Does killing more wolves make for less attacks on livestock ? according to new research probably not

Human beings have been in a complex relationship with wolves for millenia. This has been both beneficial to man through the creation of the dog from original wild wolf stocks but also to the largest extent problematic due to constant depredation of livestock from wolves.The logic to culling wolf populations(reduction through killing) is the oldest known method used to limit the attack of wolves on livestock worldwide. Setting aside for a moment other factors that affect the intensity and frequency of wolf attacks such as changes in habitat or wild prey availability ,sometimes through anthropogenic factors such as hunting for meat ,several would argue that the more wolves you kill the less the intensity and the frequency of the damage. This however is an overly simplistic notion as research from North American wolf populations has concluded at least for sheep and cows as the livestock animal.According to research by Wielgus and Peebles of Wasington state university in the USA, published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE,wolf numbers actually increased with increasing mortality due to culling of populations,possibly as a result of higher population increase rates due to compensatory increased breeding pairs and numbers of wolves following increased mortality. Only at very high rates of culling was there any decrease in predation noted(>25% of the total population) . This would make this an ineffective management strategy over the long term for managing wolf populations. The authors argued that alternative methods need to be considered for managing populations sustainably.

The gray wolf (Canis lupus)

The final point to be considered here is simple and has been argued by ecologists for decades to non experts. The most logical approach to predicting an ecological interaction may be erroneous simply because as has been consistently proven for many cases not all of the parameters driving the interactions are known


Refference

Wielgus RB, Peebles KA (2014) Effects of Wolf Mortality on Livestock Depredations. PLoS

ONE 9(12): e113505. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0113505