Thank you to CPW for developing and implementing Nonlethal Coexistence Strategies to prevent conflict between livestock and Wolves, and by extension other carnivores.

1. Carnivores are essential to healthy, functioning natural ecosystems.
   
   
2. Carnivores are a nature-based solution to humanities’ existential problems that threaten human culture including climate warming, disease moderation and declining biodiversity.
   
   
3. Nonlethal Coexistence methods prevent conflict between livestock and carnivores thus preventing lethal control and enabling thriving carnivore populations.
   
   
4. Nonlethal Coexistence methods prevent livestock loss and the use of lethal wolf control thereby enabling sustainable wolf populations as directed by statute 33-2-105.8.
   
   
5. The Wolf Management Plan should incentivize the use of nonlethal coexistence methods, instead the current Wolf Management Plan disincentivizes the nonlethal coexistence methods. Ranchers are eligible for compensation for any losses of livestock caused by gray wolves and conflict minimization techniques are not required to be eligible for compensation. Once a confirmed livestock depredation event occurs (injury or death), the rancher is compensated at 100 percent FMV up to $15,000. Additionally, if there is a confirmed livestock predation due to wolves and if there are “missing livestock”:
   
   1. Ranchers that DO use nonlethal coexistence methods are eligible for 7x the value loss of livestock lost to wolves.
   2. Ranchers who DO NOT use nonlethal coexistence methods are eligible for 5x the value loss of livestock lost to wolves.
      
      
6. The current Wolf Management Plan rules enable fraud and the misuse of taxpayer dollars. No proof of “production losses” are required, merely requiring correlation with wolf presence.
   1. Production losses to wolves have never been documented by evidence.
   2. Production losses (weight loss and declines in conception rates) have been documented as due primarily to factors such as climate, drought, disease, poisonous plants, and the cumulative impacts of numerous carnivores.
   3. In fact, ranchers who use nonlethal coexistence methods have documented increased weight gains.