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I farm right next to (within 10km) pristine forest stretching for a few thousand km in a couple directions. I've seen plenty of wolves, but they never really come into the farming areas, and even if they do, the cattle aren't very concerned. You have a couple hundred head together in a field, they aren't worried about wolves, cougar or coyotes. They'd stomp them into a paste.

We have neighbors that bitch and moan about the coyotes "killing calves". I've seen plenty of coyotes chewing on dead calves, but I feel it's pretty unlikely to have been them that killed it, they're just cleaning up a late miscarriage that might have walked around for a while looking for a place to die. It's almost always calves I've looked at and thought they weren't going to last long.

And there are more than enough deer, moose and elk around for these predators to go after that they would much rather take anyway, rather than risk an angry bunch of momma cows mopping them up.

Frankly, if the price of having a healthy wildlife population means losing a few sick calves to them and a couple tonnes of grain to deer, I'm fine with it. That ecosystem benefits us in a lot of ways.

I really doubt 10 wolves will change the price of beef so much you would be even able to quantify it.

Speaking of reintroducing species- It's too bad we can't convince America (who I doubt we can convince to get off meat entirely in the foreseeable future) to switch from cattle to bison. Not only would it put the fauna we replaced back where it's supposed to be, I just think it tastes better. You can usually only get it at local places for a premium, but back when I ate meat, it was definitely worth going out of my way for a buffalo burger.

It can't be that difficult to farm them, because I drive by a pretty sizable (but still clearly owned by one family) bison ranch on the way to my mother's house on a fairly regular basis and they seem to be doing fine on the same pasture I see the cows grazing on nearby. If anything, there are more bison per square footage than cows and the bison don't seem to be suffering. Considering they used to be in herds so huge that indigenous Americans would regularly stampede them off of cliffs for their meat and have plenty left to do it again, I'm guessing they can be farmed in greater density.

the price of beef won't increase because of this. The meat packing companies set the price that they'll buy beef. they also set the price that they sell beef. they've been keeping their buying price down and increasing their selling price. it's a fucking racket. Don't let anybody sell you the idea that supply and demand effects this.

Sounds like they should invest in better fencing

Even if not reintroduced, it won't be long before the wolves in Wyoming start making their way down anyway.

They already have. It's not been publicly acknowledged because there are powerful land-use interests that want us to believe that they are only shooting "coyotes."

That said, the cheapest and most effective way to protect herds is with dogs. They've been doing it in Europe and parts of Asia for thousands of years, so it's not as if the knowledge isn't out there. It's what your giant breeds like mastiffs, great Pyrenees and Anatolian shepherds and the like we're originally bred for.

Creating jobs and driving down prices? Sounds like a win win to me

Just caught someone raising some kind of live stock (prolly dairy cows,) talking about the deer problem here in MN- getting into her feed by the hundreds (perhaps an exaggeration on her part.)

It definitely is cutting into her bottom line…. She wants the DNR to kill the deer because it’s too expensive to put up fencing around her feed pile. (Yeah, they had to fill that part in… is the interviewee probably realized she was pushing it already.)