Posted by Rocky Barker
Suzanne Stone was awarded the Christine Stevens Award by the Animal Welfare Institute for her research in using a promising new method of keeping wolves away from wildlife.
Stone, Defenders of Wildlife senior northwest field representative and Idaho, will get a grant of up to $10,000 to test how flashing lights used by farmers in Austrialia to keep fox away from their animals may work here. Foxlights flash intermittently and appear like a human walking in the dark with a flashlight.
Stone has been deeply involved in the Wood River Wolf Project, which has sought to develop nonlethal methods to protect sheep in Blaine County.
Pioneered by Defenders of Wildlife, Blaine County, Lava Lake Land & Livestock, and the U.S. Forest Service, the Wood River Wolf Project is a partnership of local wildlife advocates, ranching operations and county, state and federal agencies using nonlethal deterrents to minimize livestock and wolf conflicts.
Out of nearly 30,000 animals, only two sheep were recorded as wolf depredations this year. Over the seven years that the Wood River Wolf Project has been in existence, less than 30 sheep have been lost to wolves despite being located in an area with one of the highest concentrations of wolves and livestock sharing the same landscape in the Western United States.