Fromm Dog Food Recall

- our next speakeris david ruid from, uh, usda-aphis. and he's gonna talk about integrated predatormanagement concepts. thank you, david.

Fromm Dog Food Recall, - thanks, otto. thanks for having--having me here today. thanks for coming here today. probably the bluegillsare moving up

into the shallows right now,and... [audience groans][laughing] [indistinct chatter] it'd be a good dayto be out there. i want to recognize my colleagueeric fromm. eric fromm does the lion's shareof wolf and bear work in northwest wisconsin,including washburn county. so, eric, raise your hand.thank you.

yeah, so we'll get going,uh, lickety-split. so when we're talkingabout livestock predators in the state of wisconsin,primarily we're dealing with wolves, black bears,and coyotes. very rarelywe'll have bobcats maybe kill a lamb or domestic fowl,but typically speaking-- this is cow-calf workshop, when we're talking aboutcow-calf wildlife predation, we're dealing with wolves,black bears, and coyotes

in the state of wisconsin. and i'm primarily gonna talkabout gray wolves today and-- and our program in dealing with--with gray wolf conflicts in wisconsin. this is a-- this-- this mapof the u.s. represents-- those green areas representwhat most people feel is suitable wolf habitin the 48 states. the black polygons representthose suitable habitat areas

that currentlyare occupied by wolves. and most recently,what we have seen is, there is nowa breeding pack of wolves that have movedinto california. eastern washington, oregon have recentlybeen colonized by wolves. so we're getting upwardsof ten states that have wolves in them,and there is some unoccupiedsuitable habitat

that still existsup in the northeast. but as you can see, our population of wolvesis contiguous with the three states. and keep in mind,from a biological perspective, our gray wolf populationis classified as a federally endangeredspecie. remember, this is a contiguouspopulation of wolves that extendsto the arctic circle.

that populationis 70,000 to 80,000, maybe 90,000 animals that existsfrom central wisconsin up into the northern latitudesof canada and alaska. so we-- we'll talk aboutnonlethal abatement techniques to try to resolve predator--predator problems, and one of--you go back in time, this isn't a relativelyrecent phenomenon. you go back to 1717;

in the cape cod regionof massachusetts, there wasa proposed wolf fence to protect livestockfrom predators, and that would have beenbears, wolves, and coyotes, but in 1717,people were thinking about, "how do i exclude my livestockfrom predators?" and interestingly enough, this proposalthat was put forth, it failed from complaints

from the unprotected neighborsoutside the fence who didn't want the wolvesshut out on them, and the proposal wasa six-foot-high board fence. another technique that was usedwas vegetation management. woods burning was used to reduce vegetative covernear livestock. there's an example of thatin the literature from 1928, uh, in arkansas. and i would imaginea lot of these techniques--

they were used in conjunctionwith lethal control, but nevertheless, these weresome nonlethal efforts to separate livestockfrom predators. some of the most earlyscientific literature pertaining to this topic was from the usda forest servicein 1908 when they developeda predator-proof fence in oregonon a 2,500-acre pasture, and their results found that

they could successfullyfence livestock from pre-- from coyotes,but it was unsuccessful in dealing with grizzly bearsand black bears, and i would suspectthat this was probably in an era when wolves had likelybeen extirpated from this particular region. and how about thisfor a farm labor rate? um, three bucks a dayper eight hours.

and what we've seen, folks, when wolves began to colonizethe state of wisconsin, they colonized some ofthe best suitable wolf habitat in the state,and these were big blocks of contiguous public land that had very, very littleagriculture in it, and there wasvery little conflict between wolves and livestock in this earlier eraof wolf recovery--

recolonization in wisconsin,you know, which was occurringfrom 1980 to, oh, the mid 1990s. but what we started to see is,this wolf population expanded. they started to set-- establish territoriesin areas that were becomingmore fragmented. it wasn't the big blocksof contiguous forestland. as you can see--this black polygon represents a wolf pack territory,

and those open areas,that's agriculture. the north end of the wolf packwas forested public land, and the southern fringeof that particular pack, um, started to--[stammers] it was fragmentedand had livestock production, so around the mid to late '90s,we were starting to see wolf packs establishingin these areas, and we really started to seea consistent trend in wolveskilling livestock annually.

