The Office for Fiscal Regulatory Accountability (OFRA) has released a new estimate of the economic losses faced by family ranches when the endangered Grey Wolf is present on their property.
The OFRA analysis includes “death loss, preventive labor costs, and indirect production losses such as due to reduced weight, lower fertility, and poorer body condition in surviving cattle.” It assumes “15 cattle lost annually on a 400-cow ranch based on Williams (2015), and 2 on a 50-cow ranch.”
The report concludes that a family ranch that is 50-herd size loses $30k annually, while a ranch of 400-herd size loses $250k annually. The government is required to pay depredation costs for the slaughtered animals, but the bar for proving a wolf kill is so high that very few of the depredations are actually funded.
OFRA found that on average only $7.5k a year is paid to the ranches with 400 head, and a dismal $300 is paid to those ranches with 50 head. The wolf will eat the entire animal, including hide and bones, so often there is no evidence of the kill. As a result, the government doesn’t pay a reimbursement.
American Stewards of Liberty had requested the analysis to help expose how the Endangered Species Act simply does not work. The wolf costs demonstrate there is no accountability in the system to protect landowners.
“While the estimated cost of wolf depredations on America’s ranchers is shocking, this calculation cannot adequately capture the lost future value of the livestock. Nor is there any way to adequately measure the resources it takes to provide 24-hour protection for the herds,” commented Margaret Byfield, executive director of American Stewards.
“This is a property rights issue and a humane issue. American’s property should be protected, not slaughtered by a radical environmental agenda.”
