PAUL N. QUEANEAU
FWP AT WORK
PROBLEM SOLVER
LIZ BRADLEY
âA BIG PART OF OUR JOB is to reduce conflicts between wolves and people living on the landscape with wolves. What Iâm doing here is putting up fladry [fence flagging] around a 20-acre calving area near Alberton where wolves had killed a calf a few days earlier and another was missing. [The U.S. Department of Agricultureâs] Wildlife Services investigated but was unable to set traps due to freeze-thaw conditions, so the rancher was open to using fladry, which works best on relatively smaller pasture like this or on hobby
ranches. Thereâs something about the fluttering of the flags that scares wolves off, so we string fladry up around the pastures and then the rancher checks each day to make sure it hasnât fallen down. Because there was no fresh snow, we couldnât tell if wolves later came up to the fladry and were scared offâas happened on a similar project I was working on at the time north of Missoulaâor if they just never returned. But there were no further problems with these cattle.â
MONTANA OUTDOORS
5
