BAKER COUNTY RANCHERS SAY 15 COWS, 51 CALVES MISSING LAST FALL
By Joshua Dillen, The Baker City Herald
Baker County ranchers suspect wolves killed more than 60 head of cattle that came up missing last fall, although no carcasses were found and state biologists haven’t confirmed wolves are responsible for any of the cattle losses.
Ranchers reported 15 cows and 51 calves missing in Baker County last fall.
County Commissioner Mark Bennett, who is on the county’s Wolf Depredation Compensation Advisory Committee, is concerned about the losses.
Chad Delcurto, who has a cattle ranch in Pine Valley near Halfway, had 11 cows and 41 calves missing after last fall’s roundup from the Forest Service and BLM allotments where his herd grazes during the summer.
“If you think about losing 40-plus animals — that’s really devastating,” said Bennett, who is himself a cattle rancher in southern Baker County near Unity.
Bennett said concern about wolves and their danger to livestock had received substantial attention from the community in the past, but that has dissipated.
The first confirmed cases of wolves killing livestock in Oregon happened in the Keating Valley in the spring of 2009. Federal officials killed the two wolves linked to those attacks in September of that year.
“These producers are still losing animals and we’re still without really a long-term solution,” Bennett said. “It leaves us playing firemen basically.”
Delcurto is confident that the loss of his cattle can be attributed to wolves, even though no carcasses have been found.
He said that because the Forest Service allotment where his cattle graze has almost no roads, it’s unlikely that the cows were stolen. He said a cattle thief would have to move the cattle ten miles just to get to a road to load them onto trucks.
“It’s just pretty isolated back up in there,” Delcurto said.
Although he said he saw only one wolf in that area last year, he has found plenty of other evidence of wolves, including tracks and scat.
David Moore’s Pine Valley Ranch reported four cows and a calf missing last fall.
Moore’s Forest Service allotment is adjacent to Delcurto’s. Both allotments are located in an area that the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) has designated as an area of known wolf activity.
Brian Ratliff, wildlife biologist at ODFW’s Baker City office, said a pair of wolves fitted with tracking collars — the animals are designated as OR 36 and OR 29 — are known to frequent the area where Moore’s and Delcurto’s cattle grazed.
Last year those were the only two wolves that ODFW had tracked in the area, Ratliff said. In previous years, the Imnaha and South Snake River wolf packs had been documented in the area. The Imnaha pack no longer exists, as its wolves were killed by ODFW personnel last March because they had been chronically preying on livestock in spite of nonlethal measures taken to curb the attacks.
Ratliff said the South Snake River Pack seems to have stopped frequenting the area.
“As of last summer the only known animals in that area were OR 29 and OR 36,” he said. “With that said, at any point in time you can have individual or groups of wolves passing through the country and they do it all the time.”
Ratliff said ODFW’s conclusion about those two wolves being the only ones in that area is based in part on reports from hunters, ranchers and others.
Ratliff said it’s difficult to attribute the loss of more than 50 head of cattle to one pair of wolves.
“That’s an incredible amount of beef for them to be eating,” he said.
Ratliff said that level of depredation would be more likely if other wolves had entered the area.
“The South Snake (Pack) could’ve been in the area — just nobody saw them or anything like that,” Ratliff said.
The Catherine and Minam wolf packs live in areas west and northwest of Moore’s and Delcurto’s grazing allotments.
Ratliff said it’s possible that wolves killed the missing cattle, but that there is no firm evidence.
Moore, though, contends that’s the most reasonable explanation.
“The fact that we found no carcasses speaks of wolves,” he said. “Generally when wolves get through with a carcass there isn’t anything left. It’s either that or poachers and we don’t have any evidence of that whatsoever.”
Like Delcurto, Moore said he has seen plenty of evidence that wolves are in the area. He has seen and heard wolves and found many wolf tracks throughout his Forest Service grazing allotment near Pine Valley.
“They’re here and they’re active. There’s no question about it,” he said.
Both Moore and Delcurto said the presence of wolves around their cattle cause the livestock to be agitated and nervous.
Delcurto said that nervousness has affected the conception rate of his cows, which has dropped by more than 10 percent in recent years. Combine that reduction in calves that are born and the missing calves and it has a significant effect on his profits, he said.
Moore is frustrated that wolves have been reintroduced and given the opportunity to threaten his cattle.
“It took western civilization 500 years to get the wolves out of our civilized communities,” he said. “And for the government to turn around and release Canadian wolves back into our communities frankly is beyond pale.”