The complexity(and lack of corroborating research) of determining if human hunting and killing of Wolves and other carnivores impacts the future predation behavior of those remaining alive hampers our Game Managers from making optimum decisions for both Carnivores and livestock......I was able to find Adrian Treves(U. of Wisconsin Researcher) conclusions on this all so important topic(since we have seemingly entered an era of kill, kill, kill as it relates to Wolves, Bears and Cougars)..........Suppositions abound,,,,,,,,,,,,but in my mind far from convincing data to conclusively suggest that by killing a percentage of our wolves, bears and cougars, the remaining individuals in the population will avoid preying on livestock and/or teach their youngsters to avoid doing the same...............Seems like a combination of non-lethal deterrrants and better husbandry practices is the optimum way of minimizing predator damage to livestock...................

-Carnivores are difficult to conserve because of direct and indirect competition with people. Public  hunts are increasingly proposed to support carnivore conservation. This article reviews scientific evidence for the effectiveness of public hunts of large carnivores in attaining three common policy goals: stable carnivore populations, preventing conflict with carnivores (property damage and competitionover game) and building public support for carnivore conservation.

-The direct impact of hunting on carnivore damage to property is unclear and even doubtful given the inability or unwillingnessof hunters to remove specific individuals selectively.

-However, hunters may indirectly deter carnivores from people and their property.

-The assumption that hunters will steward carnivores simply because they have in the past helped conserve other game species requires more study as preliminary results suggest it is incorrect.

- Policy-makers may achieve support for policy if they mesh utilitarian and preservationist values held by the general public. A number of opposed hypotheses should be disentangled before researchers confidently inform policy on sustainable hunting to prevent conflictsand build public support for carnivore conservation.

- An assumption is that hunting can indirectly prevent damage by surviving carnivores, as when predation exerts an indirect effect by forcing prey to change behaviour to avoid attack (Lima 1998; Ripple & Beschta 2004). Carnivores at risk from hunters might avoid people and their ambits). In the longer term, hunting might select against individual carnivores that have learned or inherited an attraction to people or their property (Jorgensen et al. 1978; Woodroffe & Frank 2005).

-The assumption that carnivores threatened by people will learn to avoid property is corroborated by the literature on non-lethal deterrence and guard animals (Smith et al.  2000a,b; Treves, Wallace & White 2009). In particular, when aversive stimuli are triggered in response to undesirable behaviour of wildlife (e.g. motion-activated electronic sirens andlights), one sees rapid learning that persists over time (Shivik,Treves & Callahan 2003; Shivik 2006).

- Likewise the defensive responses of livestock-guarding animals towards carnivores may act as aversive stimuli. Presumably, carnivores narrowly avoiding being shot, trapped or poisoned would experience aversion.Unfortunately, few explicit tests of the assumption of indirect effects have been reported in the literature.

-There is clearly a complex interplay of direct and indirect effects of hunting with equivocal results in the scant scientific literature. It should come as no surprise that the outcomes of hunting undertaken to reduce property damages also vary.A review of US bounty systems found 'no documente devidence indicating that bounty programmes temporarily orpermanently reduce coyote Canis latrans abundance or subsequently reduce livestock depredations....' (Bartel & Brunson2003, p. 736; see also Berger 2006).

-Research on cougar hunting suggested that livestock attacks rose as a consequence of youngermales that were more prone to attack livestock, replacing resident males taken by hunters (Weilgus,R.Unpublished data2009; Robinson

et al. 2008).

- Bear hunting illustrates the variable outcomes. Forbes et al. (1994) found reduced conflicts  after a higher take of black bears around Fundy National Park, Canada, whereas research at three other sites found no such effect (Garshelis 1989; Obbard, Pond & Howe 1997; Kapp2006). Analysing Japan's annual hunter take of>1000 Asiatic black bears U. thibetanus, Huygens et al. (2004) concluded damage costs were uncorrelated to hunter take, either in the same year or the year prior.

-By contrast, a study of Europeanlynx hunting in Norway – where free-ranging sheep grazed without protection within predator habitat (Herfindal et al. 2005) – found hunter take of male lynx saved 13 lambs across avast area in the first year – saving <1 lamb per owner – and removal of female lynx saved two lambs over a smaller area.Little or no additional savings were detected after the first year.

-An observed correlation between estimates of the rate of lynx predation on sheep, the lynx population size, and hunter take of lynx was suggestive that hunters were reducing sheep losses(Herfindal et al. 2005). Yet, subsequent work indicated that these lynx distributed according to roe deer Capreolus capreolus availability not the distribution of much more abundantsheep (Odden et al. 2008).

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Note that if the above link fails to open to full article, then go and GOOGLE: "HUNTING FOR LARGE CARNIVORE CONSERVATION"..........BY ADRIAN TREVES; JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY; 2009

 

-Sustainable hunting to maintain stable populations is well understood in theory but complex life histories of carnivores, and behavioural changes of hunters and the carnivores they stalk may result in unsustainable mortality for carnivores.

-Sustainable exploitation of stable wildlife populations has a solid, scientific foundation but a review of the evidence that hunting prevents property damage or reduces competition for  game reveals large gaps in our understanding.

-Reducing the number of large carnivores to protect hunters' quarry species seems straightforward but we still know little about behavioural and ecological responses of the contested prey and sympatric meso-predators.

-For reducing property damage, the direct effect – numerical reduction in problematic individual carnivores – presents numerous obstacles, whereas the indirect effect – behavioural avoidance of humans by hunted carnivores –holds more promise.

-Scientific measures of public support for carnivore-hunting policies are almost completely lacking, particularly measures of attitudes among hunters before and after controversial wildlife is designated as legal game species.

-Moreover, illegal killing of carnivores does not appear to diminish if they are designated as game.