Wildlife Conservation Costs

With the noticeable increase in road traffic due to deer hunters…

I have been pondering how unfair they must think we are to severely restrict hunting and how unhappy that might make them. Perhaps even angry. After all, the deer belong to the Game Fish and Parks and the hunters have paid good money for a license.

Ours is one of the few places they can drive through and be almost guaranteed of seeing deer, often very nice buck. The temptation to harvest one from the road mu…st be great. After all, the deer are free. But how free are they really? If we disregard the ranch payments in excess of $5K per month and the additional $50K we have spent for habitat improvement, the deer are still not free. Every five deer will consume approximately as much forage as a cow. Yes, the cows will actually browse the same shrubs and trees that the deer like, and they will also eat the alfalfa and field bindweed that deer find especially attractive. Roughly every five deer represent one cow in forage consumption.

We could run goats and/or sheep and hope eventually to do so, in which case the forage consumption is much closer to one for one. A herd of 40 deer (and we have more than that) would represent the approximate equivalent of eight cows in consumption, and the eight calves from those cows that we can’t run due to the wildlife would bring in at least $8K per year that we don’t get. In no way is that a complaint, because I love watching the wildlife and consider that one of the intrinsic rewards. But the deer are not free.

The financial numbers look quite different from a rancher’s perspective.

***Gary A. Howie MSc, PhD*** is a business owner/rancher and a Life & Liberty News contributor