What are the current goals or initiatives for the Wood River Wolf Project?

Biodiversity around the world is rapidly dwindling largely because of competition with people over land-use that negatively impacts wildlife populations. The WRWP provides critical aid to local ranchers and long-term evidence needed for government land-use programs to adapt from killing native predators to sustainable, humane, and ecologically sound systems for maintaining healthy and diverse wildlife populations. The WRWP serves as a sound model demonstrating how people and wildlife can thrive in shared landscapes using proactive coexistence strategies that are sustainable over the long term. By working with Nature instead of against her, we are promoting nature-based solutions to effectively graze livestock in a wildlife-rich landscape. The Project will continue working to keep sheep losses to wolves at less than 0.01%, which is 90% lower than losses reported in similar areas where they do not consistently use proactive nonlethal methods.

We have found that using nonlethal methods reduces management costs and social conflict while maintaining the wolf’s important ecological contributions. The Project uses a wide range of deterrents such as increasing human presence, flexible grazing routes, livestock guardian dogs, Foxlights, noisemakers, and turbofladry, to prevent predator – livestock interaction which also benefits a wider range of local wildlife including bears, mountain lions, coyotes, and more by minimizing overall conflict between people and carnivores.

In addition, the Project seeks to bring people with different opinions and interests together to pursue common goals by engaging in stakeholder empowerment and trust-building.

How will this grant from the WRWF help you reach your goals/further your mission?

Every year that this project continues to demonstrate success builds the case for coexistence-based wildlife management over the archaic wildlife control methods of the past. This grant will help increase our local community outreach and sustain the Project’s mentoring of communities and wildlife and agricultural leaders both regionally and internationally. Our goal is to help change the paradigm of wildlife management to working with Nature, instead of against her.

What role does the Wood River Wolf Project play in our larger community?

No news is good news. Many residents are unaware of the Project because we’ve been so successful at minimizing wolf and sheep conflicts that there’s not much local news about them. That’s a good thing, but sharing the Project’s methodology and success stories helps protect wildlife and prevent livestock depredation elsewhere, too. The foundational research from the Project has helped establish landscape-level nonlethal methods as an effective alternative to the killing of predators across the US and in Canada, Israel, Germany, Greece, France, and beyond. Our methods have now been used to protect other species including snow leopards, dingo, puma, coyotes, and more. Downloaded over 2,000 times, our Project’s research study has been cited 77 times in 13 different languages in peer reviewed wildlife management publications worldwide. Adaptive use of nonlethal strategies for minimizing wolf–sheep conflict in Idaho | Journal of Mammalogy | Oxford Academic (oup.com)