 |
|
|
$500,000 predator bill passes House
By SHANNON JOYCE NEAL The Daily Sentinel
A bill to give $500,000 a year to help ranchers fight off coyotes and other predators passed out of a Colorado House committee Wednesday.
State Rep. Mark Larson, R-Cortez, who sponsored the bill, said ranchers need the money to offset the cost of an anti-trapping constitutional amendment passed in 1996.
The amendment limited ranchers' ability to use traps and snares to kill predators that feed on their livestock. As a result, Larson said ranchers have to use less effective and more expensive means to kill predators. Fewer predators are killed, resulting in more livestock losses.
"(The amendment) made a statement that these animals are state property," Larson said. "If it's a state resource, we need to pay for it and take care of it."
Craig Coolihan, who runs the U.S. Department of Agriculture's program that controls predators in the state, said it costs more than $50,000 to send a wildlife specialist into an area where a predator has killed livestock. The federal government pays no more than half that cost, Coolihan said, leaving the ranchers to pay the rest.
County and other local governments pay some of the remainder, Coolihan said. Other groups, such as the Colorado Cattlemen's Association, collect money from their members to help pay the cost.
House Bill 1162 would allow the $500,000 to be used for those predator control programs. The Colorado Department of Agriculture administers the fund, giving money to the local, state or federal agency or private group that exterminates the predators.
"I use eight dogs and a llama named Mike," Montrose sheep rancher Ernie Etchart told the House Agriculture, Livestock and Natural Resources Committee during a hearing Wednesday.
Etchart said the dogs and llama don't work as well as trapping, leading to more of his sheep being killed by coyotes.
He said the amendment placed an expensive burden on ranchers when it limited how they can kill the animals that hurt their livestock.
"I spend more money on dog food than I do for oats for the horses," said Meeker sheep rancher Nick Theos. He said he loses about five percent more sheep each year because of the predator control restraints. Theos said he has paid $2,000 to $3,000 a year for predator control programs.
Kimmi Lewis, a cattle rancher from southeastern Colorado, said the losses have driven some family ranchers out of business.
"I haven't seen coyotes run in packs since I was a little girl," Lewis, 43, said. "You can't let someone come each night and take a little bit away from you."
No one testified against the bill, but committee member Rep. Tom Plant, D-Nederland, said the state needs to use caution when it alters the state's ecosystem.
Larson said the programs don't go any further than controlling predators in areas where livestock have been attacked.
"Let them go out of business and then we'll develop their land, because that's what's going to happen," Larson said.
The bill passed 10 to 1. Plant voted against it. It must also be passed by the House Appropriations Committee before it can be voted on by the entire House.
Copyright © 2001 Herb Newsam. All Rights Reserved.