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by Cat Urbigkit, Range Writing columnist

A few weeks ago, I spent an afternoon with cattle producers in North Park, Colorado at a gathering to discuss the wolf situation in that area. I met a community of ranchers who are struggling to understand how they can continue their cow/calf ranch operations amid a fully protected wolf population.

Thanks to a court order issued by a Northern California federal judge, wolves in Colorado are granted full endangered species status, so that wolves can only be “taken” in an act of self-defense, or in defense of others. Taking is defined to include “harassing, harming, pursuing, hunting, shooting, wounding, killing, trapping, capturing, or collecting.”

This is the most restrictive management regime for any species. Even when wolves were under federal protection during the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction program, they were treated as though they were a threatened population, allowing more management flexibility.

But that’s not what Colorado producers are dealing with. Colorado’s wolf population originated when wolves crossed the state line from the predator zone in Wyoming, stepping into Colorado and into the protection of the Endangered Species Act. Confounding the problem is Colorado’s ballot-box-biology that requires state officials to release additional wolves in the state by the end of next year. Those additional animals will acquire full “endangered” status the second their paws hit the ground.

According to a letter to Colorado officials from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, harassing wolves is prohibited, and harass is defined as “an intentional or negligent act or omission which creates the likelihood of injury to wildlife by annoying it to such an extent as to significantly disrupt normal behavior patterns which include, but are not limited to, breeding, feeding, or sheltering.”

Instead, Colorado officials and landowners are to minimize wolf-conflict risk “in an opportunist and non-injurious manner” through “appropriate hazing methods and techniques” to “discourage wolves from the immediate vicinity of livestock, a human-occupied residence, or other human-occupied area on both public and private lands.”

According to FWS, hazing methods that may be used “include, but are not limited to, carcass management, physical barriers (i.e., fencing and electrified fencing), guard animals, auditory and visual scare tactics (i.e., fladry, lights, sirens, cracker shells), increased human presence/vigilance, or any combination of these measures.”

Guardian Dogs

I was invited to meet with the North Park group because there is an interest in using livestock guardian dogs (LGDs) as well as other non-lethal measures to help protect area cattle herds. But LGDs don’t just arrive prepackaged and ready to go. Using LGDs with range cattle is a new challenge in the United States, as cattle generally don’t have the flocking behavior that allows the dogs to work so well with sheep or goats. While there are some circumstances where guardian dogs work well with cattle, I’m afraid that for most of the North Park producers, it doesn’t seem a great fit.

It is critical to set livestock guardian dogs up for success, and the process begins with they are young pups, bonding them to the livestock species they will grow up to protect. But these North Park ranches are already within the territory of a pack of six wolves, and that pack has already killed a herding dog, and injured another, inside a ranch kennel.

How is a livestock producer supposed to start a pup and ensure its survival into adulthood in the middle of a wolf pack? The North Park pack has repeatedly killed cattle on several ranches. How many guardian dogs would be needed to hold that 6-member pack out of the cattle? The odds for success is stacked against the producers, and the risk to young livestock guardian dogs would be substantial. It takes time to obtain a pup, raise it, and build up a LGD pack that would be capable of protecting livestock against a pack of six wolves. What if that pack produces pups again this year, and becomes larger?

How can I advise North Park cattle producers to start a LGD program under these circumstances? I can’t. It may be an option for some producers, but it not a cure-all for the current situation, and isn’t a viable option for ranches already within a wolf pack’s territory.

We toured one ranch just north of Walden where the cattle weaning pens would provide a fairly defensible space when the cattle are held there in the winter – but it is adjacent to a busy highway. It takes a lot of time and supervision to get a LGD into adulthood where it can really be effective – but to do it next to a highway would almost surely end in tragedy. In sum, while some individual livestock producers may be willing to try developing their own LGD program, it isn’t necessarily the answer for the majority of ranches in the area.

Other Methods

We also talked about guardian donkeys, another non-lethal deterrent that ranchers can try, but are known for generally limited effectiveness when it comes to wolves. In some areas, donkeys become preferred prey for wolves (rather than a deterrent).