and then,as late as 2010, 2013, this is an actual example of a wolf pack territoryin marathon county, and you can see,predominately, that pack's territoryis agricultural land, a lot of it being row crop, but there is livestockproduction included in that. so as this-- as this really suitable habitathas been saturated,

we're starting to seewolves spilling out of the northern forest,central forest, and establishing territoriesin this-- what we would callunsuitable habitat, because generally speaking, when we do see wolvescolonize areas like this, there's going to be conflictswith livestock. when we're investigatingwolf complaints, we have to put these complaintsinto four categories.

and this comes from the-- the wisconsinwolf management plan, and state law drivescompensation in the state, and so we have to packagewolf complaints that we received from youinto these four categories, and they're confirmed,probable, confirmed non-wolf--that would-- a confirmed non-wolf complaintwould be, for instance, a farmer calls us outabout wolves killing a calf,

and the evidence suggestsit was coyotes that caused the depredation. or unconfirmed. it doesn't mean we don't knowthe reason the calf died. it just means we knowwolves didn't kill the calf. the interesting thingabout this photograph, if you notice,there's a magpie in it. eric took this picturewith a trail camera, and it has a magpiein douglas county.

- [chuckles]that is rare. [indistinct chatter] - so when we'reinvestigating complaints, if you call us out toinvestigate a wolf complaint, the policy says:call you back in 24 hours, and if there isa livestock animal in reasonable conditionto examine, we have to investigate itwithin 48 hours. generally speaking,

by the timewe receive a complaint and we have boots on the ground looking at whatever it isthat was called in is within the day--oftentimes, less than three to four hours. in the summer months,especially now when thingsare starting to heat up, it's very, very importantfor us to get there as quickly as possibleso we can assess that evidence

before decompositionis occurring. scavenging-- you know,eagles and ravens and crows, they consume an awful lot ofa depredated livestock animal, and every time they consumethat carcass, we're losing evidenceto classify it into one of thosefour categories. so every complainthas a very detailed report that accompanies it. and while we're out there,we have to make sure

we're actuallylooking at predation. you know,was the calf stillborn and simply scavengedby predators, or was it born aliveand killed? so things we're looking foris manure on the hoof, maybe its ear tag, it has a emasculating band, so we know thatthe animal was born alive and we're actually dealingwith predation

and not just scavenging. 'cause producers aren't paid for wolvesscavenging on livestock, only if they depredatelivestock. while we're thereinvestigating complaint, the evidence we're looking for, you know, are-- are wolf--or predator tracks. wolf tracks,generally speaking, they're 4 inches longby 3 1/2 inches wide.

coyote tracks are much smaller. uh, wolf scats--there's a big difference between wolf scat biomassand coyote scat, and generally speaking,when we're dealing with bears, there's a lot of vegetationin bear scat and not so muchin predator scat. you know, we're looking atwhere the animal was attacked. the calf on the right, bitten dorsallyover the vertebrae,

that's very classic of wolveskilling young livestock, calves that are, you know,less than three months of age. coyotes typicallywon't do that. the calf on the lower leftwith that ventral neck bite, that's pretty signatureof where coyotes might attacka livestock animal. and the calfon the upper left, that was-- that wasa newborn beef calf-- red angus calfthat was attacked by coyotes

in the flank region, and they-- they simplykilled the animal by stress, blood loss,shock, and trauma. so the--i mean, when we're out there and we're lookingat dead livestock, these are the thingsthat we're-- that we're looking forand looking at to make surewe classify it correctly. we also look atthe canine puncture space

in the hideof a depredated animal. the lower right, you can seethe spacing of that is about a inch and 1/2,inch and 3/4. that's very signatureof a wolf bite. fairly large diameterpuncture holes-- 3/8 of an inchgenerally speaking. inch and 1/2 or greater is-- is very signatureof a wolf bite, and you can seeall the hemorrhaging

