“It is in everyone’s best interest to work towards solutions that will avoid or mitigate potential wolf-livestock conflicts”.This is a statement I heard while watching the news when the human was at work. “Potential wolf-livestock conflicts”. How does that work exactly? There is no “conflict” per se. The wolf is hungry. It’s not like he’s hanging around looking for a fight or plans to defend his territory. He just sees a steak or a lamb chop roaming around a mountain meadow and thinks to himself, “Dinner!”. It’s a cheap dinner. Cheaper than most. The “livestock” don’t give much of a fight in comparison to…say Brother Elk. But it’s not like the wolves are the Mafioso or something. They’re not coming to collect a debt.
And on the other side, do livestock really have a conflict with wolves? It’s not a mediation out there on the grassland. They aren’t going to sit down and talk about whether a leg would suffice in place of becoming the pack’s new breakfast buffet.
Don’t get me wrong. The wolf is my brother, from sometime way back when. But our needs conflict. Why don’t they just put a pack of me out there amongst the sheep and the cattle? I’m a herding maniac and a protector by nature. Those wolves wouldn’t stand a chance against a pack of German Shepherds. And we are well fed by our humans, so the sheep look like sheep and the cattle look like cattle, to us. If only humans realized that they could give up sitting at fancy tables talking about wolf-livestock conflicts that don’t really exist. If only, instead of reimbursing ranchers for livestock lost in this “wolf-livestock conflict”, the government funded a large herding dog pack like me and the rest of my kind. We could stand guard over these “innocents” and there would be a lot less payouts.
I’m going to mark this down as a potential career path and talk to my human about some job-training or trade school. I can see myself now in the trenches; protecting my sheep.
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