We talked about a wide variety of grazing practices, livestock husbandry practices, human interference methods, and physical barriers like night pens and corrals, and other deterrents – from visual and sound devices, and the use of fladry. Most of these methods hold promise for small pastures, but generally aren’t viable for range cattle production.

Human presence has traditionally been the best deterrent, but even that has its limits. Wolves in our area simply changed their habits, making kills of our livestock and engaging in fights with our livestock guardian dogs between midnight and 4 a.m. – the few hours of the night we humans are sleeping. Our colleagues in France report that when they night-penned their sheep in electrified pens, the wolves began killing sheep during the daylight hours. When herdsmen refused to take their herds into mountain pastures because of depredations, wolves moved to begin killing stock outside of lowland villages. Wolves are intelligent creatures, and as we try to adapt to them, they adapt to us and our tactics.

Wolf advocates will claim that livestock producers need to take simple steps to protect their livestock, but they ignore the difficult reality on the ground. They also claim that “only” a small number of livestock are killed, and producers are reimbursed for their kills, so it’s really not a big deal. That conveniently ignores the myriad of problems and impacts that are caused by wolf attacks on domestic livestock. The reality is that indirect costs nearly always exceed the direct death loss from wolf depredations.

What’s Needed

North Park cattle producers are already in an impossible situation. The tools that are offered to them have very limited effectiveness, and wolves quickly adapt to our tactics. In the current situation, it doesn’t matter how many times those wolves kill cattle, or dogs in ranch yards, the wolves can suffer no consequences. They will learn that, and the situation could certainly get worse.

Even knowing all this, the North Park Cattle Association members I met with were committed to doing their best to minimize conflicts. Not once did anyone say that they hated wolves. In fact, with one producer told the group that he finds wolves to be fascinating creatures, but he hated the position livestock producers were in under current federal wolf management.

Producers talked about their concerns for basic livestock husbandry while stewarding their lands with this new challenge. They also noted the inequity of impacts caused by wolves, with producers tending to larger herds just as concerned with small herd owners. It was noted that an investment banker who owns a ranch may be able to invest considerable money for applying non-lethal tools, and can sustain a higher level of losses, than a young couple trying to grow their agricultural enterprise.

These cattle producers understand the need to minimize conflicts with wolves, but the options available to them are limited. The conflict reduction framework outlined by the Western Landowners Alliance provides a more comprehensive system to support conservation of wildlife in working landscapes. It includes interconnected components of conflict prevention measures such as the hazing methods suggested by FWS, lethal control to reduce damage, compensation, and local collaboration. Colorado producers need access to all 4C’s (compensation, conflict prevention, control & collaboration), and wildlife managers should be empowered with all these tools to reduce conflicts.

The Future

Since wolves produced a litter of pups in Colorado last year, North Park cattle producers have been inundated with outsiders advising them to take simple measures to protect their herds. I say that anyone who begins a sentence with “you should …”  should themselves shut the hell up – you know not of which you speak. No two ranches are alike, and what works on one outfit might not be appropriate for another. One thing I am sure of though, is that the North Park producers will remain stewards of the land and the animals they share their lives with, while they try to navigate this difficult conflict.

As Colorado officials move forward with the voter mandate to release more wolves, there are two potential actions that could provide relief to cattle producers. The first is that FWS may allow the wolf release under a 10j rule of the Endangered Species Act, which would designate Colorado’s wolf population as “experimental” and treated as though it were a threatened species rather than an endangered species. The second is that FWS is currently conducting a status review on wolves, which more than likely will recommend a downlisting or delisting for wolves in Colorado since the agency had already determined that wolves in the Northern Rockies no longer need federal protection.

But either of those measures that could allow wildlife managers more flexibility in dealing with wolves that repeatedly kill livestock could be protested by wolf advocates. After all, it was the wolf advocates that took legal action leading to the current mess for Colorado livestock producers.

The federal decision that brought fully endangered status to wolves in Colorado was the result of lawsuits filed by certain non-governmental organizations. The list includes Defenders of Wildlife, Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, National Parks Conservation Association, Humane Society of the United States, WildEarth Guardians, Western Watersheds Project, and the National Resources Defense Council.

