling nearly $1 million to livestock producers in wolf zones.

“Tina Saitone, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis,” Soliman continued, “deployed about 120 game cameras across 850,000 acres to track wolves, then fitted more than 100 cows with GPS collars. She and her colleagues are comparing the results from ranches outside wolf zones, looking at variables like conception rates and cow and calf weights. They estimate stress levels by measuring the amount of cortisol, a hormone in the animals’ hair samples.

“Saitone will wrap up her fieldwork next year,” Soliman said, “but her observations have convinced her that the mere presence of wolves negatively affects cattle. While they cannot yet ‘quantify the dollar values,’” Saitone told Soliman, ranchers are losing money “in real life on the ground.”

Carter Niemeyer.
(Carter Niemeyer courtesy photo)

Saitone findings are “premature” says Center for Biological Diversity

Objected Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a May 23, 2025 media release, “It’s extremely worrying to me that these preliminary findings on California’s recovering wolves were presented as fact before the study had even been vetted. Presenting preliminary results as truth could prove deadly for our state’s protected wolves.”

Agreed Carter Niemeyer, retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Idaho wolf recovery coordinator and previously a wolf control specialist with USDA Wildlife Services, “It is biased and unrealistic to assume wolves are the causative factor for the effects these preliminary conclusions are claiming when a universe of other factors are in play.

“In my 30-plus years’ experience in the field,” Niemeyer explained, “wolves don’t just spend all their time chasing herds of cattle. Hundreds of other factors affect cattle weight gain and reproduction, ranging from weather and drought to how the cattle are managed. Saying that wolves are the primary cause and result in exorbitant monetary loss is unrealistic and false.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Seven wolf packs in California

Further objected Weiss, “The Saitone study also failed to include a cost-benefit analysis despite multiple peer-reviewed, published studies clearly showing that wolves generate millions of dollars in economic benefits that far exceed losses to livestock operators.”

Already, in a May 17, 2025 op-ed opinion column for the Sacramento Bee, Modoc County supervisor Geri Byrne and Sierra County supervisor Lee Adams warned that, “California is now home to seven confirmed gray wolf packs spread across Plumas, Lassen, Shasta, Tehama, Siskiyou and Tulare counties, with additional groups in Modoc and Sierra counties, and individual wolves dispersing from these packs or nearby states. As the population grows, reports of livestock attacks have increased, with some wolves killing cattle without consuming them — signs of territorial behavior rather than hunger.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“32 confirmed livestock kills” over winter

“According to the most recent data available,” Byrne and Adams charged, “in less than six months — from October 2024 to March 16, 2025 — 32 confirmed livestock kills have been reported. While the economic toll is significant, the emotional strain on ranching families is deeper, driven by a growing sense of helplessness as wolves have been recorded approaching homes and attacking livestock in daylight. Though no human attacks have occurred, residents worry it’s only a matter of time.”

What Byrne and Adams did not mention is that the time frame they cited coincided with the Sierra mountains snow season; that black bears, pumas, and coyotes are far more numerous than wolves throughout the California wolf range, and therefore far more likely to kill or scavenge livestock weakened by winter conditions; and that in the 30 years since the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction, the human casualty count due to wolf attacks is zero.

(Beth Clifton collage)

British Columbia wolf culls continue

Fear and hatred of wolves, though, remains far more politically influential than the facts of actual wolf behavior, as lamented in a May 12, 2025 media statement from Laurie Hamelin of Pacific Wild, based in Victoria, British Columbia.

“After a decade of provincial claims that British Columbia’s wolf cull is humane and necessary for caribou recovery, newly released documents tell a different story,” Pacific Wild began.

“In an intensive, year-long investigation, Paciﬁc Wild reviewed more than 1,600 pages of internal government records—obtained through Freedom of Information requests—revealing systemic cruelty, unethical tactics, and potential violations of B.C.’s Wildlife Act.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Weapons of war

“Wolves are being shot multiple times with semi-automatic ﬁrearms originally designed for combat, not hunting,” Pacific Wild charged. “These weapons are modiﬁed to carry 30-round magazines—six times the legal limit—and are built for rapid ﬁre, not precision. This chaotic method, carried out from helicopters and intended to maximize the chances of hitting a target, increases the risk of non-fatal shots and prolonged suffering.

“In one particular case,” Pacific Wild detailed, “17 wolves were killed by contractors in less than a month. Of those, 10 required multiple bullets, and only one was killed by a single shot to the head. While the Wildlife Act does not specify how many shots may be used, it does prohibit causing undue suffering to animals—a threshold these actions may well exceed.

(Beth Clifton collage)

B.C. massacre is not really about caribou

“The use of bait piles is also raising legal and ethical concerns,” Pacific Wild continued, citing tactics it believes “may violate Section 33.1 of the Wildlife Act, which prohibits leaving attractants that draw in dangerous wildlife.”

Pacific Wild also mentioned that “game cameras with wireless capabilities are apparently being used to monitor wolf activity as it happens,” a “type of tech-assisted hunting explicitly banned for the public” that “appears to be used by government contractors—highlighting a double standard in how wildlife laws are applied.”

The bottom line, though, is the pretext that British Columbia wolf culling is done to help caribou population recovery.

Beth and Merritt with Teddy, Sebastian, Henry and Arabella.

Beth & Merritt Clifton with friends.

Of 21 caribou government necropsy reports reviewed, Pacific Wild said, “wolves were conﬁrmed or suspected in only three cases—just 13 percent. Despite this, the cull continues,” by demand of ranchers and hunting outfitters, “while more signiﬁcant threats [to caribou] like habitat loss from industry remain largely unaddressed.”