Transcript Bruce Malcolm
2009
J Kubiak-Woodall
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TRANSCRIPTION BRUCE MALCOLM
Rancher and Ex-Montana Legislator
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BRUCE MALCOLM .I got appointed to Governor Racicot wolf advisory committee which is, we were
appointed to advise the Fish and Wildlife Parks or Wildlife agency. And, how do I write a wolf plan, for
the management of the wolves once they were delisted. And I was told there were 13 of us on that
committee, and that was a very interesting job because we had every you know people on that
committee from all walks of life, all different aspects, you know from die hard ranchers to defenders and
everybody in between. That was a very a really unique experience. We came together with one goal we
were going to write this plan. And ,we had some pretty good arguments and pretty good discussions. But
after, once we got to trusting each other it was very easy because as a people strange relationship
happened once we started trusting each other. Then it was a some kind a rancher point was being
argued, maybe some defenders or some other people would speak up and say this is not right for the
ranchers or the other way around. Some wolf issue, or something like this, I could speak up and say that
not the way this is going to work because it doesn’t work that way. And, so we worked through these
things that way, just back and forth. I think we had a really good plan in Montana. It was pretty well
recognized all over the United States as the best plan with wolf management.
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AUDIENCE: What does the plan entail?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well, basically our basic concept is that wolves are here, there here so we need to
manage them and we want them to fit into the landscape just like all the rest of the wildlife in Montana
does. They are not sacred, they are not special, they are just another life, piece of wildlife. And, so we
want to manage them in the same way. And, when they get into trouble we take them out, if they’re not
causing any trouble they can grow. There was no limit of wolves that Montana could have, it’s no top
limit like the rest of livestock. The only time that we have caps on wildlife numbers is, when they start to
get too many of them and we get too much pressure on habitat. Like the elk management plan each
area a desired number, a top number of elk that should be there so that gives the wildlife agency
something to guide to. You know if they want to go extra seasons or something like this they can. So
that’s the way the wolf ban was let them fit in they cause trouble you take them out and adapt it as we
go along. Now I think one of the things you need to look at if you’re talking about any resource
management it’s not constant. No resource management especially wildlife is constant. It’s always
changing. If you don’t keep changing with that time pretty soon you are out of step.
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AUDIENCE: So what do you mean when a wolf gets in trouble? What kinds of things would a wolf do to
get in trouble? Going after cattle, is that.
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BRUCE MALCOLM:. Livestock, people, game animals, you know if they get to harassing. If you have an
area where there are big horned sheep for example and wolves move in an start to decimate those big
horned sheep. It’s time to step in and reduce the wolf numbers so you keep the big horned sheep
numbers. So we need to, it gets pretty complicated, all those things need to play into it. You know if
wolves, you know people say wolves never attack people. There are cases of, when they get too many of
them, that they’ll start harassing people . You know it’s like mountain lions and joggers. It just happens.
There’s just too many of them and they don’t have enough fear. And, so that’s kind of basically what we
did. We set seasons. We said we could trap them and hunt them. We could take care of them and the
problem wolves especially. And the season that Montana set on them is based on a number of things.
We did a lot of talk about this, and how many we could take out and the wolf biologist say we can take
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2009
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out up to 40% of the wolf population out and still have a viable wolf population. Because the pups they
keep coming on. Scare you didn’t I.
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AUDIENCE: That seems like a lot
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BRUCE MALCOLM: It is but geez you think about two wolves having four pups and what do you do you
know. Just do the math on that if you take the two adults or the two wolves that have the pups you take
out 40%, you take out 2.4% or 2.4 wolves out of the four so you still have an increase of 1.6 .
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AUDIENCE: (Inaudible)
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BRUCE MALCOLM:. Come again with your question.
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AUDIENCE: So you said when you are reducing the wolf population the hunting that’s allowed and you
can kill up to 40% of the wolf population or _
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BRUCE MALCOLM: It’s not say that 40% of the wolf population can be taken out that’s due to like
accidents, cars, all those things are figured in mortality
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AUDIENCE: That’s not like a goal_
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BRUCE MALCOLM: No, you see in wildlife numbers there a strange phenomenon that goes on. When you
have high numbers, . You have lower birth rates, you have lower survival rates. You have where they get
down real low then you have higher. Nature makes up for it with more pups per litter , more elk calves,
more twins, more triples in white tail deer population. You just have more young ones being born and
that tends to offset being low. Mother Nature will take care of that we don’t need to interfere with that.
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AUDIENCE: How do you feel about the wolves being back in this area, personally? Is it helping to keep
the elk numbers like in check? Is it a good thing that the wolves are back here?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I was opposed to the wolves being introduced to start with. The only good thing I
could see about the wolf is in Yellowstone Park we had too many elk. Now the park, What I say might not
be agreed with by the park which often happens so you have to forgive me if you have been
indoctrinated by the park for five days cuz we may not agree.
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AUDIENCE: (Laughter) That’s why we are talking with you too.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: They had too many elk and you can’t dispute that because if you go back to our basic
resource. What is our basic resource? What is our basic resource?
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AUDIENCE: The land, the water.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah, the soil. You know that’s out basic resource? If we don’t protect out soil then
we are really losing things and that’s what was happening at Yellowstone. There was too many elk there
and they were taking all the vegetation off. And, so we were having erosion problems, losses of vast
species it was completely unbalanced. And, so that was a good thing with the wolf introduction it
brought the Northern number of the heard down from about 19,000 to about 8,000 now. That’s more in
tune with what they got and closer to the carrying capacity. If we as a people are going to start
managing, the wildlife and we have to consider the carrying capacity and that’s the very first thing we
have to consider. You we’ll go on to this bison issue, we can talk about moose losses, we can talk about
love the main things is the land. What is the carrying capacity of their range?
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2009
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AUDIENCE: What is their range what do you see as what their range should be on public lands, the
bison?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well, first of all, it, I would classify it a little differently from what you said. First of all
you have park land and once you get out of Yellowstone Park you have public land is intermixed with
private land. And so to a bison he can’t read fence lines. I mean wildlife doesn’t read fence lines. So when
you come outside and you talk about public lands, you know it’s a combination of private and public
lands. So you can’t just manage the islands of public lands. You have to manage the whole thing or you
get into trouble. You see a lot of issues where there is thousands acres of, of a range outside of
Yellowstone Park like the wilderness area. Well the wilderness area is not winter range. There’s snow
banks still 5 and 6 feet deep on the wilderness today. So, the wilderness is thousands of acres and not
winter range. Winter range in this country is what is critical. Now Yellowstone Park has a lot of summer
range and very little winter range. So that where we are at as far as what the bison have to be managed,
what the weakest link in the chain is and that’s winter range. I hope that answered your question. What?
Try again.
