Fladry. It almost seems too simple to be true. Tying strips of red plastic to a rancher's perimeter fence to flutter in the wind and scare wolves away from livestock. Yeah, right. Well, so far it seems to be working, at least on a temporary basis.
Pictured are large carnivore biologists with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department putting up a fence with fladry to keep wolves from a landowner's cattle while they're calving. The fladry has been in use for the past several weeks at a rancher's calving pasture and there have been no further incidents with wolves to date, where there typically has been in the past. While no methods are 100 percent effective, the Game & Fish will continue to work with willing landowners to implement this relatively inexpensive and nonlethal strategy for deterring wolf depredation on their cows and newborn calves. As simple as it may be, it seems to have helped at least one rancher through the calving season with no losses to wolves.