and shock and traumaand blood loss. that's evidence thatobviously this animal was alive when it was bit. and that just representsthe canine tooth spacing of a wolf right therein that image. it's about an inch and 5/8. another technique thatwe've used-- sometimes successfully,sometimes unsuccessfully-- we can collect saliva or tissue

around thosecanine puncture holes, and submit it to our nationalwildlife research center. and they can actuallytry to get genetic material from the salivaand classify by specie what saliva that has came--what sal-- what speciethat saliva came from. it's been used successfully.it's not 100%. i would say right now,it's about 50/50. carcass location,consumption, drag trail,

how much of the animalwas consumed. if we knowwhen it was killed, we know when you found it,how much of it was consumed? is it improbable for a coyote to have consumed that much,or a bear? or how big--how large of an animal is it? and was it dragged? i mean, coyotes don't havethe ability to drag carcassesas well as wolves or bears,

and maybe it was cached. it's not uncommonfor bears to cover prey items. maybe it was a fawnor a livestock carcass... [stammers]or, uh, a roadkill. they'll drag a roadkill deeroff the edge of the highway and then cache itwith vegetation. wolves occasionallywill do that but fairly infrequently. so when wolf recovery...[clears throat]

was occurring from the '80sinto the-- into the '90s and the early 2000s is when we started to see the number of wolf complaintsincreasing. those blue bars represent wolf complaintswe've received in the state of wisconsin where we actually went outand investigated. those red bars representthose complaints

that we classifiedas confirmed or probable. and obviously,the black line is the trendof the gray wolf population. so there is a very strongstatistical relationship that says,as wolves recovered and their population increased, so did complaintsand verified complaints. some people have arguedthat necessarily more wolves does not meanmore complaints.

in the state of wisconsin, there's a strong correlationthat it does mean that. but-- this is important. these are the confirmedand probable wolf complaintswe've received since 2003. so 2003, we have 35 verif-- confirmed or probablewolf complaints. in 2003, the wolf population, the minimum countwas about 350 animals.

and today, in--last year, in 2015, we had 91 confirmed or probablewolf complaints, but if you look at roughlya ten-year average, that trend is beginningto stabilize somewhat, but there's nuances to thisbecause there's been on again/off againmanagement scenarios based on the federal statusof wolves, and also the new--the state had the authority in '12, '13, and '14

to have a recreationalwolf harvest season, and we had an integrated programwhere we were-- had the authorityto lethally remove wolves that were causing depredationson farms. so in 2015, while investigatingwolf complaints, we confirmed 46 of thoseand another 10% as probable. so over 50%of the investigations that we conducted were classifiedas confirmed or probable,

and 17% of thosewere confirmed as non-wolf. and generally speaking,when it's a non-wolf complaint, it's usually, coyoteshave killed a beef calf. these beef calves are fairlyvulnerable to coyote predation that first day or twoof their life. and resource categories-- while we're investigatingcomplaints, beef cattle makes up the majority of itby over 50%. 50% of the conflictsthat we're looking at

relatesto cow-calf producers. dairy cattle is a fairlysignificant portion at 12%, and then the next biggestcomponent is dogs and hunting dogs. someone asked about a map of wolf conflictsin the state. you know, i getthis is kind of a wide scale, but in 2015, those larger red dotsrepresent

those confirmedand probable conflicts. the smaller dots representthe confirmed non-wolf or the unconfirmed complaintsin the state. and as you can see, it's mostlya northern forest system in the northernwolf harvest zones, uh, somein the central forest, and then some scattered out. notably is crawford countyin southwest wisconsin. a pack of wolveshas established themselves

down there, and they havedepredated livestock two years in a row now. um, in 2015, we investigated wolf complaintsin 35 counties. and we verifiedor classified them as confirmed or probablein 23 counties of the state. you know, this is-- this isan important statistic that we really keep track ofin our program, and that's the number of farmsin the state

where we verify wolveshave killed livestock. [clears throat]this excludes fowl. this is looking at sheep, cattle-- dairy cattle,beef cattle-- possibly horses. horse depredationsare relatively rare, but, um, in 2010,was the most farms that we had ever verifiedwolf depredations on at 47, and then you can seethat trend started to decline from 47 to 40to 32 to 28,

