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Hailey-based Lava Lake Land & Livestock’s 730,000 acres of public land allotments include rights to graze on the Salmon-Challis National Forest’s North Fork Big Lost grazing allotment, above. The allotment is located near the headwaters of the North Fork of the Big Lost River, which is prime wolf habitat.
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It's about as thickly populated by wolves as anywhere in the region, but environmentally conscious sheep producer Lava Lake Land & Livestock is developing a track record of minimal conflicts in and around the rugged Boulder Mountains of Central Idaho.
The methods are varied, but the gist remains. The huge Hailey-based sheep producer has not lost sheep to wolves since 2005 when 25 sheep and a guard dog were killed in two consecutive nights. The sheep were killed northwest of Ketchum on the North Fork of the Big Lost River in the eastern Boulder Mountains.
Lava Lake President Mike Stevens said the developing track record is, in part, due to preventative measures the company is taking to minimize the number of dead sheep and, therefore, dead wolves.
"It's an issue of how can we coexist," he said.
Spurred to respond
The summer of 2002 marked the first time Lava Lake experienced sheep depredation by wolves. At the time, ranch managers believed they were on the far southern perimeter of wolf country.
"In our minds the wolves were somewhere else," Stevens said.
But a three-night period changed that. Lava Lake lost 16 ewes and lambs in the Muldoon Creek area north of Carey.
"We really had no idea what to do," said Stevens, a former biologist with The Nature Conservancy of Idaho.
The huge ranching operation was created out of several sheep outfits bought in 2000 by San Francisco couple Brian and Kathleen Bean. The ranch's holdings include the 24,000-acre Lava Lake Ranch and grazing privileges on 730,000 acres of public land allotments that range among the Boulder and Pioneer mountains as well as on the Snake River Plain.
The summer of 2005 in the North Fork of the Big Lost was the last time the ranching operation lost sheep to wolves.
"That was obviously extremely upsetting," Stevens said of the 25 lost sheep and guard dog.
Working with U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services agent Rick Williamson since 2002, Lava Lake ranchers and biologists instituted a number of preventative measures in an attempt to avert additional depredations and avoid lethal control measures for the wolves.
Among the measures is arming sheepherders with radio telemetry equipment they use to monitor the movements of nearby wolves. In many cases, including this year, herders have detected wolves within less than a quarter mile of the sheep, Stevens said.
Under Williamson's tutelage, Lava Lake also brought on additional guard dogs—for the North Fork band they use five great Pyrenees—and began arming herders with single-barrel shotguns loaded with non-lethal "cracker shells" and rubber bullets. The purpose with cracker shells is to either scare off wolves with a loud overhead shot, or with rubber bullets to scare them off with a painful but not deadly direct shot.
The best way to use this method is to wait to shoot until a wolf sees the sheep, Stevens said. Under such a scenario, a wolf will hopefully turn and run away with a newly conditioned association of sheep and pain.
"They learn that they just don't want to be in the vicinity of a sheep band," Stevens said.
Another preventative measure Lava Lake uses is an electrified night pen, which is a square-shaped, half-acre enclosure composed of 3-foot-tall fiberglass poles and a single strand of electrified metal wire. Hanging from solar-powered electrical wires are 1.5-foot-long red ribbons called turbo-fladry.
The modern night pens borrow from a centuries-old practice herders in Mongolia and Tibet used with success, Stevens said. Because the vast majority of sheep depredations happen after nightfall, Lava Lake sheepherders Hector Vilcapoma and Melendez Orihuela herd their band of some 1,000 ewes into the enclosure at dusk.
Asked Tuesday if the Sawtooth National Forest has considered requiring grazers to institute similar preventative measures to keep wolves away from livestock, Ketchum District Ranger Kurt Nelson said no. Such a policy decision would have to come from a much higher level in the U.S. Forest Service than the district level, he said.
Still, Nelson said local forest officials do encourage livestock producers grazing Sawtooth National Forest allotments to consider "the impact of their operation on carnivore species." They also ask grazers to institute sound grazing practices like the removal and burial of sheep carcasses, he said.
Since their last incident in 2005, Lava Lake has successfully grazed sheep in the North Fork country while knowing full well that wolves were actively using the same area, Stevens said. Of all of the ranch's federal grazing allotments, the North Fork is the most actively used wolf country.
On the ground
Several hours after daybreak last Friday, July 27, Stevens discussed his company's approach to grazing in wolf country while standing within sight of smoke-shrouded Kent and Ryan peaks near the headwaters of the North Fork of the Big Lost River. The isolated mountain valley falls within the Salmon-Challis National Forest's North Fork Big Lost grazing allotment.
It's also prime wolf habitat.
Standing with Stevens were Vilcapoma and Orihuela. Vilcapoma has been herding sheep in the North Fork Big Lost area for 13 years and is in charge of keeping watch over Lava Lake's North Fork band. Orihuela was recently assigned to the North Fork band to provide an extra eye for the remainder of the 2007 grazing season.
Friday morning, Vilcapoma picked up signals from several radio-collared wolves using a handheld radio telemetry receiver provided to Lava Lake by Defenders of Wildlife, a national nonprofit dedicated to preventing conflicts between wolves and people by supporting the use of preventative measures. Frequencies emitted by different radio collars not only indicate a wolf's position, but also its direction of travel.
Private parties like Lava Lake that wish to use radio telemetry to monitor wolves in Idaho's forests and rangeland must first acquire the correct frequencies for individual wolves from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.
One of the signals Vilcapoma detected Friday came from the radio collar of a wolf belonging to the Phantom Hill wolf pack, which denned last spring north of Ketchum in the Big Wood River drainage. The detection was somewhat surprising, Stevens said, because the pack's home range is considered to be farther west. A possible explanation for the errant signal was that radio telemetry signals can bounce off terrain features such as high peaks, Stevens said.
The ultimate in prevention
Among the various preventative measures Lava Lake has used is a last resort decision to simply remove sheep from a grazing allotment if a case warrants.
Earlier this year, the company did just that after Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologists confirmed the presence of the Phantom Hill wolf pack, the Wood River Valley's first documented denning pair since the 1995 reintroduction. Rather than worry about the presence of the pack and its three pups within the North Fork Boulder grazing allotment, Lava Lake chose to forego grazing the area this season.
While the company has built into its business plan the flexibility to move sheep around, such decisions do have limits, Stevens admitted. He is keenly aware that his company's run of good luck could end in as little as one night, and it's not lost on Stevens that his operation is atypical.
The organization has vast grazing privileges on a variety of public land allotments, and that gives it management flexibility. Moreover, the fundamental business model for the operation is to "provide both efficiencies in running a large livestock operation and the opportunity to have a significant impact on conservation," says the company's Web site.
"Our vision is of a working landscape that is rich with healthy wildlife populations and functioning ecosystems, preserving the wild nature of the land while using it carefully."
From the company's perspective, agreeing to live with wolves is the least it can do in exchange for being granted the right to graze public lands.
"Ultimately, it's a business strategy," Stevens said. "We know that is important to our customers."
Moreover, Stevens said his company is not attempting to convert other grazers to the methods Lava Lake uses, only that "it's what we think works for us."
A call placed to USDA Wildlife Services agent Rick Williamson was not returned in time for his comments to be included in this story.
A great pyrenees guard dog keeps a watchful eye over a large band of ewes Lava Lake and Livestock is grazing near the North Fork of the Big Lost River northeast of Ketchum in the Boulder Mountains. The Hailey-based livestock company is using a total of five guard dogs in addition to a number of other preventative measures to keep its sheep from falling prey to wolves. Photo by Jason Kauffman