I’ve yet to see any of these organizations express support for the 4C’s conflict reduction framework to ensure landscapes where people, livestock, and wildlife all thrive. They should step up and do that now – unless conflict reduction isn’t one of their priorities.

Cat Urbigkit is an author and rancher who lives on the range in Sublette County, Wyoming. Her column, Range Writing, appears weekly in Cowboy State Daily.

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by Cat Urbigkit, Range Writing columnist

I’ve spent the last month alternating shifts with other family members as we camped on the range with a sheep flock for lambing. The sagebrush rangeland was been blessed by frequent rain and snow this spring, and conditions were ideal for enjoying the splendors of this season of renewal.

Lambing season is the most beautiful time of year in our ranching enterprise, as we supervise our fine wooled Rambouillet ewes giving birth. The ewes rarely require assistance, and our job is to make sure everything stays quiet and calm so the ewes can tend to their newborns without disturbance. 

The livestock guardian dogs take the night shift, keeping predators at a distance. We human herders spend the daylight hours watching over the flock, and directing its movements to new grazing areas, to water, and to hilltops to bed for the night. Our herding dogs help us as we backtrack the flock, making sure no lambs have continued snoozing contentedly in the brush as the flock moves.

Our primary task is to keep watch, and there is much to see. Discovering horned toads provokes a child-like sense of wonder, as does encountering pronghorn antelope fawns secreted in the contours of the landscape. We see wildflowers springing forth in brilliant bloom from hardy cushion plants, catch glimpses of sage grouse hens escorting their broods through the sagebrush sea, and laugh when we catch burrowing owls scowling at us from their burrows. 

The overwhelming magnificence of a quiet, starlit night is both seen and felt, as is bearing witness to a dark wall engulfing the horizon as a snowstorm roars across the landscape. In this environment that inspires such awe, I understand the wisdom in Aristotle’s, “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”

As spring’s lambing season draws to a close, my reprieve from society concludes. As though summer sun glares seem to blind humanity of its sense of awe, at my return I find awfulness in abundance.

The news is awful, from the international arena to local. Russia continues its assault on Ukraine, targeting innocent civilians. Tens of thousands of Maasai pastoralists are being forcibly evicted from their ancestral lands by the Tanzania government so that a foreign company can use the land for a luxury game preserve. Mass shootings in communities, from New York to Texas. Dozens of people are found dead, locked in an abandoned tractor-trailer in Texas. Casting aside 49 years of precedent, our nation’s highest court eliminated a woman’s right to obtain an abortion – an action in which some rejoice, though I join others in mourning.

The Biden administration is busy rolling back policies of the Trump administration, which had rolled back Obama’s policies. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has proposed that it should be able to transplant endangered species outside their historic ranges – because it still hasn’t learned lessons from the past.

Wyoming PBS’s mission to provide service to Wyoming citizens which “helps them more fully understand and participate in local, national and global events that affect their lives,” is furthered by hosting a public debate for Republican candidates for U.S. House. After receiving pushback from its decision to exclude both the public and the media from attending the event, PBS will now allow some media to be present. That’s progress, but the nonprofit failed to invite even one of Wyoming’s female political reporters to participate as a panelist. Instead of selecting just one of these highly qualified, award-winning political reporters, in a nod to establishment, the public will be presented with a man panel that does not reflect the diversity of the candidates they will be questioning.

Our politics is polarized, our humanity lacking in humaneness. Plenty of hateful rhetoric but a drought of proposing solutions. Conspiracy theories instead of truth. Too much casting blame and too little consideration of merits of ideas. Awfulness.

After experiencing a springtime of renewal, perhaps it’s appropriate that this is the way of the world as we enter summer, the season of heat, with higher crime rates, accidents, and mosquitos. 

I’m not a summer creature. While some will bask in the heat, I’ll be seeking the shade in the high country alongside our flock, joining other creatures in the shadows while waiting for the harvest, the ripeness, maturity, and the refreshing cool that comes with the arrival of the fall.

Cat Urbigkit is an author and rancher who lives on the range in Sublette County, Wyoming. Her column, Range Writing, appears weekly in Cowboy State Daily.

