GoldenEagle_SheepGoatsandEagles_Armentrout_Dede_SanMarcosTX_22June1999_Reel2019.mp3

Dede Armentrout [00:00:00] Predator control was a, was a big issue. It was as an emotional issue, and it was really a clash of symbols.

Dede Armentrout [00:00:08] When I first got involved in Audubon, within, within, I think at least the very first year that I was involved as a staffer in Audubon, the Texas governor, Dolph Briscoe, petitioned the Department of Interior for blanket-kill permits that would allow anybody in 39 West Texas counties to kill golden eagles or bald eagles at any time for any reason, with absolutely no limits.

Dede Armentrout [00:00:34] And I probably hadn't been on the job six months when that one came down the road. And my immediate response was to get our mailing list from those 39 West Texas counties and write a letter to each, each member that we had, saying, when was the last time you saw a golden eagle? And what do you think would be the impact if anybody in your county could shoot one at any time for any reason? And if you don't like this petition, I'd suggest you write Matt Reed, who's head of Fish and Wildlife Service, in the Department of Interior, which is the entity that had to approve this blanket-kill permit. And we got that stopped.

Dede Armentrout [00:01:13] But the, there was a real misperception about eagles and their impacts on livestock losses. And it it was pointed out to me as as this dialog started, this battle between Save the Eagle and Kill the Eagle, that ranchers were very ill-informed about what was causing their mortality in sheep and goats.

Dede Armentrout [00:01:35] And as a scientist, I had looked at data and in fact, I had helped. Texas Tech had a contract co-sponsored by the Woolgrowers Association and the Fish and Wildlife Service and Audubon to go into eagle nests and pick out all the bones in an eagle nest and analyze all the bones and try to infer from that what the feeding habits were of golden eagles, especially in these high eagle attack report zones in Texas. And I helped sort bones and did a lot. I didn't do very much in that, just a little bit of help with a colleague, but assisted it enough to have taken an interest in it when I was a graduate student.

Dede Armentrout [00:02:13] And and found it fascinating that the eagles were taking very few sheep and goats, virtually no adults and very few lambs and kids. And most of those taken, when you could, when you could make any conclusion at all, you had to conclude that they were scavenged and you know, just pieces of of animals would show up in a nest and they would be old enough that it was obvious that a eagle wasn't capable of making a big kill.

Dede Armentrout [00:02:41] So our approach was, if you killed every eagle in west Texas, you wouldn't solve the ranchers' problem with mortality on their kids and goats because something else is killing their kids and goats. And we rocked back and forth a long time with the livestock industry, when a forward-thinking young ag extension agent named Dale Rollins, to prove Audubon wrong, initiated a program called Operation Dead Lamb. And this program, in this program, they brought ranchers in and showed them how to analyze a carcass to prove that eagles killed it. And then they invited ranchers to scour their pastures for lamb carcasses, analyze the carcasses, and turn in any that were eagle kills so they could begin to generate the database to prove that eagles were indeed significant predators on lambs.

Dede Armentrout [00:03:33] Well, what happened was they got 39 lambs in in a two-year study. That wasn't the thousands they expected, but they sent ranchers out to their pastures who really started looking at what was killing their lambs. And they started realizing it wasn't eagles. And the 39 that came in were necropsied professionally. And it turned out that 13 of those lambs were actually eagle kills.

Dede Armentrout [00:03:57] So they began, through their own efforts, to realize that eagles weren't killing a high proportion of their animals, that their mortality problems were from another source, and that that's where they ought to put their revenue, and their attention.

Dede Armentrout [00:04:10] So it helped a little bit for for us to have the controversy in the first place. But, but it was more of a help for the ranching industry to take a scientific approach and to learn on its own, without guidance from the Audubon Society, what was killing their animals and what might prevent it.

Dede Armentrout [00:04:31] That, that exercise really translated into a better working relationship with Audubon and the livestock industry. And our encouragement of that process and our sort of validation of their efforts, I think created some credibility with us that we weren't just position-based, that we were willing to reevaluate if their data had shown a different, a different outcome.

Dede Armentrout [00:05:01] We also, we also started a different kind of approach with respect to predator problems in acknowledging that ranchers had legitimate problems, that they were suffering losses, and that the most important thing needed to be to get at the basis, the basis of what those problems were. What was the real cause of their losses? And then what kinds of behaviors were more likely to alleviate those losses?

Dede Armentrout [00:05:29] And what we came up with and what the data showed us was that minor management adjustments, and in some cases major management adjustments, could often stop predation problems, even on true depredation problems. It wasn't necessary to do the sort of panmictic killing of predators to solve problems, even when the problems were caused by predators.

Dede Armentrout [00:05:51] That sometimes simple shifts like cleaning up carrion from a pasture so that you didn't attract predators into the pasture, timing the lambing and kidding to come a little later in the year after eagle migration had passed, eliminating poisonous plants in the pastures, watching first-year ewes and nannies with their kids because they tend to have the most problem and tend to abandon their kids at a higher rate.

Dede Armentrout [00:06:20] Just management adjustments could often stop animals from dying, and stopping the dying stopped attracting predators into the pasture: predators that might start out as scavengers, but after eating up all the dead prey, not prey, but the carrion, might then shift their appetite to live prey.

Dede Armentrout [00:06:42] So, so what we began to advocate was a stepwise approach to predator, or to perceived depredation problems due to predators.

Dede Armentrout [00:06:51] And step one was to make management adjustments and try that.

Dede Armentrout [00:06:54] Step two was to try non-lethal programs that discourage predators, things like electric fencing, changing pastures, penning animals at night, the kinds of practices that helped reduce the vulnerability of the prey base - using guard dogs, guard donkeys and a variety of other guard animals to discourage predators.

Dede Armentrout [00:07:18] And then third, to, to attempt to focus any lethal effects on a target offending animal rather than on a whole species, or a whole class of carnivores.

Dede Armentrout [00:07:31] And then finally, a lethal, a broad lethal approach only has a measure of last resort. And we really never signed off or approved of broad lethal approaches that weren't target-oriented. But we did sign off on target-oriented approaches such as the toxic collar. This is a little poisonous collar that fits around the neck of a sheep or goat, so that if a coyote attacks that animal at the neck, it poisons that coyote. It focuses in on a coyote that's not doing what it ought to do in its ecological niche. It's eating a sheep or a goat. It's not eating a rabbit or a rodent. And it eliminates that animal from the population, but it allows other coyotes that are behaving appropriately to continue to occupy territory and defend that territory against encroachment by other coyotes that might be killers.

Dede Armentrout [00:08:21] So I think our, our approach in recognizing that ranchers had a legitimate problem and trying to find some solutions and suggesting solutions also gathered some credibility for the organization. Maybe demystified us. We weren't so scary to them after that, although I can't say we won them all over.