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AUDIENCE: If winter range is the limiting factor who gets the priority on public lands bison or cattle.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: That’s a difficult question. I don’t think that’s an answerable question. Because I
think, what you need to do is go back to just what I was just talking about and that’s the soil and the
habitat. And how are you as a soils and habitat manager going to manage that land. It’s not the bison
are, the bison are just incidental we’ve got to go back to the soils and the grasses and how do you want
to manage that what is the best way to mange that.
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AUDIENCE: I know that the granted private grazing to manage the lands because there were grazing
animals like bison which were brought to decrease the that’s why the AUN’s aren’t granted across the
country large public grazer and so . I feel it’s easier to manage the cattle because and how many are
allowed onto those public lands than it is to manage the bison. So then, would it be easier then in your
terms to manage how many cattle are allowed to graze than having bison that are grazing in that area
rather than how many bison are able to.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well you can certainly manage the cattle part. You cannot manage the bison. So if
you have asset number in which, you don’t because they fluctuated in and out and the cattle numbers
you can’t get out of the cattle business if you are not in it for at least 10 years. You have to have a base
that is going to stay constant or you’re going to go broke. We are going to quit if you’re going to start
this with cattle numbers the economics will get to you really quick. So you got to stay in the constant and
weather the storms and take advantage of the ___ sometimes and don’t try and get greedy.
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AUDIENCE: Because in your opinion, and you are right the bison don’t know where the boundaries are
and it doesn’t matter where the boundary is there still aren’t going to know where it is. What do you see
as the most viable solutions for management of the boundary areas for any kind of wildlife not just
bison.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I think the number one thing we ought to do is we’ve got to set some, some of a limit
, some habitat number of the number of bison that can be wintered inside Yellowstone and we have to
start there . Now if you need some more winter grazing let’s start there and if you need more let’s work
outside if we can. We certainly cannot, under no circumstances infringe on any private property right. If
start taking away private property rights we’ll be just like the soviet Union or like the Nazis. The basis of
America is property rights mine is mine yours is yours. Now if we don’t keep that up top then we are in
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trouble. Cuz when special interest groups or people from the east coast or someplace tell us come telling
us the property rights in Montana don’t mean anything then we are in deep trouble.
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AUDIENCE: How much private property are you talking about on this_?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: How far out of the park you wanna go?
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AUDIENCE: Well I mean_
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Cuz the first, when you come out of the park you got private property weather it a
house lot or 20 acres. Those people have the right to raise an animal a cow on that acreage. That’s a
basic property right.
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AUDIENCE: Are most of them doing that?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: What’s that?
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AUDIENCE: Are most of them doing that are the private landowners doing that_
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I don’t care whether they do it or not_
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AUDIENCE: But what I’m getting at is if they are doing that and I’m sure if it’s their private property are
they allowing cattle to come there are they being compensated for that so I mean that _If they allow
bison to come there_
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BRUCE MALCOLM: No
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BRUCE MALCOLM: No, no compensation for bison grazing.
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AUDIENCE: But couldn’t that be part of a management plan , you know allow bison to come out, I mean
if you have e cattle there you’re making money weather it your cattle or you are allowing grazing on
your land could the same be done then for bison .
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BRUCE MALCOLM: You could do that with bison but then see you could run into with the brucellosis
problem? How do you handle that?
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AUDIENCE: Does it matter_
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BRUCE MALCOLM: What’s that?
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AUDIENCE: If cattle aren’t there anymore does it matter.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: How far away do you have to have cattle , you have to have a bound- you have to
have a space so bison don’t interfere with and get to the cattle. You have to have a line. So is this (I’ll be
with you in just a second) 20 acres plot has the right to graze cows you cannot take it away from him.
You can’t take that right away. You can’t lose focus on that. Even though that would be prime bison
habitat for winter range.
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The guy doesn’t want to do it. That’s his right. That’s his right. Now if you want to try and go in and buy
it from him. Then it’s his right to negotiate with you.
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AUDIENCE: Well just like I mean in any situation your neighbor has a whole bunch of dogs and you don’t
really like it cuz they bark all the time but they can still have those dogs that bark all the time and they
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2009
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may have some kind of disease that can spread . I mean in life there are risks when you do certain things
there are risks. I don’t understand why like and I didn’t think that bison were the only that can pass
brucellosis. Thought elk could pass it brucellosis to cattle. The elk, we don’t manage the elk. They are
where they are. So, I don’t understand that.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: The difference ids elk in this country are about 3% infected and the bison is about
40% infected. See the bison is, you see at on e time Yellowstone Park was the other place infected with
brucellosis in the nation, the bison at Yellowstone park all the other states were brucellosis free.
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AUDIENCE: But isn’t brucellosis, didn’t it originally come from cattle, brucellosis.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I suspect it did. You had a question back there.
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AUDIENCE: Well you had said earlier what about brucellosis and set that aside when everything we’ve
read and talked. Do you know of a case where brucellosis has passed from bison to cattle? In any of the
three state area Wyoming, Montana, in most of the cases, we have found the most likely indicator is
from other cattle or elk. And so I think we need to leave that out of the conversation at this point when
we are talking about lands when someone wants to their grazing right to go to the bison instead of cattle
, on private lands now on public lands who gets priority ?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well I don’t think, it is what, I think you have to go back to the what I said before.
That land management agency, how they want to manage that land. Whether they want to have it with
animals that they can control the numbers of, or whether they want to have uncontrolled numbers on it.
That’s kind of what it boils down to. Other words do you want to have a 1000 bison or 100 cows that you
can take off.
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AUDIENCE: I think part of the problem is that that you can’t have checker board cattle an d bison. You
have to create corridors in which you can. So if that 20 acres want s to go and that 30 acres want so do
bison it doesn’t work. -_
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AUDIENCE: Where the boundary is doesn’t matter because if you extend the boundary at least in my
opinion if you extend the boundaries they can go beyond those boundaries too. So I think that it seems
that it’s about boundary management and not where the boundary is . It just about what do you do
about the boundary weather it’s public or private land , it’s between the park and public land it doesn’t
matter it’s what you do at the boundaries . What do you see to be, and I hope you don’t think we are
putting you on the spot here.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: You can’t put me on the spot here
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AUDIENCE:I know_
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Ask me any question I don’t care.
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AUDIENCE: But I think that well I guess I’d like to know what you think. What do you think , what do you
find to be, because obviously you’ve been engaged in this conversation from a variety of angles not just
the bison issue but what do you see as the greatest obstacles to any kind of management plan? Because
obviously you do have a lot of special interest groups many of them who are not from this area that
really probably it’s easy to have an opinion at a distance and what do you see as the greatest obstacles
to any kind of management plans regardless of what wildlife we are thinking about .
