Tim Hearden ■ Capital Press
REDDING, Calif. — A wolf conservation group is making good on a promise to educate ranchers on how to prevent clashes between their livestock and predators.
The California Wolf Center is sponsoring a series of workshops in far Northern California next week to address challenges related to wolf-livestock coexistence.
Among the topics addressed at the workshops will be “understanding depredation investigations” and “what you can and cannot do” under the state Endangered Species Act, the California Cattlemen’s Association noted in a newsletter.
The workshops are part of the center’s broader mission to ease the impacts from the arrival of gray wolves, including a pack that was discovered in rural Siskiyou County last summer.
“We really do believe in and support the value of working landscapes and the need to preserve that heritage,” Karin Vardaman, the center’s director of wolf recovery, told the Capital Press.
The center has been promoting nonlethal means of warding off wolves, including using guard dogs, brightly colored flags or range riders or providing supplemental feed to livestock to keep them away from grazing areas where wolves are known to be present. The center uses grants and donations to support its outreach efforts, Vardaman said.
“It’s been an amazing experience working with the ranchers,” she said.
State and federal protections make it illegal to kill or hunt wolves, even in the case of livestock depredation. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife is putting the finishing touches on a proposed gray wolf management plan that includes sections on wolves’ interactions with livestock, horses and other wildlife.
The 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.. workshops will be held as follows:
• April 25 at the Fort Jones Town Hall in Fort Jones, Calif.
• April 26 at Bob’s Ranch House Restaurant in Etna, Calif.
• April 27 at the Mercantile Hotel in McCloud, Calif.
• April 28 at the Bieber Memorial Hall in Bieber, Calif.
• April 29 at the Dorris Community Center in Dorris, Calif.
• April 30 at the Community Center Rotary Club in Montague, Calif.
For information, contact Vardaman at karin@californiawolfcenter.org .