Beverage

LA GRANDE — The Oregon Department of Agriculture has notified Union County that it will receive a 2024 Wolf Depredation Grant of $101,832, one which the Union County Commission  voted to accepted on Wednesday.

The funding will be the most Union County has ever received from the state’s wolf depredation grant program, said county Administrative Officer Shelley Burgess.

Union County Commissioner Donna Beverage said she is happy for the funding, noting that it is needed because Union County has about one third of Oregon’s wolves.

“This is a problem I wish we did not have, but we do and we need to address it,” she said. “We received more money than we were expecting and I am thankful for that.”

A portion of the money will compensate Union County livestock producers for animals that were killed or injured by wolves and help ranchers get the funding they need for nonlethal means of protecting their livestock from the predator. The state agriculture department has been providing funding to Union County ranchers for these purposes for at least eight years.

This year, however, the state is also providing compensation for missing livestock believed to have been killed by wolves. The funding for missing livestock has been provided before by the agriculture department, but Union County has not received it until now.

Union County ranchers will receive $26,982 in compensation for livestock that are missing because there is evidence indicating that the animals were killed by wolves, Burgess said. 

Beverage said to qualify for compensation for livestock that went missing because of suspected wolf attacks, one must be raising their animals in an area with a high number of wolves and be able to show that their losses over the past year were higher than average. There also must have been at least one confirmed livestock death due to a wolf attack in the past year.

The grant will also provide $14,850 to five Union County livestock producers who had a total of 10 cows and calves killed or injured by wolves plus a dog that was injured by a wolf attack.

Nonlethal protection

A total of $60,000 of the grant will help livestock producers get the funding they need to use nonlethal strategies. Ranchers in the past have used this funding to hire extra range riders and purchase noise makers, additional fencing and lighting. The recipients of the $60,000 for nonlethal strategies will be determined later.