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well I think the biggest thing we especially I’m, I think in Yellowstone Park , I think
it’s the absence of a leadership role from the park, in other words it’s all political it’s not scientific , it not
based on the resources, it’s all political . It’s time that they say listen you special interest groups we’ve
got to manage it this way. This is why we are doing it. And have to come out and be aggressive with that
instead of wishy washy around and changing things and changing things there as far as. And the other
thing they’ve got to do, as far as we’re concerned here, as opposed to the park, is start stop making
policy decisions and then funding studies to back up those policy studies. We see that so often. That they
make a policy and then they fund studies to support it. I know of several professional people that were
let go out the park because they didn’t agree with the policy, what they were writing. Didn’t agree with
the polices so they are gone and you know it’s just back to the old political thing. The park belongs to
everybody. I agree with that but the management does not belong to everybody. The management
ought to belong to some farsighted scientific persons, people.
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AUDIENCE: So then, you are not in agreement with the livestock management association to be in
charge of this management.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well at the moment that’s the best way to protect the state industry , Montana’s
leading state industry from brucellosis infection is to have the livestock industry because I’m not sure
that anybody else is going to have that much interest in whether the livestock industry in Montana
survives and it goes on deeper than that if you don’t keep the livestock industry in Montana healthy and
surviving then what ‘s the next alternative for that land it’s houses and subdivisions and you know if
that’s where we’re headed if we can’t keep the livestock industry healthy. They aren’t asking for
subsidies all they want is a little protection to be able to do what they are doing
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AUDIENCE: But right now (inaudible)
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I do. I really do. And I think the park service is lacking in stepping up to the plate. And
I think the first thing they’ve got to do is say how many bison do we want, how many bison get you know
have some sort of feel for the management of how bison the park can carry. When they get up too many
, it’s just like two years ago they all came out and they killed what 1600 of them they took the 4700
down to 3000 and this year I think only a few came out and they killed one and 15 on the highway
something like that so they didn’t come out. You’re more in tuned with the winter range so they weren’t
forced out.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: What happens, it’s really interesting, what happens is you have so much winter
range that and if you put in 10% more animals. What happens? That whole 110% of animals runs out of
feed. Not just the 10% the 110% runs out of feed so here they come so that very delicate balance there
needs to be you know. Sort of that delicate balance.
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AUDIENCE: So if we are managing our bison is there a better way to do it. Things you… think like to keep
the bison in the park. Obviously, they’re not, I think people misconstrue breed animals are wild because
these bison are just not, in my opinion. We have done things we have you know made them stay in
certain areas and its, there not and so giving them
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I’m glad to hear you say that.
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AUDIENCE: Hi sleepy (fuss over an animal)
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BRUCE MALCOLM: He will get a love from everyone of you.
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AUDIENCE: Well, that’s alright.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Whether you want to give it or not.
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(laughter)
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AUDIENCE: But I mean you know giving them food and giving them some sort of sustenance that they
can make it through the winter not have to leave the park and having some way of allowing elk hunting
maybe Native American tribes to come in because really they are not wild animals anymore not be true
definition
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BRUCE MALCOLM: And you know I’m not so sure why the Yellowstone bison so special because if you
cross Montana they have a big bison farm at Mateetsee they have you know bison in South Dakota ,
Wyoming . I mean thousands of bison out there. Even Turner has a free thousand head of bison
Montana. Why is Yellowstone so special? What’s the difference between them?
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AUDIENCE. I was going to ask you what’s the difference in those ranches? What’s the purpose of those
ranches? Raising those bison to harvest for food is that the difference maybe because in Yellowstone
they aren’t raise for food
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah its somebody’s , yeah they’re raided for food and in some places the bison fit
the habitat , you in some places, South Dakota and Wyoming are not the greatest grasslands around
and so some of the animals the bison are more adept on that high desert country
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AUDIENCE: I have a question about the brucellosis and the bison you said it’s about 40% of the bison and
only about 3% of the elk. Do you think that because you’re saying why are they so especial in other words
why aren’t they managed, do you believe in vaccinating them and if they did eradicate brucellosis from
the Yellowstone bison how would that change the management plan that you are currently under.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: That would be really scary then because what would keep the bison from coming
right down the river then (laughter) Let’s be honest about it
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AUDIENCE. You kind of need brucellosis
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I didn’t want to say that (laughter) but let’s be honest. What would happen? It would
be the same thing as the elk; it would be like thousands of elk coming down out of the park because
nobody is managing the numbers. The park service as soon as they start to manage the numbers
everything will be a lot better.
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Audience: Well then what do you feel about the three livestock agencies through AFIS announcing that
they are going to create plans in regards to brucellosis . They put them in to areas area 1 and area two,
which I know the cattleman association was not happy with, but that the new group talked and agreed
that we need to separate brucellosis status with and Montana and the surrounding, Wyoming as well .
How do you feel that is going to have an impact on you and how is that going to play out if they
concentrate brucellosis here while allowing the rest of the state to work independently
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well I tell you what it means to me, if I move I, if don’t have enough pasture here
and I go out of the zone. I have to test those cows when they go out and means they have to done within
I think 30 days is the kind of tentative schedule. So that means in the Spring I have to test 200 cows if
that’s what you’re taking out to take them to move to Summer pasture then it gets really complicated .
In the original, ones they had tested …back in which that didn’t make any difference at all, but so then
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you go that gets really complicated. Because when you go to summer range a cow needs to go home to
be doctored so you don’t know that, so you go here’s a cow or bull that needs to go home, needs to go
home today but she can’t come back because she doesn’t have her test . It gets really complicated and it
gets burdensome. The thing that’s happening is those people in…you see the cattle industry has
vaccinated to the best of what we thought was best. The vets told us once a year under 11 months of age
and we are okay. We knew the effective rate was not that great, like 55% but that was the best we could
do and most everyone had done that. I mean it’s not that cows have been unvaccinated, it the ones that
didn’t get their immune system built got brucellosis infected.
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AUDIENCE: What has losing that brucellosis free status done to the market value of your cows? Is it more
difficult to sell them?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well, yeah. It is more difficult and in a state where Montana is one of the leading,
breading we have been in the lead of replacement bulls and heifers for some time now been really and so
we have a lot of pure breed breeders. And so, that means they have to go to extensive testing. What is
really worse than that is that__those people out there __hear that have a risk of brucellosis then those
buyers don’t even show up . Those buyers won’t come. They are not interested and they will go
someplace else. And I’ll give you a real prime example of that. My neighbor over here in 1988 when the
bison came out of the park in large numbers they got out as far as this rest area. And he was on the news
several times talking about brucellosis and the bison and how he was trying to keep them out of his
cows. And he would about 30 yearling bulls a year across the state of Montana and other states . In 88
none of his repeat buyers even showed up . He was stuck with 30 head of yearling bulls he’d feed all
winter and he could only eat one of them. They just didn’t show up. With no difference in the quality of
the bulls, it was all perception.
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AUDIENCE: I didn’t think the brucellosis was you could transmit it from the meat to human beings.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: You can’t
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AUDIENCE: So then, why is that a problem?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well, these are breeding bulls. These are breeding bulls.
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AUDIENCE: Oh.
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AUDIENCE: None of the bison were carrying at the time and there was no way for the brucellosis to be
passed to the cattle as all the cases have shown none of them were bison.
