This screenshot shows rancher Don Gittleson speaking to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission.
After more than a year of dealing with the threat of wolves killing his livestock, Walden-area farmer Don Gittleson has gained some hard-won perspective on where to turn for insights into wolf behavior and how to protect his livestock from them.
During that time, he found, among other things, that while people had told him that it was a wolf that decided when a pack would attack, that was not what he saw happen. Instead, he was a man with collars involved in every attack.
“I’m getting to the point where I don’t care if you’re an expert, and I don’t care what you tell me. If the wolves show me something different, I think it’s the wolf,” Gittleson said this week.
Gittleson gave extended commentary on his efforts to deter wolves before the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission in Colorado Springs, taking public feedback on his draft plan to begin returning wolves to the state by the end of the year. This reintroduction is required by a formal voter-approved ballot procedure in 2020. After first speaking about the same few minutes available to other public commentators, he was later invited to speak to the panel in more detail about his experiences, as it is considered a plan that focuses in part on measures that could They are used to protect livestock from wolves and to compensate farm owners for livestock losses.
Gittelson says he has lost cows and calves to wolves. The wolfpack settled the North Park area after the adults traveled there from out of state and two adults gave birth to the first wild-born wolf litter in the state about 80 years ago.
Gittelson described feelings of anxiety about wolves and the loss of the animals. He has said that not only is it hard for him, but it’s hard for Parks and Wildlife employees.
“I see it in their eyes when they come out and cover some of these cases,” he said.
He recounted one instance where a Parks and Wildlife employee responded to a wolf attacking a dog.
“This guy had to take the rest of the day off because it was such a scene,” Gittleson said.
While it is difficult to deal with animals killed by wolves, he said, “the really bad animals are the ones that aren’t dead, and I have to put them down.” “These are the worst.”
Gittelson said, “After a while, you find it hard to sleep, and what you think about a lot are wolves.”
Wolves are currently listed as endangered by the state, and they also have a federal Endangered Species Protection Act in place in the state, so killing them is illegal in Colorado. Parks and Wildlife is working with the US Fish and Wildlife Service on a special rule whereby the federal government can allow states to bring in and manage wolves with some flexibility. While the draft restoration and management plan calls for the use of non-lethal means to reduce conflicts between wolves and livestock, it also envisions a role for lethal management of wolves when necessary, assuming they are legally authorized by federal law, which officials hope to obtain. in place by the end of this year.
When his wolf problems began, Gittleson said, he knew lethal control of wolves “would not be allowed in Colorado for at least a year.
“So I always hoped the non-mortal stuff would work for at least a year. They didn’t. Anything we make (the wolves) can get used to. It just takes a little bit of time. The problem was, it didn’t take as long as I would have liked.”
Gittelson described to the committee a long list of procedures he had tried, with varying levels of success. He said the fladry, which consisted of a fence with waving strips hanging from it, worked well. But he told The Daily Sentinel in May that he couldn’t get enough of it to cordon off his pasture, and the wolves were used to it. This week, Gittelson said the Fox spotlight wasn’t a deterrent.
“This pack of wolves, the lights had no effect on them.”
The crushing shells were effective, he said, but did not scare away the wolves when the female wolf was in heat. Sparks from the shells also pose a wildfire threat when used on dry ground.
The problem with some of the deterrence measures Gittelson tried, which also included using bells on cattle, he said, was that they could scare the cattle and cause them to run, which is the last thing he wanted to happen.
He said the game’s cameras worked for a while. When the camera took a picture of the wolf, that camera never took it again. Mother cows are also a deterrent, helping prevent wolves from attacking the calves, and Gittleson said he never lost an adult cow to wolves until a strange situation caused the cows to flee and be chased by the wolves.
He said, “They knew they could bring down a cow.”
Gittleson said he had a product to use on cattle against parasites, and he gave it to calves before turning them over to grazing, hoping that if you kill wolves and eat a calf or two, they won’t like the meat and kill no more. Then a bear killed a calf. Gittleson said the bear didn’t want to eat the carcass right away, waiting for it to rot.
He said non-lethal procedures work because the wolves think they will be hurt or killed by them.
“They quickly lost that fear,” he said.
He had people stay out all night with their cars running, which only worked to deter coyotes for about two months. He said the wolves eventually arrived quietly and killed the calves without people knowing the attack had taken place.
With the help of Parks and Wildlife, Gittleson also obtained and popularized donkeys as a deterrent to coyotes, though he worried about a public backlash depending on how that happened.
“I didn’t want to lose a donkey (to the wolves) and put that in the press,” he said.
Three wolves that Parks and Wildlife believe may have been part of a North Park pack were legally killed last year across the border in Wyoming. The deaths did not come as a surprise to Gittleson.
He said, “They have lost their fear of people and it is not safe for them when that happens.” “So it’s nice for people to see them. It’s nice when they want to be able to get close to them. It’s not good for the wolves.”
Those deaths, he said, divide the flock into small groups, and the wolves don’t bother him anymore.
“A coyote or two has never been a problem around big cows. They need at least three to be a problem, so when pack sizes grow, you’re going to see a lot of your staff busy,” he told the committee.
Gittleson said he incurred some wolf-related expenses that were not reimbursed by the agency, and spent about $12,000 to $15,000 on non-lethal procedures, but did not seek reimbursement.
Luke Hoffman, director of game damage for the agency, told the commission that so far Parks and Wildlife has spent just under $13,000 compensating people for four coyote depredation lawsuits.
The allegations included two dogs, a calf and five cows. He said two claims were denied and two are still pending.
He has been denied claims for loss of calves, Gittleson said, and has a pending claim for one animal.
Parks and Wildlife Commissioner Dallas May, who is also a farmer, asked Gittleson how long he could bear the losses and costs related to wolves if they continued to grow.
Gittleson said, “I don’t like that question because it’s too real a question to answer.”
Mai said, “I know in my situation I can’t take it, so I respect that.”
He told Gittleson that he hoped everyone would learn from his situation, but that he also hoped “you’d be weird, and that it wouldn’t happen anymore or so often.”
“…the real thing I’m getting at is we’re trying to develop this compensation plan on a worst-case scenario basis. I’d like to think your situation could be closer to the worst-case scenario,” May said.
Gittleson told the commission it would be important not to transplant wolves into Colorado until the new federal rule is in place.
Referring to the education section of the wolf plan, Gittleson also said that agency personnel on the ground should be able to talk to the media to improve transparency regarding wolves.
“There are things they don’t need to share with the press, but there are things they need to share with the press. Putting a gag order on them doesn’t show very good transparency,” he said.