C ommentary
Balance needed to protect livestock, pets and people
By Taylor Hagata Growing up on my family’s cattle ranch in northeastern California, the words ranching and conservation didn’t often go hand in hand. But over the years, I’ve come to understand they’re one in the same. For four gener-
deer, antelope or elk tag before you die. I’m not calling for eradication. Ranchers understand balance—we live by it. But what’s happening now isn’t balance. It’s an unsustainable shift, one that’s endan- gering not just cattle and pets but people, livelihoods and rural identity. We need the agricultural communi- ty, our local sheriffs, hunting groups and outdoorsmen to join forces to help bring positive change to our rural areas. We need thoughtful, science-based wildlife management policies that reflect on-the- ground realities. We need support for working lands, and we need voices in the rooms where these decisions are made. We don’t want to look back in five or 10 years, see our rangelands consumed by massive wildfires and realize too late that wolves were the spotted owl of ranching, where regulations—like those protecting the owl—ultimately made it impossible to continue logging, resulting in misman- aged forests and wildfires that destroyed the habitat they were trying to protect for the owls. I encourage everyone to attend your local and state Fish and Wildlife meetings. Call your legislators. Speak up for the people who feed you and care for the land, those who are protecting open spaces every day. We need smart rules and regulations that don’t focus on one group of apex pred- ators, forgetting about all other wildlife. We need to protect property rights and public safety, regulations that let farmers and ranchers continue to do what they do best—creating safe, reliable food for the world while conserving open space for wildlife and future generations. Lassen County rancher Taylor Hagata serves on the board of the California Farm Bureau, representing Lassen, Modoc and Plumas-Sierra counties. He can be reached at media@cfbf.com.
ations, my fam- ily has lived and worked this land. We’ve raised cattle while stewarding wildlife, water and soil. My grandfa- ther may not have used the word con- servation, but he
Taylor Hagata
lived it. He knew, as all successful ranchers do, that the health of the land is tied to our own longevity and success. But today, that balance is being pushed to a breaking point. The pressures from ris- ing apex predator populations—mountain lions, black bears and now gray wolves— are colliding with collapsing deer, antelope and elk numbers. The result is a growing wave of livestock losses, increasing danger to rural residents, and an uncertain future for ranchers and outdoorsmen alike. I’ll never forget the day in the early 1990s when my grandfather and I saw a moun- tain lion running across our ranch road. He was nearly 70 and had spent his life out- doors, and yet he told me it was the first lion he’d ever seen. Fast forward to today, mountain lion encounters are common. I’ve lost two dogs in four years to lions on my own porch and have been losing calves at an increasing rate each year. It’s not just animals being lost. A wom- an in Northern California was killed by a bear. Two brothers searching for deer sheds were attacked—one fatally. Locally, we’ve seen lions on school playgrounds, golf courses and in parking lots. Something has changed.
U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services trapper George Alfonso examines a deceased calf that was confirmed to have been killed by wolves at a Sierra County ranch this spring.
For years, deer and antelope popula- tions in my area have been in decline— made worse each time rules and regula- tions are put in place that focus on one apex predator. In response, deer have begun living in towns where they’re safer from predators. The predators have fol- lowed them. At the same time, changes in policy, such as the 2013 ban on hunting bears with hounds, have made it harder to manage predator behavior. Bears now live in plac- es they were rarely seen before, including the high-desert mountains of northeastern California. This has created a dynamic in which lions must hunt more often because they are losing kills to bears—kills they normally would feed on for days. In 2011, the first gray wolf returned to California in nearly a century when OR-7 passed through our ranch. Now gray wolves are spreading across Northern California, killing livestock and worsening an already unstable predator-prey dynamic. I understand the emotional pull wolves
have after I saw a gray wolf for the first time in the wild on my ranch. They are large, in- credible animals. But in a landscape where deer herds are struggling, apex predators don’t just compete with one another—they will eat what is available. And unfortunate- ly, more times than not, that’s our cattle. Ranchers in California have few tools to protect their livestock. Predator de- terrents stop working after a short time. Compensation programs don’t replace lost genetics, years of work or the emotional toll. Most importantly, they don’t stop the next kill. These issues aren’t just about ranchers. An overall decline in public safety in rural areas affects anyone who lives in or loves rural California. Parents like my wife and I now think twice before letting our children play outside. Communities built on out- door living and the public that enjoys hunt- ing are watching their way of life change with decreases in hunting tag quotas year after year. This creates a hunting-points system in which you are lucky to draw one
VOL. 52, NO. 13
June 18, 2025
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(4) Kevin Merrill; (5) Kevin Robertson; (6) Roger Everett; (7) Lorna Roush; (8) April England; (9) Jay Mahil; (10) Jan Garrod; (11) Joe Martinez; (12) Steve Kafka; (13) Jake Wenger; (14) Joe Fischer; (15) Clark Becker; (16) Garrett Driver; (17) Johnnie White; (18) Daniel Suenram; (19) Taylor Hagata; (20) Martin Spannaus; (21) Ronald Vevoda; (Young Farmers & Ranchers Committee Chair) Daniel Jones. ADVISORY MEMBERS: Jenny Holtermann, Chair, CFB Rural Health Department; Glenda Humiston, University of California Cooperative Extension. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Send to agalert@cfbf. com or Ag Alert, Attn: Editor, 2600 River Plaza Drive, Sacramento, CA 95833. Include name, address, phone number, email address; 250-word limit.
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