The Rising Toll of Predators on Ontario Agriculture
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
A recent study puts the cost at $41 million, and this may be significantly understated. Meanwhile, farmers are concerned that provincial compensation will not go far enough.
by DON STONEMAN
Murray Gingrich put his newly purchased sheep flock onto a pasture north of Durham in Grey County in September. In the weeks to follow, he learned more than he cared to about predators.
It's not as if Gingrich, who started farming north of Durham last year, went into the business with his eyes closed. Before he put nearly 600 mature ewes and spring born ewe lambs out, he fenced a 15-acre field with eight strands of high tensile wire, five of them electrified, including two strands at the bottom.
The first kills took place six days after sheep were put into a field, when coyotes took 10 of them. As Gingrich relates, they took two, three and four nearly every night following. So he upped the power on the electric fence.
Gingrich says he weighs 225 pounds and the voltage on the fence is powerful enough to knock him off his feet. Yet it's not enough. Coyotes "just run through," he says.
Gingrich's experience is all too common across livestock-raising areas of Ontario. The province's statistics show that the incidence of livestock kills is rising. (See Figure 1, page 19)
Farmers losing livestock to wildlife predation are entitled to compensation under the Livestock, Poultry and Honey Bee Protection Act. The local municipality employs a valuator to confirm the claim, pays the farmer, and the province reimburses the municipality.
Compensation is a huge issue the province must address, says Richard Horn, policy advisor for the Ontario Cattlemen's Association. He says compensation levels haven't been updated in many years and aren't adequate. The maximum payable must be raised on fully grown animals.
As it is, municipalities are not obligated to pay more than $200 per sheep, goat or pig, $1,000 per head of cattle, $500 per horse or more than $1,000 per year for poultry of one owner. Compensation is marked at a maximum of $35 for bees and $75 for hive equipment.
Last July, as one of the steps involving consultation with the industry, the province issued a discussion paper entitled Managing Agriculture-Wildlife Conflicts. Horn says the province is looking for feedback from all parts of the industry. He expects the real consultation to begin when the Ontario agriculture ministry establishes a steering-working group in January.
Bruce Webster, a Little Britain cash cropper and beef producer, chairs the predator task team of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA). He says livestock predation is costly in his area, but worse to the east. Moreover, livestock kills are only the tip of the iceberg when the total cost of wildlife to all of Ontario agriculture is taken into account. The OFA director says damage to crops is even worse. Anecdotally, he says some neighbours lose four to five acres of corn a year to bears. With yields of four to five tonnes per acre this year priced at $175 a tonne, the damage "soon starts to add up."
In 2009, the George Morris Centre in Guelph updated a 1999 study of the impact of wildlife on Ontario agriculture for the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association and pegged current losses at a "conservative $41 million, a 20 per cent increase over 1999 because of improved prices. "The true value of livestock damage is apt to be significantly higher," says a press release from the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association.
Doubling of compensation
The 1999 estimate of damage was based upon surveys of farmers. The George Morris update put a new amount on the value of the damage, with farmers saying there is more wildlife now than 10 years ago and thus more damage.
The Centre says that federal and provincial government statistics point to hunters taking twice as many Canada Geese in 2002 as in 1992, and 10 times as many deer in 2000 as in 1980. But there are no estimates of the number of coyotes and raccoons in the province.
This problem has grown so much, Webster says. He notes that compensation to livestock producers in his municipality has more than doubled in the last five years, and we aren't in the hardest hit area.
He adds that we never used to have bears in this part of the country and we do now. This happened since the province cancelled the spring bear hunt in 1999.
The Soil and Crop study says the number of animals claimed under the Livestock, Poultry, and Honey Bee Protection Act has increased by 92 per cent for cattle and by 55 per cent for sheep between 1998/99 and 2007/08.
In the last fiscal year, the Ontario agriculture ministry spent $1.4 million on wolf and coyote kills. A relatively small amount went for bear kills on livestock.
Peter Jeffrey, an OFA senior researcher, says that the Soil and Crop study is the only study I know of that looks at Ontario in the big picture and tries to put a number to the losses that farmers are incurring. The federation has sought compensation for crop farmers as a policy for five or six years.
