“It works. It works,” the rancher said. “That’s so hard to get across to other producers that haven’t tried it. Until you try it, you don’t know if it’s gonna work or not.”
Posted: 9:32 PM, Jun 12, 2024
Updated: 9:22 AM, Jun 13, 2024
By: Stephanie Butzer
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CPW and a rancher in northern Colorado share in an exclusive interview how they have found common ground protecting livestock from gray wolves, plus the free resources available to other ranchers.
JACKSON COUNTY, Colo. — Growing up on a ranch in northern Colorado, hard work was quickly rooted in Philip Anderson’s life. It’s a habit that he has carried ever since, and even more so now, as he operates a ranch and grapples with raising livestock while gray wolves roam the landscape.
That has been an ongoing adjustment for years in Colorado’s Jackson County and North Park area after wolves trekked south from Wyoming. This came well before the controversial, but voter-mandated December 2023 reintroduction of 10 wolves in Grand and Summit counties.
The addition of more wolves has raised concerns for ranchers in north-central Colorado and beyond.
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Anderson, 69, is one of just four ranchers in northern Colorado who has welcomed Colorado Park and Wildlife’s (CPW) free help installing fladry — a line of bright, rectangular, heavy-duty flags hung on a wire surrounding a pasture perimeter — to spook predators during the calving period, a period from March to May when cows typically give birth. The smell of the placenta is a strong attractant for the wolves, Anderson said, making the cows and newborns extra vulnerable.
“So, when they calve, that’s kind of a calling card: ‘Come on over and have some lunch,'” he said.
Ranchers who have accepted CPW’s assistance installing devices to keep wolves away from livestock — technically called wolf-livestock conflict mitigation measures — are familiar with Adam Baca, the department’s wolf conflict program coordinator. He installs and maintains non-lethal systems at those ranches in the region, and teaches other CPW wildlife officers how to do the same.
Baca has studied wolf and grizzly bear non-lethal conflict prevention for yearsand now lives in Jackson County, where he is keen on building relationships and finding common ground with the local ranch community.
He admitted that the idea of half-a-centimeter-wide wire — which is electric in Anderson’s case — and flags keeping wolves away is “kind of insane” and “crazy, but it works.”
“Showing that creative out-of-the box thinking is how we’re going to get through this and move into the future and keep ranches viable and keep that good habitat for wildlife,” he said.
Watch Denver7’s latest exclusive interviews with a local rancher and the CPW wolf conflict program coordinator below.
Ranching is a family affair for Anderson.
“My great-great-grandparents homesteaded this ranch and another ranch just three miles away from here in 1919,” he said, standing next to hay bales on his Jackson County property.
His father bought the ranch from Anderson’s grandmother, married a woman from Chicago, and had three boys. Anderson is the youngest. His two brothers have passed away.
In 1973, he married his high school sweetheart and they raised two boys. While balancing responsibilities as a father, husband and rancher, he also taught agriculture education for 34 years, including 24 at a school near his home.
His establishment is one of about 38,800 farms and ranches across Colorado, about half of which are livestock and poultry operations, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data from 2017. It counted about 11,300 beef cattle in Jackson County in 2023.
Ranching is a good way of life, but profit margins sometimes don’t “look any thicker than cellophane,” Anderson said. It comes with long stretches of minimal sleep, bitter cold winters, and a trusty pickup truck with no back window, but he wouldn’t trade it away.
“It’s a good way to raise kids. It’s a good way to raise your family,” he said. “We have kids that come work for us in the summertime. It’s just a great way to be part of this community. And there’s a wonderful community we live in.”
So, when a wolf preys on livestock, it can feel personal. And word travels fast among neighbors.
The Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan, which was finalized in May 2023 after years of meetings and discussions with community members, reads that the state is legally required to provide fair compensation to livestock owners for any economic losses if their animals are injured or killed by wolves, no matter if they are reintroduced wolves or the ones that naturally migrated to Colorado. In those cases, the wolf-livestock compensation program will pay for 100% of fair market value compensation, up to $15,000 per animal. Total statewide depredation claims of $25,000 are expected in fiscal year 2023-2024, increasing by about $5,000 in subsequent years as wolf numbers rise. This compensation program does not include coverage for stress on livestock living among wolves, which can result in lower weights and pregnancy rates.
Anderson explained that a heifer — a young, female cow — can live beyond a decade in the herd, so when one is killed by a predator, a rancher loses not just the animal but years of genetic improvement.
“One animal that is killed by a wolf, over a period of 10 or 12 years, could cost you $40,000,” he said. “You know, just that one kill.”
Livestock producers often underuse compensation programs, mainly due to “high costs and burden of proof to verify kills,” Colorado State University’s Center for Humane-Carnivore Coexistence reported, citing previous studies.
