Wolves prey on cattle while ranchers huff and puff

MOTLEY, Minn. (AP)--One day after selling his cattle, hay and farm machinery, Mike Kasten Sr. visited with his good friend, John Eischeid, in the office of Tri-County Livestock Auction Inc. Still sporting his cowboy hat and boots, Kasten pulled up a chair and explained why he decided to sell.

Last June, he said he was getting his two grandsons off to summer school classes when he noticed trouble in a pasture close to his house.

"The cows were up close, calving," he recalled, "and there were three timber wolves, two of them working the cow. One calf took off running toward the brush, and I ran to get my .243.

"When I got back, they were by another cow that had just calved that morning, and they were trying to get her."

Kasten said the adult female wolf ran off, but he managed to shoot two young males. He notified the local authorities, who in turn summoned a DNR official and trapper from the USDA office in Grand Rapids.

By midwinter, Kasten said he had lost several more calves to wolves, but he had no carcasses to prove his damages. He said it is common knowledge that wolves can tear carcasses to pieces, dragging them away to their den.

In addition, some of Kasten's adult cows suffered injuries he attributes to wolf attacks.

"One cow had her hip socket completely out, and two more had shoulder injuries. When we butchered one, they found out all of her ribs were cracked, probably from hitting a post because they stampeded," he said.

He also thinks a wolf-related stampede caused the trampling deaths of twin calves.

Livestock depredation by wild animals is not uncommon in the Upper Midwest, but Kasten said the nature of his operation made the losses more painful. His crossbred herd was relatively small, with 160 stock cows or less at any given time.

Raised on a Montana ranch, Kasten moved in 1985 to the Motley area. Carefully building his ranch from the ground up, some of his best-laid plans later created unexpected challenges.

"I made a lot of mistakes when I did my ranching because I was a conservationist," he said. "I used small acres so I could rotate graze, and when you've got wolves, that's against you."

Kasten also focused on fall-calving cows, for better timing in the calf market and the ability to graze calves on grass for a longer period of time.

"But I didn't realize that when they calved, it was going to be during wolf season.

"I also culled out any cows that had a bad disposition, that would go on a fight," he said.

But Kasten said once the wolves moved in, his herd became difficult to manage.

"You just couldn't work them after the wolves got into those cows. They just got goofy."

Both men say cattle stampedes not only make ranching more difficult, but also create a public safety threat. Some of Kasten's pastureland is just a couple hundred yards from U.S. Highway 10, a four-lane expressway of sorts between the Minneapolis metropolitan area and the hunting and fishing mecca of northern Minnesota.

Kasten said one wolf kill happened about 250 yards away from the highway, and the cattle broke through several fences trying to escape the predators.

"If those cattle would have run east, they would've all headed for the highway. If 140 head of cattle get out on that highway when the boys are headed up here from the cities, I would have lost everything because of the liability."

Ironically, just two days after Kasten's farm sale, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made an announcement that may make it easier for ranchers to deal with wolf depredation.

The U.S. Department of Interior agency announced Jan. 29 that the western Great Lakes population of gray wolves, often called timber wolves, would be removed from the federal list of threatened and endangered species. The agency says it is recognizing the success of gray wolf recovery efforts under the Endangered Species Act.

Bill Paul, who works at USDA's Wildlife Services office in Grand Rapids, says it's expected to take some time for the delisting to go into effect. When it does, he said, affected states will use their own management plans to address wolf depredation issues.

"Under Minnesota's plan, if a wolf was in the act of attacking a producer's livestock, they could legally shoot the wolf," Paul said. "But it would have to be in the act, it couldn't just be passing through the area."

Paul was one of the government officials summoned when Kasten shot two wolves in his cattle pasture last June. Legally, he said, ranchers cannot shoot wolves even if they're attacking livestock.

"The only provision is if they are posing immediate threat to their personal safety," he said.

Paul quickly pointed out that last June's wolf attack on Kasten's ranch occurred just a few hundred yards from his home. He acknowledges that missing livestock is a big factor in wolf depredation, since ranchers don't get compensated unless there is evidence that an attack took place.

Along with the two wolves Kasten shot, Paul captured two more in nearby traps, and those animals were destroyed.

"By federal regulation, when wolves are verified to kill livestock, we can kill them," he said. "We continue trapping in that area until the wolf signs diminish, and then we move on to the next place."

The process starts from scratch with each new livestock season.

"We can't do preventative work," Paul said. "We can't just stay at one farm forever and ever simply keeping them wolf-free."

Kasten said it wasn't only livestock losses that prompted him to call it quits but also the added cost of trying to protect his animals from wolves. By using his grasslands for feed, he estimates it cost less than $20 a day to feed his cows and their calves.

"But I had to bring them all in and feed them because of the wolves," he explained.

Based on the price his hay brought at auction, Kasten figures it was costing him nearly four times as much to feed his confined cattle.

"It ain't the wolves' fault; I don't blame the wolves," Kasten said. "The government likes to show serene pictures of wolves running through a meadow, and if they want to do that, fine. But take my one cow, running up and down along the fence, looking for her baby.

"If you want to put it in the same terms, look at 9/11, people running in panic, wondering what the heck has happened. Then, look at all my cattle stampeding and cows getting hurt. I mean grown cows getting rolled over. Put those pictures side by side."

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Date: 2/19/07

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