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AUDIENCE: But , that’s what he was saying, it was perception.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: And don’t brucellosis doesn’t need to be, it can be passed from the placenta and that
can be done with an aborted calf anything of the year, I mean after they are breed.
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AUDIENCE: So then going back to what you said earlier even though you said cattlemen, no you didn’t
say Clare said but you kind of agreed, you said that the cattlemen sort of need brucellosis almost so that
bison just can’t isn’t that counterproductive because now here it is affecting the way people are__
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BRUCE MALCOLM: You see that’s how things are really complicated, complicated just like the wolves. It
gets complicated after awhile. You don’t like the wolves but finally they got management in the park
that worked.
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AUDIENCE: Right.
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AUDIENCE: Well there’s a real liability issue right their because e the beef buyer potentially liable for
your business (inaudible) have a choice of buying from a buyer where there is none and buyer where
there is 20% risk of some. What are you going to put your whole business at risk? So, whether it’s
perception or reality it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t with the liability with the way it is today. Why
would any buyer do that?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: One of the things that you talk about bison and elk coming out of Yellowstone. One of
the things the big difference is elk come down the valley from up on the foothills. They bison come down
right through the valley, right down the highway, right through the ranches through the middle of the
farmland. Elk have a tendency to just jump fences if given the chance; bison has a tendency to just walk
through them if they want to. So there’s a big difference. If you had bison, running down back and forth
up the valley here you could be fixing fence every morning.
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AUDIENCE: (Inaudible) the highway.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I …the year that they came down here that rest area there was 8 of them there in
that bunch. They were above Yankee Jim’s the night before and down here in the morning, So that’s how
fast they travel.
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AUDIENCE.: When you were talking about the year when so many of them __
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I’ve got a question right here
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Audience: Have any of the ranchers lost their ranches due to brucellosis status loss (inaudible)
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BRUCE MALCOLM: No, I don’t think so. The one in Montana that lost was my son in law and daughter
down at (Bridger?) you know, and their still shaky as far as financial wise, because they lost all their
cows.
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AUDIENCE: (Inaudible) pay for them?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: They got paid for the cows but they did not get paid for the calf crop that year . So
they had 250 calves you know and that was probably like $600 a calf for fall weight. See they went out
on the 16th of July. If they could have held them until October they’d of got five to six hundred dollars.
They come to a hundred twenty-five to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars income. Ya that they did not
get .
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah I think I know, in my opinion. I think it was some elk that came up out of
Wyoming a couple of winters before and they got infected. We don’t know which cow got infected .Lefty.
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AUDIENCE: On brucellosis , I’m from Minnesota and we have a problem in the North West corner of our
state with brucellosis that come in your some elk transplanted from another state , from this area to
Minnesota . And then Minnesota lost their freedom to sell cattle due to brucellosis () so it doesn’t just
come from bison but from elk and other things and it can affect the whole state when it comes to the
movement of cattle out of the market.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: But those elk that brought the inflection down at Bridger I’m almost positive came
out of Elk that came out of Wyoming down on the feed grounds cuz those elk are infected by about 20%
infection rate. Because if you look at geographic, you know the geography of the country there was
about 200 head of elk and a lot of you aren’t familiar with it but they came to Belfry which id part of the
ranch down there. Belfry is on the edge of the high Wyoming desert and the cornfields. I mean it’s a line
like this. The Three Forks valley area meets the cornfields and beyond that it’s desert . Anyhow, those elk
came there. Look at it they didn’t come out of here. They didn’t go through all the grass that’s in Big
Timber Absarokee to get to the high Wyoming desert I can guarantee you that . They didn’t go into Bear
Tooth the high Bear Tooth cuz as you start in the winter time snows over so they can’t get to go over it so
they gotta go around it. So that only leaves one alternative to come up outta Wyoming. Another 250
herd of elk came up. They went to the cornfields, and they go back to the desert for the daytime and
these cows are right at the edge of that. So they went back and forth through these cows. And everybody
talks about the cow that was first found. There is absolutely no evidence that that was the first cow
infected. I mean there is no way to tell. At least nobody was interested in finding out. Yeah.
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AUDIENCE: I just wanted to know what is the , what’s it like here on your ranch a for typical calendar
year as far as moving your cattle to parts of the ranch when there is interactions with wildlife when you
feed your cattle or take your cattle to process . What is it like a typical year?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well you want to know the relationship between cattle and wildlife that’s or kinda or
just the whole thing?
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AUDIENCE. Whole thing.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah, well normally, see on our particular ranch we only have a few mother cows left.
Most of our mother cows went down to the Bridger ranch and we were running yearlings, replacement
heifers here. We would go out to heifer caves and breed them and they would go down to the Bridger
place. That’s out program here. We do have a few cows coming in, a fee longhorn cows now. My wife
and I are trying to retire but that didn’t work. Any of you thinking about retiring you better think about it.
It ain’t working. Let me know. (Laughter) But anyhow that’s what we’re doing. so we feed, we winter
down here in the hat meadows and of course the elk come down off the mountains to the hay meadows
nightly and there’s not a whole lot you can do about it . Well, there is some stuff we do about it, but they
will come down to some hay meadow along the three ranches on this side. There is about 600 head of
elk, here in this bunch here. So you know we have been trying to, we try to keep the elk away from the
cows as much as possible but it is impossible to do. Of the state made a big deal out of how a ranch
planned his haystacks, Well that’s about as dumb a thing as I’ve heard in a long time. We fenced out
haystacks 20 years ago cuz we couldn’t afford to lose the hay to the elk. Nobody is going to let the elk
into the haystacks. The ranchers they just don’t do that. You can look at the haystack I got right here. I
wanted to continuous stack it because I couldn’t keep the woven wire up on it. You know there’s about
three thousand dollars worth of materials in that haystack, in the fence of that haystack, just to keep the
elk out. So we are trying to do our part. Actually, we’re trying to do our part. The thing that actually
bothers me a little bit about the people, the plan, I’ll go back to the plan for just a minute here. The
ranchers are stuck with all the work. Nobody else is doing anything. We are the only people responsible
for doing anything, nobody else is doing anything. Think about that. The state of Montana’s not doing
anything, the park service is not doing anything. The rancher are the ones who have to test their cows.
They’re the ones who have to gather the cows. They’re the ones that have to do all the work and obey all
the regulations and nobody else is doing anything. That kind of gravels me that it’s our problem.
Brucellosis is not our problem. We cleaned this state up. We had a clean state until Yellowstone Park let
brucellosis run rampant. I understand that if they want to spend about 25 million dollars they could
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2009
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develop a vaccine that would be effective in bison but doesn’t seem to be a goal. We’ll spend a hundred
million dollars doing something else.