and during--in 2012, '13, and '14, we had the recreational harvestof wolves in the state, and our program hadthe authority to not only implementnonlethal abatement on farms to try to preventwolf depredations; we had the authority to set equipment on property, and any wolves capturedwould be euthanized. so in 2012,we had euthanized 57 wolves

that were causing conflicton different farms, and producers,through shooting permits and provisions of nr10.02 that allow livestock producers to shoot wolves that areactively attacking livestock, you know, there wasan additional 17 animals removed in 2012, in additionto the 57 that we removed. so we were beginningto remove wolves that had become associated

with depredating livestock, and we started to seethe number of farms that wolves werekilling livestock on decrease. 2014 was the last yearof recreational wolf harvest and lethal control for livestock depredationprotection, and that number of farmsjumped up to 32 last year. [stammers]so as a livestock producer, there's seasonal variation

in when you mightexpect wolves to depredate livestock, especiallycow-calf producers. beginning in januarythrough march, it's a relatively rare event. you don't have manysmall animals on the farm. all your big animalsare up around the hay ring near the buildings,and they're just-- they're not very vulnerable.

you know, but what happens,as soon as-- as soon as you start to calve and pasture greens up, your herds get dispersedon pasture; they're in more remote areasof the farm. you have young animals. you have wolveson the landscape. we start to see the uptickin depredation starting in end of march,first of april,

and thenaround the middle of may, end of may, it kind of peaks, and then it startsto drop off. and what's occurring is,fawning has occurred, and we see a decrease in the rate of wolvesdepredating livestock when they switch over and there's this newfood resource that's available on the landscape,and that's deer fawns.

and so we see this--this bimodal relationship where livestock conflicts get a little slowerin june, july, but as soon as we beginto approach august, end of july, first of august,middle of august, the wolf pups are weaned;they're away from the dens. they're old enoughto travel with the adults, and you can possibly end up withan entire pack of wolves

that are called"rendezvousing," or they have a rendezvous sitenear your farm. the bioenergeticsof the wolf pack is increased tremendously 'cause you not only havethe two breeders that need sustenancefor survival; the pups are also old enoughto where they're depending on meat for sustenance, and we see thesedepredations increasing

in august and september, and then towardsthe middle to end of october, it starts to decline again, and, you know,pasture could be froze off by that point; maybe your feeder calveshave been shipped. the vulnerability-- the number of vulnerable animalsout there just starts to decline,

and this rate of depredationdrops off to where when we get intonovember-- late november, december, it becomesa fairly rare event. what we have seen when livestock producersdo have wolves on their farmslate in the year and depredations are occurring, those can be significant issuesfor that producer,

'cause those wolves are--[clears throat] they're going to spend timeat that farm hunting livestock because they've becomeacclimated to doing it. and, you know,what predisposes an individual farmerto a livestock depredation-- you know, i said earlier,there's 32 farms last year that we verifiedwolves killing livestock on. we know thatit occurs more than that. [clears throat]they may kill a calf,

consume it, and the producer'snever aware that-- why the calf is missing;that has happened. so that number of farmsis higher than 32, but what predisposes a farmto wolf predation in wisconsin is, generally,it's a larger farm, usually has, you know, 50 to a few hundredhead of cattle on it, more remote pastures, and what happens,these farms are just

positioned on the landscapewhere they butt up next to really goodwolf habitat. and this is an aerial imageout of an aircraft flying from ashlanddown along highway 13. so this would be right around marengo, high bridge, york arealooking south, and you can seethat pastureland right there, but that blue hazein the background

is the great divideranger district of the national forest. there's county forest landthere. and there'sabout a half a million acres of really good wolf habitat right up next tothis livestock production area, and there's a lotof cow-calf operations in this area. and you simply havefour strands of barbed wire