We won't be giving up on compensation for crops, Jeffery says, even though the July discussion paper doesn't specifically mention it. The government might concentrate on wolf, coyote and bear kills for now, though agriculture minister Carol Mitchell did make allusions to wildlife in general when she spoke to the OFA convention in November.
Jeffery says the province wants to put a new program in place for April 1, the beginning of a new fiscal year, and is talking about reimbursing producers for predator damage to livestock at 80 per cent of market value. None of the four Western provinces pay 100 per cent of the value. Two provinces currently pay at 80 per cent and two pay at 85 per cent. Manitoba recently announced that, for fiscal 2011-2012, it will reimburse farmers for 90 per cent of the value of livestock losses and 100 per cent for the following year. Both Manitoba and British Columbia have a crop loss program as well.
Jeffery notes that, in all four Western provinces, the cost is shared with the federal government, with the feds ponying up 60 per cent of the program and the province paying 40 per cent. Ontario is looking towards that as well. The 60-40 split is the traditional formula under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Growing Forward program that supports agriculture, he says, adding that the 20 per cent of the value of livestock not being reimbursed might be construed as a producer premium for the program.
The province's July discussion paper, Managing Agriculture-Wildlife Conflicts, caused a stir in the countryside. It proposed that livestock producers in Ontario be reimbursed for only 80 per cent of the value of their livestock killed by predators.
'Worse than before'
Outspoken sheep and beef farmer Don Lewis of Holstein, who recently retired as mayor of Southgate Township in Grey County, wishes the OFA had never opened up the issue. The province is not going to be coming to the table with a cheque book, he says, predicting that the compensation issue will be worse than before.
It doesn't help that the province proposes that producers with two or more claims in five years be required to enroll in a best management practices workshop to be eligible for subsequent claims. A farmer doesn't lose 80 per cent of animal to a coyote, he loses 100 per cent, observes Webster.
Norwood sheep producer Eadie Steele describes reducing the compensation rate to 80 per cent of the value of the animal as criminal.
I can understand people are not completely happy with it, Jeffery says. He asserts that producers aren't happy with the current 30-year old schedule anyway. The current maximum limit on payouts doesn't come remotely close to reflecting any sort of market value.
Livestock producers can claim for damages under three wildlife compensation programs: One compensates for wolf and coyote damage to livestock. The other two cover bear damage to beehives and livestock respectively. The current coyote and wolf damage program and the bear damage to beehives are covered under the Livestock, Poultry and Honey Bee Protection Act. Bear compensation for livestock is under the authority of an Order in Council (that is, the provincial cabinet.)
Currently, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs is proposing that compensation be provided under a single Order in Council covering a large list of predators including wolves, coyotes, bears, fishers and birds of prey like ravens, hawks and eagles. Cougars aren't included as possible predators, even though the Ministry of Natural Resources now admits that cougars are in southern Ontario.
Under an Order in Council, livestock compensation is easier to tweak because you don't have to open up the Act, Jeffery says. It is slightly more vulnerable to dismantling . . . You are going to take flak in the Legislature one way or another. Under the Open for Business Act, the government has already undertaken to change the Livestock, Poultry and Honey Bee Protection Act. References to wildlife kills are removed. Only references to dog kills are left in.
Amendments to the Ministry of Agriculture Act, which lays out the powers and authorities of the ministry, allow specific authority to establish wildlife compensation programs.
The OFA has a list of issues with the current compensation programs. It considers that compensation maximums are unrealistically low. Trappers need more tools to deal with marauding predators. Also, reliance on market average value penalizes producers who have invested in highly productive livestock, Webster says. The province's proposal to cut off compensation to producers who have more than two claims in five years won't fly on the side roads, he adds.
Trappers need to be able to use non-lethal snares and poisoned livestock collars to trap and kill marauding predators, says Lansdowne sheep producer and licensed trapper Alan Whitlam. Both technologies are allowed in some U.S. jurisdictions. The non-lethal snare is a steel cable with a stop lock on it that prevents it from closing on an animal's neck. Farmers want to be able to put these on specific routes used by predators entering fields.
Non-lethal snares are legal in northern Ontario, and can be used in central Ontario seasonally. They are not allowed in western Ontario, where, the OFA points out, the heaviest densities of livestock are located.