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AUDIENCE: Can there be a working plan, something that works for all people involved land owners,
national parks, ranchers? Do you think that is actually a possibility?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Sure, I think you can vaccinate the calves. I think you could vaccinate enough calves
in the park to eventually get rid of the brucellosis or get it toned down to a few percent. They say in elk if
you got 3% we’ve got the source stopped because elk calf differently than bison that it will eventually die
out or down so low it would not be significant.
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AUDIENCE: But then even if you get rid of the brucellosis isn’t there still a problem with the bison still
coming out of the park, isn’t there?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well that’s the (laughter) cuz see there’s no numbers, see there’s no numbers.
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AUDIENCE: Do you think it can ever work?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Sure, I think it could work.
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AUDIENCE: Okay.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Number one vaccinated the calves. Spend 25 million dollars out of the 780 billion in
stimulus money we have today. That’s pretty small. That’s peanuts guys. Pretty small peanuts. Do that,
vaccinate the calves as many as you can, keep the numbers down to 3,000, none of them came out.
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AUDIENCE: And do that by hunting, culling?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: See, I don’t care how the park service does that. I don’t care how. They got to bite the
bullet. You see years ago, they killed bison, kill elk in the park. The park service has to come out and we
need to keep the numbers down. We need to do it somehow. And this is how I think we ought to do it
and let the politics out of it and let scientific people say we’ve got to do this. Yeah, carrying capacity is
that and if you don’t like it figure out a better way. Otherwise, we will go ahead with it. But somebody
has to that control of the resources. I’ll be with you in a minute. I would have tested all those bison as
many as I could have and I’d of shipped the infected ones off and turned the others loose. I’d reduce that
infection rate not that it would have stayed there but I would have reduced that infection rate by what
75%.
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AUDIENCE: But you weren’t allowed to in the plan.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah in the political plan
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AUDIENCE: Because of pressure from the livestock association(inaudible)
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BRUCE MALCOLM: No. They don’t have that part of the plan in it, that idea in the plan. I think you could
sell that part of the plan if you came out and decided to do that. You could modify the plan if you get
everybody together to do it. If it makes sense. But if you stand back here political and say I don’t to play
that. You have part of people doing that. We’re not going anyplace. And then you have, have all the
political, special interest groups poking at you , you know, you rise above all this
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Audience: When you say you would remove those infected calves and bison and let the healthy ones
loose where would you like to see them loose? You said let the healthy ones go loose.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: They could have been right around the corrals
AUDIENCE: Just here?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: No they don’t come down this far. Yeah they could have been contained up there like
they, you know
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AUDIENCE: Okay
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AUDIENCE: So the people who own the containment areas. We saw them when we drove up . They keep
the healthy bison there contained for the winter so that they have something to eat and they go back in
the park for the summer or…
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BRUCE MALCOLM: No, the two spots you saw alongside the highway are, yeah they’re quarantined
stations, and they take calves and test them in those. And those calves that test clean are kept there and
tested and retested and they keep weeding them out. Eventually, I’m not sure what the original goal was
and I’m sure what it is now but they’re trying to take some of those out and trying to put them out
someplace. They’ve tried a couple of runs at it. They get them almost there and then people say we don’t
want them here either. So I don’t know what they’re going to do (laughs).
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AUDIENCE: So part of the problem is where do you release them.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well, you don’t need to, you don’t have a lot of range that doesn’t have bison fairly
close. And just can’t go out and dump it on somebody’s cattle allotment. That doesn’t go over very good
for the sake of a bison. We gotta get the bison off a pedestal, gotta get the wolves off the pedestal and
let them fit in and we’ve got to let them fit in economically with this ranching operation so we can keep
some open spaces. Or else you go like government land and Montana starts looking like Yellowstone
Park. I’m pretty critical of the management of Yellowstone Park and I’m pretty critical of the way they let
things go. It’s a disaster. It’s a flat disaster folks. Yeah, another question from the background back
there.
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AUDIENCE: Are you concerned with the Grizzlies in this area , the bears .
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BRUCE MALCOLM: We have bears. If you’d been here a month ago you’d of seen a big Grizzly bear over
there in front of the house, over there.
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AUDIENCE: Really, in front of your house?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: He was there twice.
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AUDIENCE: Now what do they do when they come down?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: He just wanders around.
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AUDIENCE: Checking things out
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah
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AUDIENCE: If you had cattle here would he threaten the cattle?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: We have cattle, you have colts. We have pretty good operation raising colts here.
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AUDIENCE: Do they go after horses?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Oh yeah anything. That’s back to where they fit in. He can fit in. He can walk around
the place as long as he doesn’t harass me. When he harasses me I’m going to harass him back. If he gets
serious about it those harassments are going to be over with. Protected or not. I mean, I’ll be with you in
a second I got two more over here. I thing in the wolf thing we talked about the wolves being delisted. If
they don’t delist the wolves. Delisting would be the best thing that ever happened to the wolves. Because
if we don’t delist them the population in Montana ranchers, hunters, and the general public are getting
intolerant of broken federal promises and so the wolves are going to suffer. Now if you do things in good
faith you have a little more compassion but if you’re stomped on all the time you get intolerant. So
delisting would be one of those, we were promised the wolves would be delisted if they got to a certain
number and that was back there 8 no 9 years ago. And so it’s just one thing after another, another
lawsuit, another judge that doesn’t have any history of scientific basis for making his decisions . You they
shouldn’t be doing that stuff anymore in my opinion. The legal in of things and the political end of things
should not be managing resources. Who was up, someplace, oh right here.
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AUDIENCE: Well while I’m listening to you talk although it certainly isn’t necessarily a wildlife issue
where we come from but of the thing you mentioned that I never really considered . Certainly this is a
beautiful country and when you mentioned the alternative if you have ranchers moving away from
becoming ranchers and you said the alternative is subdivisions and I have never really thought of that
even in Indiana and certainly we don’t have this type of natural beauty to offer however we are in a wild
river valley not though its not the same it is a desirable piece of property within our state . What we have
seen happen in out county in particular is that farmers who were large scale farmers for a long time
generation after generation can have sold their property off to subdivisions . And I’m kidding our whole
county now is paved and that has caused a lot of problems ecologically within the area. Have there been
ranchers who have been approached to sell their property off for development in that way.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Oh yeah. Quite a number of them _
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AUDIENCE: Because bison would really be in trouble then.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: This is a very highly desirable valley for recreation and_
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AUDIENCE: Are there areas where that is happening?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Oh yeah the whole valley here is on the verge, you know, in the last ten years houses
in this valley have doubled. Nobody doing any_ we don’t have any subdivision laws. We only have one
law that you have to have a septic tank 100 feet from the river. Which is asinine in this gravely country
we live in
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AUDIENCE: I don’t know if we are going to talk today about going North before we go South again
because when to up towards Immigrant on the East River road and back that way cuz the last 9 or 10
years there’s been a big change just on the valley floor here . And talked a little way up from the bus stop
about the possibility a bumper sticker that said cows not condos, and about the change that could
happen if a big scale rancher were to sell out to subdivision, then what happens to the whole valley floor
not just bison. So we were mentioning about other organizations such as the Nature Conservancy having
land researchers talking and making contact with ranchers to see if they would be interested in stopping
their operations but preserving the landscape in the state in the sense that is instead of breaking it apart.