separating your animals from some of the bestwolf habitat in the state, and that's not-- that's notan abatement strategy. your fences are designedto confine livestock. they're not designed to keeppredators out of your pastures. and, you know,farm size can range-- the biggest producerwe deal with is-- he's got--uh, about 1,200 acres. and generally speaking,on a farm, and, uh--

generally speaking--there are exceptions, but the average number of calveskilled per farm using our statisticsis around two calves per farm. there are situations,as you can see, where one particular farm,we verify-- we verified12 calves were killed. that particular producerhad a fairly large missing livestock claimthat year also. [clears throat]

cattle depredated by wolves. um, since they were listed as an endangered specieback in 1975, we have verifiedwolves have killed 661 head of cattlein the state. last year, it was 46. something that's nottalked about but is very important are thesenon-depredation impacts

that wolves can haveon livestock production. and, you know, mr. linkhit the nail on the head. the instance--in 2015, there was an incidenton that particular property where we didn't havegood abatement strategies, and the best solution was just to move the cattleoff of the-- off of that pasture. and, to me,when that is the solution,

the program has failed, because we weren't ableto resolve that conflict using just nonlethal techniques. we need to havean integrated approach to resolving livestockdepredations from wolves. but some of thesenon-predation-related impacts that wolves have hadon livestock production includes weight loss. that ramler et al. 2014 paper

is a scientificpeer-reviewed paper that looked at ranchesin montana and compared feeder calf weightsat the end of the season on farms that hadwolf depredations and on farms that didn't havewolf depredations, and those farms that hadwolf depredations, their calf weightswere 26 pounds lighter than the rancheswithout depredations, and, you know, that year,

if you look at, you know,26 pounds per calf at a couple of bucks a pound, that adds up to real moneyreally quick. i mean, and these are impactsthat aren't compensated for. increased cattle vigilance,that kluever paper, looked at cow-calf herdsin the southwest, in arizona and new mexico,that were exposed to the mexican gray wolf, and those animals...[clears throat]

those animalson those allotments that hadthe presence of wolves spent more time looking for-- presumably for predators than herds that didn't havewolves on the allotment. meaning,they spent more time grazing, putting weight on. i mean, that's the goalof cow-calf production. cattle--very difficult to handle,

that have been huntedby wolves. cattle have been stampededthrough fences. there's the potentialof a disease transmitted between wolves--other canids. coyotes, farm dogs,foxes, and wolves can transmitneospora caninum, which can resultin the cow aborting a fetus. um, fence damage, and time spentsearching for depredations.

you know, these are someof these secondary impacts that folks like youcan have when wolves starthunting livestock on your farm. so some nonlethal concepts. disruptive stimuli--this is, you know, an undesirable stimulito prevent or alter the behavior of an animal, to try to frighten it away. aversive stimuli--

stimuli that causediscomfort or pain that's pairedwith a specific behavior. when we talkabout nonlethal concepts, these are kind ofthe two boxes that we look at when we're tryingto prevent wolves from killing livestock. and some of thosetechniques are fladry-- and we'll go over thesewhen we go out to-- when we go outto the radzak farm.

fladry,randomly activated lights, electronic guards,radio-activated guards, and scare wires. the image on the left, that's a scare wireon a cow-calf operation. it's placed between the groundand the bottom barbed wired, and it's electrified with 12-volt fencers,solar parmak fencers, or some other fencers.

fairly high voltage. it's a techniquethat we're using on a particular farmthat has a huge historyof wolf conflicts to prevent wolvesfrom accessing pastures. the image on the right, that's some of our staffinstalling fladry on a farm in douglas county that had wolf depredationsin 2015.