Don McGugan, mayor of Brooke-Alvinston in eastern Lambton County, plans to hold a coyote summit in Alvinston in mid-January. Until 18 months ago, the township had very little experience with coyotes but that has changed.
The issue goes beyond livestock, McGugan says. Moms can't let their little kids get off the bus at 4 p.m. because of coyotes close to the house, he says.
Scary costs
Eadie Steele and her husband John raise lambs from 2,400 ewes near Norwood, east of Peterborough. We think we do all the right things with predation and we still have losses, Steele says. None of the recommended protection techniques, including the use of guard animals, are perfect, and some of them haven't worked for them at all.
In 2009, they opened their farm books and took part in a benchmarking study with the sheep marketing agency. It scared me when they tallied up what we spent on predator control, she told Better Farming. The Steeles spent $11,552 on permanent and temporary fences, buying, feeding and veterinary treatment for guard dogs. But that's nothing compared to 2010. By Dec. 1, predator costs had doubled to roughly $25,000. The figures don't include labour costs for repairing fences, patrolling for holes and removing tree limbs. And they certainly don't include losses.
In one attack last June after a heavy rain, when the voltage in fences tends to weaken, the Steeles lost 30 lambs. Steele says only one showed signs of being eaten. She believes a mother was teaching her pups how to make a kill.
Over a couple of weeks in the same month, the Steeles lost three of their guard dogs in coyote attacks. One of them, found still alive, couldn't be saved by the vet, who diagnosed a twisted stomach. The dog had been run to exhaustion chasing marauders. Steele thinks the coyotes have figured out how to take advantage of guard dogs' instinctive tendency to continue the chase regardless of the need for water or food.
Coyotes no longer hunt as single animals; they hunt in packs, she says. They are constantly testing electric fences waiting for them to break down. At the end of November, there were two juvenile coyotes inside the Steele's perimeter fence. Saying they should be hunted is easier than it sounds, Steele says. They are hard to see and nine times out of 10 we can't get a safe shot because neighbours would be at risk.
She has no sympathy for owners of dogs that might get caught in snares. That dog is trespassing and there are bylaws about dogs running at large, she says. When we started here, we were firmly in the live-and-let-live camp. I'm quite willing to live and let live. The coyotes aren't.
Favours non-lethal snares
The Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, another lobby group, favours the wider use of non-lethal snares by farmers and trappers with seasons that aren't terribly restrictive, says biologist Ed Reid. He says Anglers and Hunters recognizes that more tools are needed to deal with predators responsible for record-breaking livestock losses year after year.
Reid doesn't think the federation has a position on the use of so-called M-44s, collars placed on the necks of livestock that release a poison that kills a marauding predator. We are not opposed to investigation of their feasibility. Not all coyotes are livestock killers and the collars certainly target the ones that are, he says.
However, Eadie Steele doubts that the livestock collars will be approved here any time soon because the poison is regulated as a pesticide. She allows that farmers have contributed to the coyote growth in some ways by not disposing of dead stock properly. A carcass dragged back to the bush is a buffet for coyotes, she says. But I can't tell my neighbours to spend money every time a cow dies to protect my sheep, she says.
Predation is one of the things holding the industry back, she says.
The cost of coyotes in rural communities goes beyond livestock killing. Coyotes can bring rabies, sacroptic mange and ovine cysticercosis to the farm. Mange infects dogs of all kinds. Ovine C. larvae host in canines without affecting them and is passed in the feces. Farm dogs can be vaccinated. Coyotes, which get the disease from infected deer, can't.
In sheep, the worms migrate into muscle tissue and cause sheep measles, pustules that make the meat unsalable. The meat of infected animals is condemned at slaughter. If the parasites get into the flock, we might as well pack it in, she says. I'm not too sure what more we can do here legally.
Back in Grey County, Murray Gingrich has kept on working on ways to keep the coyotes from his sheep until he could complete a new 50 by 280-foot barn in which to house them. He played loud music and the kills stopped, for a while. Then he put up lights. That worked for three days and then they came back and got seven more again. Then I stayed out every night or had someone else stay out there for me.
Gingrich says he shot three coyotes that came into his spotlight and they stay away now. As of Dec 2, just before he put his sheep into his new barn, there had been no more kills. BF