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by Cat Urbigkit, Range Writing columnist

At Tuesday’s regular business meeting, the five members of the Sublette County Commission unanimously voted to release attorney/client communications regarding the county’s fire mill levy in response to a Wyoming Public Records Act request, and then held a public discussion of the taxation issue for more than an hour.

The meeting room was fairly crowded, with attendees including the mayors and legal counsel for the incorporated towns in the county who had been specifically invited to join in the discussion at the meeting.

The communications included a 12-page analysis of the way the commission had levied up to one mill for Sublette County Unified Fire services in the county.

As reported in last week’s column, when Sublette County unified its local fire departments into one countywide department in 2015, it continued to tax a portion of a mill for fire protection in the unincorporated areas of the county. Residents of the incorporated towns were never subjected to the county tax.

In anticipation of the commission’s decision to publicly release the document from the County Attorney’s office, Sublette County Clerk Carrie Long prepared a large stack of copies to be distributed to the public attending the session.

Written by Chief Deputy County Attorney Clayton Melinkovich, the memo included several startling revelations. The first is the County Attorney’s determination that “the County has no authority, statutory or otherwise, to assess a mill levy for fire protection services, and as such the practice of doing so is unlawful.”

The memo reported that there is no time limitation for refunds of an illegal erroneous collection of a tax and pointed out that Sublette County has collected more than $11 million from its fire protection levy in the last five years.

Not only did Sublette County improperly impose the Fire Mill tax levy, the County Attorney’s office advised that the County also violated state and federal laws by failing to apply its General Fund tax levy uniformly throughout the county by not taxing properties located within the three incorporated towns (Big Piney, Marbleton, and Pinedale). County officials estimate that this failure represents an undertaxation of about $42,000 per year, or about $36 per person residing in the towns.

Executive Session

My column last week criticized the county commission for holding its discussion of this taxation issue in executive session on June 7. An email communication to county officials dated June 3 from Melinkovich, released in response to the Wyoming Public Records Act request, summarized the situation going into that meeting:

• “the County has not had the authority to assess a ‘fire mill’ since 2015”

• “A tax collected without proper authority would likely be found to be erroneous/illegal”

• “Erroneous or illegally collected taxes are subject to refund or credit against future payments.”

• “Eliminating Sublette County’s ‘fire mill’ and absorbing that amount into the County’s general fund levy and taxing all properties within the County uniformly would protect all dollars collected in the future from being subject to refund.”

The June 3 email was sent to prepare the Board of County Commissioners for its June 7 business meeting. The email noted: “We will be discussing whether the County is appropriately assessing a fire mill at Tuesday’s meeting.

The agenda has a brief executive session prior to the discussion for the purposes of providing the opportunity for the Board to ask any questions about the legal aspects of the attached memo or the issue and what potentially could happen next.

If the Board ultimately chooses to make a change and absorb the amount that has been levied as a ‘fire mill’ into the County General fund mill levy, this decision would need to be made through Board action. Thus, a motion, discussion, and vote would need to take place in open session.”

But the County Commission didn’t hold any of the discussion in open session at that June 7 meeting, and the public generally was unaware of the taxation issue until my column was published last week. In my view, this week’s release of documents and full discussion in open session, resolves the lack-of-transparency issue.

Changing Taxation

After discussion of the issue at length between county and town officials on Tuesday, Sublette County Commissioner Sam White said he was ready for the commission to make a decision, to take action. “I think we are doing it wrong and we need to change the way we are doing this,” he said.

Although Commission Chairman Joel Bousman pressed to request an Attorney General’s opinion on the matter, Commissioner Tom Noble said that legal opinions are just that (opinions) and “only a judge” could make the legal determination.

In the end, the commission took action as White had suggested. Prompting Melkinovich to provide the proper verbiage, Commissioner Doug Vickrey make a motion to eliminate the Fire Mill levy from the county taxation in the future. The motion was seconded by Commissioner Dave Stephens, and passed on a vote of 4-0, with Bousman abstaining from the vote.

Going Forward

This week’s action means that Sublette County will no longer impose a Fire Mill levy and will now begin to tax its General Fund levy on property owners within the incorporated towns to comply with the Wyoming Constitution’s Article 15 provision that taxation “be equal and uniform.”