in 2015, we had 17 majornonlethal projects. we installed 16--almost 16 1/2 miles of fladry. we put theseradio-activated guards-- and you'll see thesethis afternoon-- out on three differentproperties, installed over six milesof electrified poly-tape, used electronic guards and various livestock husbandryrecommendations. you know, and someanimal husbandry practices

that might help preventwolf depredations-- you know, changing pastures,night penning, changing birthing dates,and fencing. some othernonlethal approaches that have been usedin the past has been actuallythe sterilization of wolves. they feltif they weren't breeding and they weren't raising pups, the energy demands of the packwould be suppressed,

and therefore they wouldn'tdepredate livestock. it wasn't proven scientificallywith wolves, but it was a techniqueused in utah with coyotes,where they were able to actually reducerates of predation on lambs from sterilized coyote pairs. translocationof problem wolves-- that was a technique we usedprior to 2003. there was33 different wolves

that were caught from farms that were sufferingdepredations from wolves, and we moved theselong distances and released them. it didn't prove to bea very successful technique because the majorityof these animals died within the first six monthsof them being released, but what it did do is,it stimulated nine county boards to pass resolutionsnot wanting us or the--

or the state of wisconsin releasing wolvesin those counties. so it-- it wasa unpopular technique. - [chuckles]yeah. - that's an imageof a radio-activated guard. it's got a strobe lightand some sirens, and it's activatedby the presence of a radio-collared wolf. so it's moreof an interactive tool.

it's not going off all night. we know if the stimuli is going off repeatedlyand consistently, animals will habituate to thatfairly quickly. but this is--it's an interaction-- it's an interactionbased on proximity between wolves and this boxfrom its radio collar where it sends a signal,and it activates the device. potentially,calving nearer buildings

might be something-- a recommendationthat you might consider. it doesn't proveto be 100% effective. we've had wolves kill livestockvery near buildings, so to saythat this is foolproof would be inaccurate, but it's somethingthat you might consider. and mike will talkmore specifically about guarding animals.

you know,i've talked about the importance of havingan integrated approach to resolving wolf conflicts. and right now, with the federal classificationof wolves as federally endangered, we can only tryto prevent depredations for folks like you usingnonlethal abatement techniques. and this is a scenariothat happened in 2010

in douglasand bayfield county. this is-- that black linerepresents the summer territoryof a wolf that eric had radio-collared in an attempt to use a radio-activated guard, and i'll just walk you throughwhat happens. and so the green representsforested cover. the beige is-- is some typeof agriculture,

and the blue'sself-explanatory; in the top of the screenis lake superior. so on may 10th,we had wolves kill a calf. you know, we appliedsome nonlethal technique to try to abate that situation, try to prevent wolvesfrom killing other calves. well, it worked therefor a few weeks, but over on a neighboring farm,they killed a calf. so we applied some nonlethalabatement there.

it's fladry, flashing lights,or electronic guards. and then on the 15th of july, we had a farmer reportwolves harassing livestock. we verified that, so we didproactive nonlethal abatement trying to preventany depredations and these secondary effects that wolves might poseon a particular farm. so on the second of august, they depredated livestock

on the north edgeof the summer territory, so we appliednonlethal abatement there. and then on 8/19, they actually depredatedlivestock on the farm where we had already appliedthis nonlethal abatement, so that didn't proveto be successful. and then in september, another depredationon an adjacent farm, another onea couple of days later.

[stammers] at this point, we're tryingeverything that we can try. this is--this is the era when wolvesare federally lifted, and we don't havethe authority to remove them, so... another depredation occurson the 30th of september, the 10th of oct--or the 11th of october, the 30th of october.

without the authority and the ability to havean integrated approach, that's notsuccessful wolf management. spreading the problem from one producer to anotherisn't successful. and at that point, those animalshad become so habituated to these nonlethal techniques that none of themwere being successful. and i would argue,if you want to talk

about wolf conservation and theseconservation strategies, that-- that pack of wolvesdid nothing to support wolf recoveryand wolf conservation when everybody in the communityis having problems with them. eric, would you liketo add anything to that experience?- no. [laughter] - it was a difficult summer.

