In the United States, Wildlife Services kills hundreds of thousands of wild animals every year. Many are killed in the name of livestock protection. Wolves were nearly wiped out in the 1900s as livestock took over the country.

But the wolves ranchers fear are mostly an illusion. Many proclaimed wolf kills are not the doing of wolves at all. As more and more stories come out about ranchers and Wildlife Services misidentifying wolf kills, the excuses to kill wolves evolved.

For example, it’s possible to kill a wolf if its believe they caused livestock to die due to myopathy, or muscle weakness. Government officials, who used to rely on tracks and bite marks to identify wolf kills, can now simply say livestock died due to exertion after by being frightened.

The sad thing is ranchers don’t have to kill wolves to protect livestock. Ranchers can change how they graze livestock, build better enclosures, and utilize guard dogs to significantly reduce depredation. Even hanging a rope with fabric on fence lines, called fladry, has been shown to help.

Ranchers have contended non-lethal practices only work in small areas but studies show they also work in large, open ranges. In an effort to study ranchers’ claims, scientists put non-lethal methods in larger areas to the test in Idaho.

They found sheep depredation was 3.5 times higher in areas where lethal wolf control was used. That’s right, killing wolves was associated with a high rate of sheep depredation. The losses in areas where wolves were not killed also correlated to the lowest rates in all of sheep-grazing areas in Idaho.

The Idaho wolf study is backed up by another study looking at the effectiveness of non-lethal versus lethal methods of predator control. The study tested 12 different methods (five non-lethal and seven lethal) and found non-lethal deterrents were the most successful.

Four of the five non-lethal deterrents reduced depredation while only one showed no impact. Of the seven lethal deterrents, two proved effective, three demonstrated no impact, and two actually increased the number of livestock killed.

The fight between ranchers and predators isn’t confined to North America. Even Costa Rican ranchers must contend with pumas and jaguars preying on their livestock.

However, the ranchers there also allow their bias to win out over facts. Jaguars, being the bigger of the two cat species, are disproportionally blamed for livestock kills despite ranchers’ inability to accurately identify tracks or other evidence.

Perceptions of their local predators are just that, perceptions. Unfortunately, perceptions are often based on incorrect evidence. Not only did Costa Rican ranchers misidentify predators, but they also overestimated economic losses.