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AUDIENCE: You saw some of that out west on the drive over ….in 2007…that hotel wasn’t there and
neither were those houses.
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AUDIENCE: When are we going to start managing human beings? They’re the ones causing all the
__(laughing)
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AUDIENCE: It should be mentioned that in this incidence Bruce had put this river front in__thanks for
doing that it’s beautiful__
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BRUCE MALCOLM: We need to go back to the Nature Conservancy a little bit. We need to keep that land
in working ranches not just set aside because set aside land is (pause) pretty disastrous. You get in the
plant; especially range land, rangeland that was developed by grazing. If you don’t graze it then those
plants continue to grow. And actually they, that over the period of just a few years suffocate themselves
out. So, we need to graze that land. We need to use it. You know part of this, the CRP lands, the reasons
that they are not highly successful is as it could be is because it was for 10 years in non-use. In 3 years,
you had a beautiful stand of vegetation there. By year, 7 or 8 half that vegetation was gone and replaced
by weeds. At year 3, it should have been harvested; it should have been cut for hay. It should have been
done, something with it, it should have, that vegetation should have been taken off so you could
maintain that healthy stand of grass.
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AUDIENCE: So, you set aside your land with the stipulation that it still be used for grazing.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Just between the highway and the river, it has a restriction on it that there be no
building on it.
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Or any other use. There was to things no gravel pits, no building. So the gravel pit was impractical. There
is some fine gravel but it’s all below river and ground water level. Couldn’t even have a pond down there.
Any other questions? Who hasn’t asked a question? Two right there together.
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AUDIENCE: (Laughing). I was going to ask how brucellosis. Is it realistic to believe that we will ever have
this area be brucellosis free again? Whoever gives that classification and is there a threat to other states.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: The county surrounding Yellowstone are all high rise counties and so as long as we
have this nucleolus of brucellosis in Yellowstone being transported out by elk we run that risk . And the
counties surrounding Yellowstone are the highest risk but that’s not the only risk because there’s no
reason that an elk won’t travel further than the county. And it only takes one elk. It only takes one
placenta to get brucellosis started. The only good thing I see about the plan is that is proposed is that we
would not necessarily have to depopulate the whole herd. That was a 1950 law that was updated.
Frankly, Montana was so far behind the times they didn’t know what to do with the brucellosis infection.
They didn’t know what to do with it. They didn’t want to act. The Montana state vet had just retired and
they had an assistant state vet that came in on that first infection. She had no idea. All the history was
gone from the old state vet and there wasn’t a lot of communication between them. And that was the
first case of brucellosis in twenty some years. They had no idea what to do. They went back to the old
law books and said this is how it’s going to be. Then AFUS was almost as bad. Because they sent a brand
new guy from out of Wisconsin out here to run AFUS in Montana who hadn’t dealt with brucellosis ever.
And he was mostly incommunicative, I mean his communication skills were zero. So, it was hard to talk
with him and you couldn’t get a commitment out of him one way or the other. It was very diff__he didn’t
know what to do. Nobody knew what to do. It was a very difficult time.
Transcript Bruce Malcolm
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AUDIENCE: And what time period was that?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: That was in 2005. (Pause) Those cows that went were not just, those were cows my
wife and I bred, raised, and bred as; let me see how to say it. There cows and then there cows and
sometimes you have cows that are really good mother cows. You have an idea so they take care of their
calves and they are aggressive enough to take care of the calves, aggressive enough to knock you down.
You breed back, you do all these things to , in other words you breed a lot of femininity into a cow but
not so much that she doesn’t keep her flesh up so she can recycle. So we worked at that we started in 19
well actually my dad started in 1942 and my wife and I took it over in the 70’s . We started to breed for
that particular thing. We weren’t concerned with steer weights. What we wanted was a heifer calf that
would produce. We were going to sell replacement heifers. And so, we geared our whole operation
towards that. So that whole set of cows was where we were , so we lost everything we had, everything
we’d worked for, for. So, it was pretty hurtful. There was about 250 cows and 7 or 8 of them tested
positive but the whole works had to go.
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AUDIENCE: And that’s because they resorted to the laws that were in place in the 1950’s
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah, but if they hadn’t done that Montana would have lost its brucellosis free
status. I wasn’t ornery enough to say heck with the status and say lose it but my son in law and daughter
had a lot more sense than I did. But then what really happened was that our state board of livestock
voted to condemn the cows anyway. So, we didn’t have a chance. Montana’s condemnation laws go
back to 1906 and their condemnation laws said they’d pay us $60 a cow for those $1500 cows.
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AUDIENCE: That you sell for 500 or 600.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: No, we could have gotten 1500 for those cowherd straight across. We were raising
about 100 to 150 heifer calves here and I was selling on the ranch to neighbors and so forth. I had my
entire 150 sold in April for fall delivery. That is how popular they were and I turned away buyers.
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AUDIENCE: I’m sure it was less about the money and more about all the work you’d put into raising your
heifers the way that you had__
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BRUCE MALCOLM: So they were worth it, they were known to be worth it. Then when that happened this
150 cows that were worth about 1200 to 1500 dollars apiece as heifers . I lost all the buyers. I gave my
buyers a chance to opt out and they opted out. If I had pressured them, they would have stayed because
they were neighbors and they would have bought. But I didn’t think that was fair. Then I was stuck with a
bunch of cows that I couldn’t get rid of.
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AUDIENCE: So another thing we’ve been talking about is brucellosis testing it’s not always accurate is
that why you’re saying they are contained and tested, then they are tested again because it doesn’t
always catch it? Is that why people are afraid to buy one because of the risk. Cuz you could test and no
it’s__healthy and they should be okay with it.
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AUDIENCE: Is it because of the latency period?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah. It could be dormant in a lymph gland. It’s a bacteria that operates in the lymph
glands of a cell.
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AUDIENCE: How long can it remain dormant like that? So long do you have to__
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well, I don’t know that because the vets I’ve talked to, they’ve not talked with us. We
talk to alot of vets clear across the nation. And anywhere from 2 years to 10 years. I don’t know. I don’t
know if there is an answer. I don’t know because there’s no real research. Cows tested positive then she’s
gone. If she tested negative, you didn’t know whether she had it or not and test positive 10 years down
the road. I mean, when did she get it. It’s kind of a tricky disease. It’s not an easy disease. In a, cattle
vaccination doesn’t work very well on bison. In fact it doesn’t hardly work at all. It’s a little different
modification of the vaccine.
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AUDIENCE: Does it work well on the cow? If they’re vaccinated they don’t get it?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: About 60 to 70% effective.