The county’s fire protection program will now be a part of the General Fund budget, on par with other departments such as the road and bridge department and the sheriff’s office.

That also means that the revenue stream generated from Sublette County Unified Fire’s (SCUF) work on federal wildfires throughout the western states will no longer be protected by its designation into a restricted fund used to replace aging equipment and fire halls.

Instead, the revenues generated by Unified Fire will go into the General Fund to be spent by the county commission as it wishes (and will no longer be earmarked exclusively for fire purposes).

That issue was of considerable concern for many attendees at Tuesday’s meeting. Representatives from the towns expressed their continued support for SCUF and the existing structure of the town-county deal in which the county provides fire protection for the towns, prompting the commission to agree that the exiting program works well and expressing their support for the importance of the fire protection program.

In the end, it will be the sitting board of county commissioners that decide how much money is spent on the SCUF program every year when it adopts the upcoming budget. That’s been the way the program has operated in the past, but from now on, the revenues generated by SCUF will no longer be set aside specifically back into that program.

By the time the session concluded Tuesday, what the commission didn’t address was how to correct the mistaken taxation imposed since 2015. My guess is that any action on that front would only be prompted by a legal filing from a county taxpayer.

A full audio recording of Tuesday’s commission meeting is available here. The Fire Mill Levy agenda item begins around 1:25:44.

Cat Urbigkit is an author and rancher who lives on the range in Sublette County, Wyoming. Her column, Range Writing, appears weekly in Cowboy State Daily.

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By Cat Urbigkit, Range Writing columnist

There’s bad blood between the Sublette County Commission and Sublette County Attorney Mike Crosson. Crosson claims there is a “deep state” operating in Sublette County and has been vocal with his complaints against a county administrator, sheriff, and other county government leadership. Here’s a backgrounder by the Pinedale Roundup’s Brady Oltmans.

Even Crosson’s annual budget request submitted in April this year included a dressing-down to the board of county commissioners, which Crosson claimed “miserably failed to uphold the three basic conservative Republican core values of low taxes, small government, and fiscal responsibility.”

The conflict with the County Attorney Crosson hasbecome so extreme that the county commission requested the presence of law enforcement in its business meetings when Crosson is in attendance.

That bad blood may be impacting how the Sublette County Commission is responding to a taxation conundrum the county now faces.

Last week, when the Sublette County Commission met for its regularly scheduled commission meeting, on its agenda was an item noted as the “fire mill levy discussion.”

Unable to attend the meeting, I listened to the recording of the meeting that evening, but found the commission never addressed that agenda item.

I attended the commission’s budget workshop the next day and learned the commission had discussed that item behind closed doors ­– during one of four executive sessions held during the business meeting.

The Fire Mill Levy

When Sublette County unified its five local fire departments into one countywide department in 2015, it continued to tax a portion of a mill for fire protection in the unincorporated areas of the county. Residents of the incorporated towns have never been subjected to the county tax.

Sublette County Unified Fire provides fire protection for all the county, including in the three incorporated towns of Pinedale, Big Piney, and Marbleton which receive the service for a token $10 per year per town – similar to the law enforcement services provided by Sublette County to the towns. None of the towns in Sublette County have their own police or fire departments.

But state statutes didn’t envision such a scenario for fire protection. Fire protection could be extended by the towns out into the county, but the statutes didn’t address the reverse.

State law reads: “The board of county commissioners of any county contracting with any municipal corporation, private organization or fire department in return for fire protection service may make an appropriation in its annual budget for the purchase of fire equipment or for the maintenance and support of the fire protection and may annually levy a tax of not more than one (1) mill on the taxable valuation of the property in the county except property within any incorporated city or town or rural fire district.” (emphasis added)

Sublette County is no longer contracting to receive fire protection service, and instead, is providing that service throughout the county by its own department – yet has continued to levy the fire mill tax throughout the unincorporated areas of the county since taking over fire services in 2015.

If the county budget simply included the costs of fire protection services in its overall general fund, there wouldn’t be an issue, but state law also requires that proceeds from the fire mill levy be kept in a special fund that is used solely for the purpose of fire protection.

