IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ajagec/v96y2014i3p631-656..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Crying Wolf? A Spatial Analysis of Wolf Location and Depredations on Calf Weight

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph P. Ramler
  • Mark Hebblewhite
  • Derek Kellenberg
  • Carolyn Sime

Abstract

Combining a novel panel dataset of 18 Montana ranches with spatial data on known wolf pack locations and satellite-generated climatological data from 1995-2010, we estimate the spatial impact of changing wolf pack locations and confirmed wolf depredations on the weight of beef calves. We find no evidence that wolf packs with home ranges that overlap ranches have any detrimental effects on calf weights. Other non-wolf factors, notably climate and individual ranch-specific husbandry practices, explained the majority of the variation in the weight of calves. However, ranches that experienced a confirmed cattle depredation by wolves had a negative and statistically significant impact of approximately 22 pounds on the average calf weight across their herd, possibly due to inefficient foraging behavior or stress to mother cows. For ranches experiencing confirmed depredation, the costs of these indirect weight losses are shown to potentially be greater than the costs of direct depredation losses that have, in the past, been the only form of compensation for ranchers who have suffered wolf depredations. These results demonstrate a potentially important and understudied aspect of economic conflict arising from the protection and funding of endangered species recovery programs.

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph P. Ramler & Mark Hebblewhite & Derek Kellenberg & Carolyn Sime, 2014. "Crying Wolf? A Spatial Analysis of Wolf Location and Depredations on Calf Weight," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 96(3), pages 631-656.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:96:y:2014:i:3:p:631-656.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ajae/aat100
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sims, Charles & Aadland, David & Finnoff, David & Hochard, Jacob, 2020. "What are the benefits of delisting endangered species and who receives them?: Lessons from the gray wolf recovery in Greater Yellowstone," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    2. Häggmark-Svensson, Tobias & Elofsson, Katarina & Engelmann, Marc & Gren, Ing-Marie, 2015. "A review of the literature on benefits, costs, and policies for wildlife management," Working Paper Series 2015:1, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department Economics.
    3. Widman, Marit & Elofsson, Katarina, 2018. "Costs of Livestock Depredation by Large Carnivores in Sweden 2001 to 2013," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 188-198.
    4. Mensah, Justice Tei & Persson, Jens & Kjellander, Petter & Elofsson, Katarina, 2019. "Effects of carnivore presence on hunting lease pricing in South Sweden," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 1-1.
    5. Steffen Mink & Daria Loginova & Stefan Mann, 2024. "Wolves' contribution to structural change in grazing systems among swiss alpine summer farms: The evidence from causal random forest," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(1), pages 201-217, February.
    6. Malone, Trey & Melstrom, Richard T., 2020. "Where’s the beef? Cattle producers’ response to endangered species listings," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:96:y:2014:i:3:p:631-656.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.