Of Wolves and Social Media… and Real Life

Social media is an interesting phenomenon, when it comes to friendships. I have “friends” on Facebook who I’ve never met. I have followers - and I follow folks - on Twitter and Instagram, who are strangers in real life. I share some (many?) things in common - an interest in sheep (obviously), a focus on science, an affinity for the Sierra Nevada. But sometimes, I find, social media allows us (myself included) to post things without thinking about how my “friends” feel about the issue. For me, as a sheep rancher and as a cooperative extension researcher and educator, predators are a particularly complicated subject. And no predator is more complicated, at least in the Sierra, than gray wolves.

Officially, there are three established packs of wolves in California - in Siskiyou, Lassen, and now Plumas Counties. Other wolves have traveled through the northern two-thirds of the state (most notably, a collared wolf from Oregon that came down the east side of the Sierra, traveled though Tuolumne County, and ended up in San Luis Obispo County before his collar quit transmitting). More recently, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed a new pack in the north end of the Sierra Valley - one of my favorite places in the northern Sierra, and home to the ranches of a number of friends and acquaintances.

I learned of this new pack last month, when friends and colleagues reported the loss of a yearling heifer, and harassment of a group of yearlings (who ran through fences several times). Today, another friend posted how excited he was to learn of this new pack.

As a scientist and lifelong Sierra resident, I’d be thrilled to see wolves. Indeed, I’ve been conducting a research project to evaluate the effectiveness of livestock guardians dogs in newly re-established wolf territory. But as a sheep rancher and colleague of those who lost animals to this new pack, I’m upset about this new pack’s predilection for beef. My concern, like my colleagues, is much more than economic impact - any loss of an animal in my care feels like failure on a personal level.

Social media has lots of upside - it connects us with people we wouldn’t know otherwise; it exposes us to points of view different than our own. But I find that I am uncomfortable commenting on posts like I saw this afternoon, celebrating something that I have mixed feelings about. I don’t want to offend my virtual friends, and yet I also don’t want to diminish the pain that my colleagues have experienced at the loss of their livestock.

We live in interesting times….