Tag: sheep

Coyote

Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore

This is a photo of a coyote in the ranching area of Point Reyes National Seashore.

Coyote in the Ranching Area of Point Reyes National Seashore.

This coyote is standing in a ranch pasture at Point Reyes National Seashore.  Between now and July 14, the Park Service is going to decide which of six alternatives to adopt for management of 28,000 acres of land owned by the Park Service/United States at Point Reyes National Seashore and the adjacent Golden Gate NRA and dedicated for decades to private ranching.  The preferred alternative is to expand the ranching, especially for 18 of the 24 ranching families who live on park land with their families and employees – at subsidized rents no less.  Life is going to get a lot more complicated then for the coyotes, bobcats, and the other mammalian and avian predators that live there.

The preferred alternative will provide, among other things, that each of the 18 occupied cattle ranches can also have up to 50 sheep with their lambs or 70 goats with their kids, plus 500 free-roaming chickens which will be in the pastures during the day and in mobile coops at night.  Now, the ranchers can only have beef and dairy cows, which are way too big for any Point Reyes predator to bother.  These small domestic animals will be protected by livestock guardian dogs which are capable of killing coyotes and the other predators.

The leases will provide that ranchers can’t kill or harm predators.  However, the leases also provide that where predation occurs, the rancher can report it to the Park Service and the Park Service will decide what action to take.  If NPS says “no” to killing, what’s a rancher to do?  Well, there’s the old “3S’s” maxim – shoot, shovel and shut up.

And you thought national park units were established for the protection and preservation of nature, including wildlife.   Guess again.  What predominates in the National Park Service thinking is maximizing tourism (especially for concessioners) and emphasizing viewsheds for those tourists.   What is living in those viewsheds has never been on the Park Service’s radar.  Most former Park Service employees will tell you this or, if you don’t know one, read this book by a retired NPS employee, “Preserving Nature in the National Parks” by Richard Sellars.

Tule Elk

Bull Tule Elk; Point Reyes National Seashore

This is a photo of a bull tule elk feeding at sunset.

A bull tule elk feeds at sunset.

This photo was taken during the last few minutes of daylight in 2019.  It was a sunny day with no fog.  This bull is one of the over 400 elk that are kept locked up inside a 2,600 acre enclosure.  There are no perennial streams in the enclosure.  The elk are dependent on old farm ponds that were dug decades ago before the Park Service bought the ranches.  Unfortunately, these ponds dry up in drought years.  About 250 elk died during the drought several years ago.  Perennial streams exist not far outside the enclosure.

You may be wondering why they are kept penned up.  It’s so the elk won’t bother the ranchers who live with their 6,000 cattle and sheep on about 25,000 acres of park land and do so at about half the rental rates for ranch lands outside the park.

When the Seashore was asked why the Park Service didn’t do anything to save the elk during the drought, the Park Service said that it was Park Service policy to let nature take its course.  But in nature there are no eight-foot tall woven-wire elk-proof fences.

Coyote

Marin’s Sensible Approach to Protecting Sheep from Coyotes

Photo of a coyote staring at the camera.
Portrait of a Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore

There was a very good article in the San Francisco Chronicle last Friday about Marin County, California, and its approach to dealing with coyotes and sheep ranching.  (Marin County is the county you enter when you drive north across the Golden Gate Bridge.)   The article, written by Peter Fimrite, and entitled “Dogs Keeping Coyotes at Bay,” can be found here.

Most counties in the United States that have any sheep ranching in them have agreements with the Department of Agriculture’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service for “Wildlife Services.”  APHIS’ Wildlife Services (“WS”) unit has, as one of its purposes, the trapping, poisoning and shooting of wild animals that are considered to be a problem for someone.

In the late ’90s Marin County terminated its relationship with APHIS.  I remember reading an article in the Marin Independent Journal in the early to mid ’90s which summarized WS’ activities in Marin for the previous year.  It listed the number of coyotes killed.  There were a few things about the article that struck me.  First, I knew of WS, but was surprised that it even operated in Marin, a bedroom community of San Francisco.  Second, I was surprised at the number of coyotes killed.  Third, I was shocked that a large number of bobcats and badgers were also killed due to the non-selective nature of baited steel traps and poisoned meat.  (I was also surprised that there were even any badgers in Marin.  Fast forward.  Last year I photographed several in Point Reyes National Seashore.)   Thinking about it now, I assume the numbers were conservative because animals that die from poisoning aren’t always found and the same is even more true for animals that feed on the carcasses of poisoned animals and die even farther from the bait site.

As the article points out, things came to a head in 1996.  WS was killing a lot of coyotes, but sheep losses seemed to be unaffected.  WS proposed stepping up killing methods by adding collars for sheep which would be filled with the poison Compound 1080.  Some residents decided it was time to do something.  They were led by Camila Fox, now head of Project Coyote.  The State Legislature was convinced to ban steel traps and poison collars.  By the end of the ’90s the wildlife advocates convinced the County to end its relationship with WS.  The County decided to spend the money it used to pay to WS to instead pay for guard dogs, llamas, specialized fences, night corrals and lambing sheds and to pay the ranchers for any sheep losses.  The program has been an overwhelming success.  The county spends less than it paid WS and the sheep losses are much lower than in the WS days.  Not only do these measures greatly reduce sheep losses, but coyotes reproduce at lower levels when the Alpha males and females live normal-length lives as pack leaders, unlike when they are killed and packs break up and many more coyotes begin reproducing.  This is basic wildlife ecology, but it is ignored by WS.

In 2005 APHIS/WS completed a study of its activities in California entitled “Wildlife Services in California: Economic Assessments of Benefits and Costs.”  A copy of the report can be found here.  I’m not sure why the report was written, but it seems to me to have been written to justify its mission and methods, especially in light of Marin County’s success using non-lethal methods and at lower cost.

A word about the coyote photo.  I photographed it in Point Reyes National Seashore a couple of days before the San Francisco Chronicle article was published.  The coyote was smaller than usual.  It may have been a yearling, but I would assume a yearling would be about the size as its parents by now.  It also seemed totally unfazed by me in my car.  When I see and attempt to photograph coyotes in the open ranching areas of the Seashore they always get out of sight fast.  The same is true for bobcats and badgers (and wildlife in general).  I don’t know why it stayed fairly close while I photographed it.  Perhaps it had spent time in areas with lots of hikers before moving into the ranching area.