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AUDIENCE: Okay
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BRUCE MALCOLM: When that came along in our thought processes in visiting with vets and a couple a
more we said if it’s only 60% effective why don’t I vaccinate them again as claves? Because you do that
with everything else. Well the feds went unglued on me. No, we can’t do that. So we argued that one for
6 months before I finally got permission to revaccinated the, to double vaccinated the heifer calves. Nah,
we still have a risk.
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AUDIENCE: Still have a risk, but it’s small.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: See if you take 60 % and you get another 60% you get 34% more (inaudible) that’s
worth it. We are still dealing with some old antiquated rules. If I don’t get them vaccinated twice before
they are a year old. Then we had to re ear tag them. So we’re still dealing with the old antiquated stuff. It
needs to be updated but we’re working on it.
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AUDIENCE: It’s what you said that you bear the burden of what’s happening_
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah and we’re doing the thinking. You see the ranching community is doing the
thinking, It’s not the vets, it isn’t the state vets doing any of the __ Why did it take an old rancher to
come up with double vaccinating a cow? Why did every idea have to come from the ranching community
instead of a vet?
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AUDIENCE: Instead of the medical community.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah. It’s just common sense you know. (Laughs) But that’s where we’re at you know.
Any other question? I can go into wolves for a couple of minutes if that’s __
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I’ll give you a couple of wild ideas on wolves now. Just a few statements. We do need
to have the wolves delisted, for several reasons when they are ready they are viable sound to do it even
AFUS promotes that idea now. We don’t need to worry about killing all the wolves off. One of the
contentions of the lawsuits is that with the hunting regulations we would kill all the wolves. Well first all
Montana, especially in Montana, Montana regulates how many animals are harvested, wildlife is
harvested. Under hunting seasons, they have increased the hunting numbers in every case they have ever
regulated. So there is no reason why that wouldn’t happen in wolves. One of the safe guards you got,
you could kill every wolf off in Montana today, and in five, or six years you could be in the same spot you
are in today number wise. I that because you could put 34 wolves, I could be wrong, it’s a small number
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of wolves in Yellowstone park that have expanded across the southern half of Montana to the numbers
today__
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AUDIENCE: Which are, which is about what (inaudible) what is the population today about
approximately?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I think there’s 60 or 70 packs something that.
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AUDIENCE: Do you know how many in each pack?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: There 300, I don’t think I know__
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AUDIENCE: I can’t remember in the GYE area…………24 million pups born in the spring…..right now
(inaudible) but that’s just a small percentage of what we are talking about now in the state of Montana
and outside the park boundary.
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AUDIENCE: Because they came out__
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yes.
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So you see if you take that few that were introduced into the park in 1994 and 95 now you have 124 to
start with. I think Doug Smith told you if you talked to him the wolf Yellowstone Park is saturated,
they’re saturated, number wise. There’s not any more room for wolves in Yellowstone Park because of
the territorial limits. So all the increase, all the increase is going to come out of Yellowstone Park. Outside
the few casualties. So we could repopulate Montana in just a few years based on those numbers. So
don’t buy into the fact the wolves will be all killed off and Montana will be gone forever. It won’t happen.
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AUDIENCE: What are your rights as a private property landowner even though the wolves are listed?
What are your rights if a wolf is on your property killing your cows? Do you have any rights (inaudible)?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: We have rights now we are under what they call , the southern half of Montana is
under what they call the 10J rule that would be resulting from an experimental population, that’s what
they call the introduction into Yellowstone because it was experimental . The northern half of Montana
is natural migration out of Canada so they don’t enjoy these same privileges. Under the 10J rule, we can
kill a wolf if he is harassing, chasing livestock or guard dogs, cow dogs, your working dogs. Of course, if
they are found around schools and kids they are history. That gets to be kind of technical because you
can’t . You have to have a law person come to the school with a gun. But that’s where we are at with
those. We can protect ourselves to some degree that way.
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AUDIENCE: Do you know how many fatalities there have been toward dogs or cows due to a wolf?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I don’t recall those numbers offhand. I’ve reviewed them but I don’t recall them.
There’s not, you see the number in the ranching community the numbers of cows that or livestock that’s
killed is not as critical as some of the other damages the wolves cause. Other words, if you harass a cow
in a breeding season you can stress her then she secrets a chemical that won’t allow her to settle . So
then, you’re 21 days late for the next cycle. So if that’s it, this goes to 21 days, a cow is 21 days late
calving. You haven’t lost any animals but 21 days is , these calves are gaining about 2 pounds a day, so
that’s about 50 pounds and these calves are bringing about a dollar to a buck and a quarter a pound. We
see that’s about between 50 and 60 dollars a calf for just being 21 days late. And that gets to be fairly
significant. And then, yeah and then there’s you know the lameness. When they first starting coming into
the area many of the animals are scared of wolves. Really a big fear. And so they’ll be running and get
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lamed up and scared up. Even have broken legs and stuff like that. Which may not show up as a dead
animal because you call a vet out and he’ll heal them up .
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AUDIENCE: But that’s an expense.
BRUCE MALCOLM: But that’s an expense. And it’s very time consuming to be out there protecting your
animals from the wolves . If you do have enough energy you can stop your loss but then I’m not sure
whether the loss, how that evaluates to your time
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AUDIENCE: Well that’s regional predation , what about (inaudible)between your facility, your ranch
here and (inaudible) Do you have the numbers for wolf or bear predation on livestock or cats, dogs.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well, this is the way I’ve seen it. When the wolves first came out of Yellowstone,
when they were first introduced, when they’re first coming out we had a tremendous amount of loss you
know scared animals. Things were absolutely scared of them. It was a fear factor that was unreal. We
had for example, we had six 3 and 4 year old bulls about 3 miles down the road here that we were
wintering. And we were going down there about everyday to give them a protein cake, taking the pickup
and the dogs and just go down with a 5 pound bucket and give them some cake. And the dogs would
jump out and run around the bulls and so forth and nothing happened. One day we went down there and
the bulls were gone. And went down in the corner of the field and it was all tore up. The bulls we finally
found about a mile this side of where they were supposed to be. Just ran through fences just tore down
fences running. And, then our dogs jumped out of the pickup like they normally do and those bulls took
one look at those dogs and started running again. We finally cornered them two miles later down here in
a neighbor’s corral, finally got them herded into that corral center steered in and got them in that corral
center and held them for and the neighbor had locked his dogs up for three days until they calmed down
enough to haul them back. But the fear there, the fear of the dog, the fear of the wolf was in those bulls
so great. That’s what happens to a lot of the animals. And those on the elk numbers used to have elk
that would get scared out of one patch of timber run across the hillside to another patch of timber and
stay there. When the wolves came, they went right through that patch of timber, to the next patch of
timber, to the next patch. They probably ran 5 or 6 miles instead of just half a mile. So, there was a fear
factor there. Then as they got used to it, as animals got used to the wolves, the fear started to go away
and now we have a lot less. We have a lot more harmony amongst the animals aren’t so scared of the
wolves as they were. And so the wolves can come around and cows don’t react to them near as much as
they did. And I see that, if you look you see that circle coming out of Yellowstone Park are the wolves just
going across Montana. They are out there about 150 miles now. And that 150 miles is where all the
depredation is happening at this point. It’s not back here in this valley. Now there’s still some loss here,
still have an errant wolf or two once in a while but there are a lot wolves in this valley living peacefully.
