Northeast Washington Wolf-Cattle Management Grant moves forward
Conservation Northwest / Mar 09, 2017 / Wolves
We’re supporting efforts by the Washington State Legislature, livestock interests, and wildlife advocates to create a grant program to fund locally-run organizations that develop and implement ways to reduce conflicts with wolves.
The project is called the Northeast Washington Wolf-Livestock Management Grant, proposed in House Bill 2126. It was recently approved by a unanimous vote in the State House and is now being considered in the Senate. The intent is that money will go to community-based projects that focus on non-lethal wolf-livestock conflict reduction methods in Okanogan, Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille Counties.
The goal is to support the development of community-run groups that provide equipment, range riders and technical information to interested producers to implement non-lethal wolf mitigation methods such as herd monitoring and other tools. This will provide increased capacity for local ownership of the progress in reducing conflicts for those raising livestock in wolf-occupied country. This model builds off lessons learned from our Range Rider Pilot Project and successful conflict-avoidance cooperatives in Montana and elsewhere.