“Although wolf depredation on cattle and sheep accounts for less than 1% of the annual gross income from livestock operations in the Northern Rocky Mountains, these costs are unevenly distributed and localized,” the center said. “As such, low average industry-wide costs could mask high costs for some individual producers.”
The North Park wolves have not killed at Anderson’s ranch since the fall of 2023, when he found three dead ewe lambs on the property.
“And we called our Game and Fish people. And they came out right away to inspect it,” he said. “Sure enough — wolf kill. But they haven’t been back.”
There was no promise it would stay that way.
At that point, including the loss of those three lambs, Jackson County had seen 19 confirmed kills or serious injuries by wolves since December 2021, according to CPW’s wolf depredation tracker. That spanned both livestock and dogs. The December 2021 wolf kill marked the first in more than 70 years in the state.
Wanting to prevent any more attacks, Anderson sat down with Baca to discuss what type of conflict resolution or minimization CPW could provide. Baca was upfront with the rancher — turbo, or electric, fladry had not been successful in Colorado yet. But they decided to give it a try at Anderson’s ranch.
“He was willing to take that leap with me,” Baca said.
Together, they agreed to install about a mile and a half of the fladry in March 2024.
“I thought, ‘Wow, is that the weirdest thing you ever saw? How’s that gonna work?'” Anderson recalled. “I knew that flag whipping around on there, and especially when it blows… I guess if I was a wolf, I would probably stay away from it. But I’m not a wolf. But it’s not just a flag in the wind. It’s electrified.”
Non-electric fladry is effective for about two weeks, while turbo fladry remains effective for about 45 to 90 days. If it’s installed when cows begin to have their calves, that two-week period butts up against when wild ungulates, like mule deer and elk, start having their own babies, Baca said. Those animals are wolves’ natural food source, so the hope is they would return to the normal diet after calving season ends and CPW can take the fladry down.
Last year, wolves came “pretty darn close” to Anderson’s livestock during a blizzard, but they never attacked, he said. When Baca looked at the wolves’ GPS collar data, he could see the animals had made a 90-degree turn at the fladry away from the cattle.
“That’s pretty indicative of having some effect on their movement,” Baca said.
“And when that happened, then we knew it worked,” Anderson added.
Wolves have not attacked his livestock since the fladry was installed on the ranch.
“It works. It works,” he said, softly. “That’s so hard to get across to other producers that haven’t tried it. Until you try it, you don’t know if it’s gonna work or not.”
CPW has not yet obtained a video of the electric fladry shocking a wolf, but Baca said he has seen videos of the animals moving parallel to the wire or investigating it.
“And the idea is just to bump them off their route, so they’re not interacting with the livestock,” he said.
The number of flagship wolf kill prevention projects in northern Colorado is relatively low. Three ranches in Jackson County and one outside of it accepted CPW’s support installing fladry, and Baca and other wildlife officers have assisted other producers implementing other non-lethal deterrents such as fox lights, critter getters, and cracker shells.
Baca said some ranchers question if any of the tools provided by the state will work.
“I can’t force anybody to do anything they don’t want to, especially on private lands,” he said.
In talks with others in the community, Anderson has heard similar attitudes. He respects his fellow ranchers and their choices but adds it is unfair to claim something isn’t going to work before giving it a try.
“So put it up, and if it works, that’s great. If it doesn’t work, then we’re going to have to work on how to make it better, how to make it work in everybody’s situation,” Anderson said. “That upsets me as much as anything — is producers that aren’t willing to step forward and take the help that we’re given.”
There is still a long way to go before, if ever, ranchers in northern Colorado will feel at ease with the wolves. And how the reintroduction started, plus some recent movements in Denver, have not eased their fears and frustrations.
Anderson mentioned Colorado House Bill 24-1375 “Wild Carnivores & Livestock Nonlethal Coexistence,” which died in the legislature this past session, but pushed to require ranchers to use nonlethal strategies and dispose of any carcasses on their property if they wanted to receive compensation for a wolf kill.
Anderson said it is unreasonable to force ranchers into that decision, as many are calculating the best path forward for their specific ranch and coming to grips with a challenging new reality.
“We didn’t ask for it,” he said. “We didn’t vote yes.”
That vote happened in the fall of 2020. Of the 64 counties in Colorado, the majority in 13 voted in support of Proposition 114, a measure that required CPW to create a plan to reintroduce and manage gray wolves, which did not yet have an established population in the state. Most of those counties that voted in favor were around the Front Range, in addition to Summit, Pitkin, San Miguel, La Plata and San Juan counties.
Ultimately, the measure passed with 50.91% — 1,590,299 votes — of the public voting in favor of the proposition. Opposing voters made up 49.09%, or 1,533,313 votes.
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