By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project
The link below was sent in by a reader. It profiles a study out of University of California, Davis which purports to put a price on how much a single wolf in an area can cost a rancher. It’s right there at the top; the image heading this post is the title.
I’ll leave it to you to read through the details of the study, note its methods, and come to your own conclusions on the validity of the estimate. For my part, I’m somewhat skeptical of the number itself. I do not at all doubt that wolves put economic costs on ranchers. I do doubt the exact figure and am skeptical in general about estimates.**
Rather than looking in depth at the estimate and the method, however, I want to bring something to your attention. This is particularly important if you, like me, don’t ranch and don’t have a sense from working cattle.
Claims that the presence of wolves, their mere presence, can cause the cattle and ranchers harm can seem fanciful from the outside. They’re not.
Cortisol (a hormone that is reflective of stress in cattle and humans), is something that can be measured, and that’s exactly what the study authors did. Quoting:
“Hair cortisol levels were elevated in cattle that ranged in areas with wolves, indicating an increase in stress.”
There was other evidence of stress too, though not via direct blood measurements. Quoting again:
“But one evening reviewing trail camera data, [UC Davis, professor and Cooperative Extension specialist in livestock and rangeland economics Tina] Saitone noticed a herd of cows and calves walking fast and running by a camera for about 30 minutes, followed by two wolves in the middle of the night. ‘They’d been chasing those cattle and we just caught it on camera,’ Tate said. ‘That stress event just streamed by and, for me, was the first and most exciting finding of evidence wolves were negatively interacting with cattle.’”
Increasing stress on cattle has consequences. The job of beef cattle is to put on weight. To grow. For cattle (again, this also holds for humans–stress management is critical if you intend to grow muscle), an increase in cortisol means they’re not gaining weight at the rate they otherwise could. When cattle are running from predators, they are not gaining weight at the rate they otherwise could. Pregnant cows also suffer consequences. Stress a pregnant cow enough and her body decides that now is not the time to carry a baby.
This stress then directly translates into cost for the ranchers: it’s lower weight at the sale barn or it’s a lost calf. It’s not ranchers whining. It’s not imaginary. You have direct, repeatable, measurable evidence in the study below.
Colorado has a terrible history with our wolf reintroduction. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think there is enough money set aside to cover actual injury and killing by wolves, let alone the other kinds of losses that come about merely by having wolves near them.
I wish, though I’m not sure if it would have made a difference to the voters that chose it, that studies like this one had been around at the time that the wolf reintroduction was up on the ballot. Despite my skepticism at the numbers the authors put out there, it would have given voters and the folks writing the Blue Book estimates something else to consider.
Reintroduction, like almost every government program I’m aware of, has far exceeded the original cost projections and now we’re stuck with it. At a time when the state has way overspent, we can add this disaster to the pile.
This November, as you fill out your ballot, remember this as a lesson.
**All the more so when you read near the bottom: “A clarification was made on 5/27/25 to note that the findings of the research are preliminary and have not yet been published in a journal.”
https://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/news/tate-wolves
READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT THE COLORADO ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT
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