Assessing the potential, actual, and perceived risk that gray wolves, Canis lupus, pose to livestock in northwestern Minnesota


Category:  Ecology
Linked Publication
Language: English
Author(s): Andreas S. Chavez
Description: The recent natural recolonization of gray wolves (Canis lupus) into parts of their former range in the upper Midwest of the United States has led to wolves establishing territories in semi-agricultural areas containing abundant livestock. However, the risk that wolves pose to livestock is not well understood. We investigated wolf-livestock relationships in a semi-agricultural area of northwestern Minnesota from 1997 to 1999 by assessing the perceived, potential, and actual risk that wolves pose to livestock, mainly cattle. The potential risk that wolves posed to livestock in northwestern Minnesota was high for several reasons. First, the wolf population demonstrated a resiliency to various anthropomorphic mortality factors by quickly replacing vacant breeding territories with new breeding packs. Secondly, wolves were most active at night and dawn during the grazing season, which was when livestock were most vulnerable to wolf predation. Wolves also preferred open habitats during nighttime, which was the type of habitat that best characterized pasture areas. In addition, wolves visited pasture areas 35% of the days during the grazing season. Finally, efforts to remove wolves in response to wolf depredations on livestock did not appear to deter wolves from making future visits to the same or other pasture areas. The actual risk that wolves posed to livestock in northwestern Minnesota was very low since there were only 6 confirmed depredation incidents. The fact that cattle made up only 10.3% of the wolves' diet during our study further exemplified the low actual risk. Despite the low number of wolf depredations on livestock, the rural residents in northwestern Minnesota still perceived wolves unfavorably. The mean response score for rural residents to the statement "should wolves be allowed to exist in northwestern Minnesota" was between neutral and disagree. Furthermore, there were no statistical differences in mean response scores between rural residents who lived within wolf range and residents who lived adjacent to, but outside of wolf range. The rural residents' mean response score to the statement that wolves are causing unacceptable levels of damage to northwest Minnesota's livestock industry was between neutral and agree. Although there was a statistical difference in mean response scores between residents living within wolf range and residents living outside of wolf range, the scores were not substantially different from each other.