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AUDIENCE: It seems like you, we have to control the number of bison, we have to control the number of
elks, so we don’t have over grazing and we have to control the number of wolves . Seems like there
should be a way to find a balance in there. Is that what people are working towards or__
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Should be working towards__
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AUDIENCE: should be working towards then and the (inaudible) are in that mix as well__
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Right. And we’ll go even further that, I’ll probably have to start this, but you know
the biggest predator we have, one of the worst predators we have is the raven. Baby calves cuz they’ll
come on, peck on a baby calf, and peck the eyes out of a baby calf. And there’s another protected bird.
All predator birds are protected.
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AUDIENCE: In the entire state?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well in all western United States all predator birds especially those that cross into
Mexico, cross international boarders by international treaty those (inaudible) birds are protected.
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AUDIENCE: I knew the eagles were, but I didn’t realize ravens were protected
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Ravens and magpies. You probably don’t have magpies in Indiana.
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AUDIENCE: No, crows.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Crows. But the raven is a very__
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AUDIENCE: And some eagles__I think__ bunch of hawks
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah, hawks, eagles, ravens. Ravens can be disastrous in calving times.
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AUDIENCE: Do the bigger cows try to protect __
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah.
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AUDIENCE: How do you protect from a raven coming through the air?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well the cows will chase a raven.
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Audience: Chase them.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: They’ll chase coyotes, they’ll chase wolves. The mother cow will do that kind of thing.
But the trouble with a lot, what happens the mother cows gets so worked up and so protective that she
stomps on her own calf and kills it. (Laughs) So yeah.
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AUDIENCE: You said that the state of Montana manages the number of cattle. Do they tell you how
many cattle you can have per year__
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Montana ?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah, the state of Montana
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AUDIENCE: I thought you said that the state of Montana manages how many cattle you can have
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BRUCE MALCOLM: No, no. No Montana doesn’t’ t do anything . I didn’t mean to say that if I did. What I
probably said was like the public grazing lands, they manage how cows would go on that public grazing
land, that grazing allotment as a management tool and when they go on. No Montana doesn’t regulate
the number of cows.
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AUDIENCE: I have another question, I know that you said the predatory birds are protected, the wolves
are protected, and the bears are protected but as a rancher if they are after your cattle you have the
right to kill a wolf or a Grizzly.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Not sure about a Grizzly.
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2009
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AUDIENCE: Okay. What about the birds? No. Does it happen anyway because people are trying to
protect their livestock, their living? It have to wouldn’t it?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well (laughs)
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AUDIENCE: I’d have trouble not protecting what was mine.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Think about yourself what do you need to survive. How much of your private property
do you want to give away to something? No matter what you’re doing, if you’re a store owner, whatever
you got. When the wolf first came in it was, you know they were fully protected. It’s like a grocery store
or one of the store on main street leaving their back door open so the wolves can come in and take
whatever they want. That’s where we were and that’s the way we felt. There was nothing we could do
about it. And they talk about black boxes and electric fences and flagger and all that is a certain amount
of protection but it’s not very long lasting because they get used to it.
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AUDIENCE: Just like the cows got used to the wolves being there __accustomed
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah. You scare something off so many times. You take cows you can only scare them
off your corn patch so many times finally they don’t pay attention to you anymore.
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AUDIENCE: Yeah.
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AUDIENCE: Why would you delist the wolves if there is a working , it seems to be working wolves have
become accustomed and the wolf packs are showing little (inaudible) they don’t want to be shot
(inaudible) so it was the learning curve that was painful . They are past the learning curve if you delist
them as you said depopulate through the entire Montana area (inaudible) you going to have another
learning curve through the wolf pack. I see it as working and so what I wanted to, why would you want
anything different?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well, it’s working here it’s not working out 150 from now.
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AUDIENCE: Will it eventually?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Well, maybe eventually. But then how do you stop the wolf from being accustomed
to people?
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AUDIENCE: I think that the thing that exists here doesn’t. Does it not? Around people or in__
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah but when they start to become more wolves they start becoming more
accustomed to people they start moving in. You have to have some mechanism to make them more
scared of, more respectful of your home and your livestock.
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AUDIENCE: My question is what would you add to this existing law that they don’t do that?
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I’d just delist them. I’d just delist them. They’re fine. It’ll work.
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AUDIENCE: And then the wolf learns if they come near a ranch they’ll gonna get shot.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Yeah it’s going to be the same thing if he gets to harassing you know he’s going to
have to be harassing the same rule here except to the whole state of Montana instead of just half. You
just can’t go out and kill them because they are there. That’s not going to work. And that’s not law. And
if you want to go to the economic side of things the wolf license is a going to run on a quota system so
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when they reach a certain number of wolves in an area then that season is shut down. And it really
makes sense economically because permits, you only sell a limited number of permits and only bring in so
much but if you have a quota system every deer hunter is going to buy a license just to have in his pocket
in case the opportunity is there . So instead of a few thousand dollars, well there’s eighty thousand deer
licenses in Montana and sell for 20 dollars. You can do the math on that. What the wolf license would
bring into the state for Montana residents. And you still wouldn’t kill off that forty wolves, I think that’s
what the quota is. Yeah.
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AUDIENCE: Is it necessary to do that? What if the state of Montana the people say we’d rather forego
that income and not kill wolves cuz it’s not for food , it’s just a trophy thing . We can only respectfully
handle so much and it is such a family unit.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Why? What’s wrong with a trophy? Oh bore. (laughs) What? Why, what’s wrong
with a trophy? You and I are going to get into it here pretty quick (laughing)
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AUDIENCE: I like the, I’ve never really come up with someone who had that amount of, you know, in
Indiana we don’t see ranch mentality and I love it.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: So what’s wrong with a trophy. I have a right to like a trophy. So and what’s wrong
with economics cuz who’s going to pay for the wolf biologist? You want to add a little more to it?
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AUDIENCE: I see__him as an equal.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: What?
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AUDIENCE: I see him as an equal, so killing him, I’m sorry.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: I’m sorry. We need to help you out some more because you need to read the big
book because when he created the earth, and I’m sorry if I interfere with anybody’s religion here but he
did create man to manage wildlife.
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AUDIENCE: Didn’t he also say not to eat hooven animals, which cattle are?
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AUDIENCE: You can’t pick and choose, you can’t pick and choose.
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AUDIENCE: Well thanks for meeting with us.
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AUDIENCE: Thank you.
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BRUCE MALCOLM: Thanks for the questions