A collaborative effort between Montana ranchers and a number of partners to remove livestock carcasses to reduce conflicts with area predators is the subject of a new documentary video produced by the Blackfoot Challenge. "Living with Carnivores: Boneyards, Bears and Wolves" describes the livestock carcass collection program started in the Blackfoot Valley that is creating new opportunities for collaborative conservation on working landscapes.

The Blackfoot Challenge's carcass collection program aims at reducing the number of ranch "boneyards" where livestock that die on the ranch are buried. These boneyards attract large carnivores including bears and wolves to scavenge for food, increasing the potential for predation on ranches as well as the potential for more conflicts with humans. Research in Alberta, Canada found that when wolves are scavenging and not hunting, 85 percent of the time they use boneyards.

"If you have any kind of carcass on the landscape it is an attractant and if you pull that wolf into close proximity with live cattle that increases your encounter rate with the wolves and the cattle. So that inevitably is going to increase your risk," said Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Liz Bradley. "The thing about wolves is that once they learn something it's very difficult to unlearn, and so preventing that behavior from starting in the first place is really key."

The carcass collection program started by the Blackfoot Challenge in 2003 collects dead livestock from ranches and brings them to a Montana Department of Transportation facility that has pioneered composting of roadkilled wildlife. The Blackfoot Challenge and FWP has supported the compost facility by installing electric bear fence and water infrastructure that is necessary for composting in the summer as well as the wood chips where the carcasses are composted. The compost that is created is used on roadside revegetation projects in the area.

The program has depended on collaborative partnership with the local ranchers and the development of trust on the value of the program. Since the program began, the number of producers participating has increased to nearly 120 covering 1.2 million acres in four counties. Annually about 600 carcasses are removed and composted.

"One of the things we're very lucky with in western Montana and here in the Blackfoot Valley is that we've got some unbelievable stewards of the land in these private landowners. That's why we have the bears, that's why we have wolves on the landscape, that's why we have all these critters here ? it's because of their amazing stewardship," noted Greg Neudecker, Montana Partners for Fish and Wildlife State Coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "It's our job now to help them deal with these complex issues and that's what we're trying to do and so far we believe it's been very successful. The only way ? to be successful, though, is if these programs are homegrown, community based, ground up. They can't be from a top-down perspective."

The success of the Blackfoot Challenges carcass collection program is spreading across the northern Rockies. Similar programs are starting in other parts of Montana and in Washington state, and in 2008 ranchers in southwest Alberta traveled to the Blackfoot Valley to learn about the program and have created a similar program that is now expanding to other parts of the province.

"When we put all of our programs together ? the livestock carcass removal, the fencing, the range riders ? there's some good news. We've seen decreased conflicts with bears and with wolves. That's good for wildlife and that's good for people in the valley," commented Seth Wilson, Wildlife Committee Coordinator for the Blackfoot Challenge. "Removing carcasses off of ranches in the West, that's one piece to a larger puzzle of living alongside large carnivores. What's really fundamental in my mind is that people are talking with each other not at each other and that's good for the West, that's good for our country." (jas)