Conflict Reduction Saves Wildlife in Oregon and Washington

Our landscape was once abundant with wildlife of all shapes and sizes. After settlers wiped out many predators from much of the United States, people adapted to their absence. Now as wolf and grizzly bear populations recover, people are learning how to live alongside them again.

Some producers in the Northwest face challenges in protecting their herds, crops and beehives. Thankfully, a variety of strategies — including deterrents, better range management and federal support — have been helping reduce conflicts and create a path forward for living with wildlife.

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Kenny Midkiff

Equipping The Northwest  

The fertile soil and climate of the Pacific Northwest make it an ideal place for growing apples, grapes and hazelnuts, as well as raising cattle herds. The rich landscape is also home to gray wolves, who may see a livestock carcass as an easy meal, and bears, who may follow their noses to tasty food sources like beehives, compost bins, chicken coops and fruit orchards. With a few nonlethal conflict reduction tools though, this area can be a safe home for both producers and wildlife.  

Here are five tools Defenders is helping equip communities in the Northwest with to peacefully coexist with carnivores:

1. Range riders: The age-old practice of livestock tending has long been essential to human civilization, ensuring the health and safety of animals through careful management and protection from predators. Human presence on the landscape discourages wolves and other predators while also allowing for better monitoring of livestock. In the Northwest, range riding can be done on horseback in large pastures, on all-terrain vehicles or even simply by walking fence-lines in medium and small pastures. 

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Kylie Paul/DOW

2. Livestock Guardian Dogs: These large dogs’ barking alerts people and wards off predators – usually wolves – in search of an easy meal. Sheep and llama ranchers in Oregon have had success using these dogs.

3. Fladry: A series of brightly colored flags, typically red, attached at intervals to a rope or wire fence. When wolves are in an area around ranches, hanging fladry creates a psychological barrier and can keep wolves away from livestock. The movement of the flags in the wind triggers a fear response, making wolves hesitant to cross the barrier.  

4. Electric fences: Electronically charged fences produce a painful but non-lethal shock — and a strong negative association — which reduces bear habituation to human food sources. By denying easy meals, electric fences keep grizzly and black bears wild and prevent conflicts that could lead to relocation or even a dead bear. Defenders has an electric fence incentive program in the Selkirk mountains of Northeast Washington where there is a population of grizzly bears.  

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Conservation Media

5. Carcass removal: This important strategy eliminates an easy food source and reduces the likelihood of attracting predators to areas of livestock production. When wolves and bears scavenge on livestock carcasses, they increase their interactions with domestic livestock. Proper carcass disposal can include burial, composting or removal to an off-site landfill. Defenders is working with both Oregon and Washington state agencies to support carcass removal in areas where wolves are recovering.  

Lending a Helping Hand

Defenders plays a key role in conflict reduction efforts in the Northwest through providing grants, technical assistance and policy advocacy. We are developing a host of new projects on the ground in areas of Oregon and Washington where wolves and grizzly bears are recovering, including electric fence projects around sensitive livestock calving areas and community-wide carcass removal projects.  

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ODFW

Our policy and advocacy engagement ensures state and federal wildlife agencies are equipped with the tools and resources to reduce conflict. Unfortunately, recent funding cuts and the widespread termination of federal wildlife employees has made our future work with federal partners uncertain. Many of the federal workers who deploy non-lethal deterrents are at risk of losing their jobs and their programs are in danger as we see more federal funding cuts.  

Despite these challenges, Defenders will continue to work to ensure these critically important efforts continue and we will work directly with agency partners at both the state and federal levels as necessary on conflict reduction projects. You can help too! Contact your elected officials and let them know how important it is for continued federal support of wildlife conflict reduction.  

Looking Ahead

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Angela Sitz/USFWS

While conflicts still arise, proactive strategies prove livestock and wildlife can coexist. Livestock producers, wildlife advocates, and state and federal wildlife professionals in Oregon and Washington are leading the way in creating a future where livestock producers and wildlife thrive together.  

Check out more about the prevention tools we're working with in the Northwest and across the U.S. You can also help us continue this important work by donating to Defenders.