- how many of those wolvesdied accidentally? - [laughs] - pardon me?[laughter] - uh, i don't know.- do you refuse to answer? - i forget-- that was w-757,and i think-- maybe that winter,it went off of the air. i forget what happened to it. but that is-- that isa real-life example. i think that'sa fairly compelling story that--

that tryingto resolve these conflicts with nonlethal abatementstrategies-- although, we can select a farm--maybe it's a single farm. it's isolated.it's relatively small. we can stop wolf depredationsto livestock with these nonlethal toolsrelatively efficiently, but there are these scenariosthat occur where nothing in the realmof nonlethal is practical. in northern wisconsin,

we conduct tribalco-investigations of wolf complaints. the menominee,stockbridge-munsee, and the ojibwe nations value,culturally and spiritually, wolves very highly. if we have a depredationwithin six miles of tribal lands--of these tribal lands, we will co-investigatethe complaint

with the tribal biologist. so we do an on the ground-- boots-on-the-ground evaluationof the conflict. so if we're starting to talkabout abatement strategies, we have the tribal biologiston board, so when we start talking-- potentially, given the erain which we're at, whether it's federally delistedor listed, they can be partof the determination

as to what we're going to doto resolve that issue. we had talked aboutcarcass disposal, proper carcass-- proper carcass disposaltechniques. the--the image on the left, that's animproperly disposed of cow, and those tracks coming into itare wolf tracks. that could probablypredispose you to wolf predation,when you start

to calve on those pasturesin the spring. it's-- it'sa very important topic, and it's a very difficult issueto deal with that you folks have to deal within the winter months. just a time frame of thison again/off again federal status of wolvesin wisconsin. you've seen that earlier. wolves captured and killedfor depredation management by usda wildlife servicesand the wisconsin dnr

from 1974 to 2015. there's been397 wolves captured for conflict management, and 335 of those animals were euthanized. an integrated site-specific wolf depredation managementprogram has nothing to dowith population level control. it is not our objectiveto have any impact

on the overallstatewide wolf population. it is to resolve your conflict, not to reducethe wolf population. when we have a yearof full lethal control, we will removebetween 5% and 10% of that minimum estimatedwolf population from the previous winter. i would like to also addto this that site-specificlethal control

for wolf conflict abatementhas had nothing to do-- or has had no negative impact on wolf recoveryin the state of wisconsin. you folkssaw this image earlier. i mean, what it speaks to is, those yearswhen we had the authority to lethally remove wolvesin 2002 through 2008 and thenin '12, '13, and '14, you can obviously see that

the population growth lineis increasing while we had the authorityto lethally remove animals. some weird wolf conflicts, you know, somenon-predation-related things. this is a silage bagin marinette county that a pair of wolveshad ran up the side of, and their nails had puncturedthat silage bag. and you can see wherethe farmer had taped the bag. and you all knowwhat that means to you,

when you havea punctured silage bag. you know, these areright near the barnyard. just-- just somenon-livestock-related wolf incidences that-- that do-- that do occur. um, you know,so when we go back to 1908, that first scientifically... i wouldn't call itpeer-reviewed but an effortto demonstrate

predator management toolsback in 1908, to today, in 2014, we still have scientiststhat work both for our agencyand other agencies that are trying to developthese tools and techniques to preventlarge carnivores-- grizzly bears,black bears, cougars, wolves, and coyotes--from depredating livestock, so there is still effortout there, folks,

that people are spendinga fair amount of time on trying to develop techniquesto resolve these conflicts. and this 2014 just representsanother one of those efforts. dr. john shivik has devoteda lot of his career to investigating techniques to preventlivestock depredations. i know that's very quick.it's a lot of information. we could talk about this topicfor a very long time, but we can go over someof the stuff at the field day

with eric,but at this point, before i open it upto questions, on the back are some magnets, and if you want,grab one of those. those have our 1-800hotline numbers on them. and so if you suspectthat you have a wolf or a bear depredation, it'd be nice for you tohave that on your refrigerator so you know the number to call.

we monitor those numbers seven days a week,365 days a year. if it's a holiday or a weekend,there's someone assigned to call in and check voice mailevery couple of hours to see if we've receiveda wolf or a bear complaint. so it's365-day-a-year service. so grab one of thoseon your way out. and some of the packages--packets that you got on your way in,they just contain

a lot of informationabout our agency and program, not only about bears and wolvesbut some of the other stuff we dothat might be useful for you. so i encourage youto grab one of those and take it home. so at that,i've got a little bit of time, if there's any questions. [applause]