If the fire mill has been inappropriately levied by the county since 2015, what then? Since the county never levied more than the maximum 12 mills allowed by law, is this all no-harm, no-foul? Probably not.

Hiding Public Business

Last week, county officials conferred in small groups to discuss the fire mill issue – in small enough groups to avoid a quorum which would violate state law requiring deliberations about public business be held in public. Written correspondence viewed by me indicates the issue has been discussed since at least November of 2021 – that’s about eight months of keeping this taxation issue on the down-low.

As the Sublette County Commission prepares to adopt a new budget assessing the maximum 12-mill levy next month under the same structure that is now under question, it has failed to inform its taxpayers that there may be a problem, let alone the details.

To my knowledge, Sublette County hasn’t been threatened with litigation, and there is no legitimate reason whatsoever for Sublette County to keep this issue hidden from its taxpayers for all these months.

Taxation is surely public business, and, as the Wyoming Supreme Court has noted in the past, “The courts, legislature, administrative agencies, and the state, county and municipal governments should be ever mindful that theirs is public business and the public has a right to know how its servants are conducting its business.”

Recourse

This column is the first step to opening the door and letting the sunshine in – an airing of the public’s business.

But the door needs to be thrown wide open – and they’d best prop a rock against it because the public is going to want in the room for the discussion.

You can bet that the energy industry that pays more than 90% of the property taxes in Sublette County will take notice. Have they been inappropriately taxed? If so, what is the financial recourse? Those are the tough questions the commission will soon face.

Wyoming’s ad valorem taxation laws provide for refunds in the case of illegal taxation.  Wyoming Statute 39-13-109 (c) reads: “Within one (1) year following an illegal assessment, levy or collection of taxes an action may be filed in district court to enjoin the illegal assessment, levy or collection. The action shall be against the county assessor in the case of an illegal assessment, the governmental entity which levies an illegal levy, the county treasurer if the levy is entered on the tax list, or against the governmental entity if the taxes were collected and paid to the entity,” and “If any person pays any tax, or portion thereof, found to have been erroneous or illegal, the board of county commissioners shall direct the county treasurer to refund the erroneous or illegal payment to the taxpayer.”

As a representative of Cowboy State Daily, I filed a Wyoming Public Records Act request for documents concerning the fire mill levy, including a memorandum from the Sublette County Attorney’s office to the Sublette County Commission – a memorandum which County Attorney Mike Crosson will neither confirm nor deny exists, but does indeed exist.

I also notified the Sublette County Commission Chairman and the Sublette County Clerk that handling this very public business in executive session was improper and requested that the commission release the memo from Crosson’s office and that the entire issue be fully discussed and debated in public.

I am confident they will do so, in part because there are numerous county officials uneasy with how this issue has unfolded.

Which brings me back to the bad blood. We won’t know all the legal issues and advice the County Attorney’s office has provided to the County Commission until that information is publicly disclosed.

If the County Commission is balking from legal advice because it’s tainted by the bad blood with County Attorney Crosson, it needs to get over it and do its duty for the taxpayers of the county.

If the commission feels it needs specialist legal counsel to help work through this, tell the Sublette County Attorney that, in a public meeting. Let Crosson explain why or why not that may be justified. But don’t let bad blood, or the questioning of motivations, hinder resolution of this tough issue.

If the Sublette County Commission has been notified by its legal counsel that it has improperly imposed a mill levy, and yet choses to stick its head in the sand by adopting a new budget with the same tax-levy structure, it will be rightfully accused of a dereliction of its fiduciary duty.

If a previous county attorney made a mistake, or there was an oversight when the county reorganized the fire service in 2015, the county must move forward by acknowledging and correcting the mistake. It must prepare for the potential ramifications in its new budget. It cannot simply hide this public business any longer.

Disclosures:

1.  I work for the Sublette County Commission as an independent contractor, writing and compiling an annual budget report.

2.  I once worked under the supervision of Sublette County Unified Fire (SCUF) Chief Shad Cooper when I served as public information officer for an interagency Covid-19 response team. My son is a wildland firefighter now employed by SCUF. I have great respect for the work of SCUF under Chief Cooper’s leadership.

3.  I have numerous friends and acquaintances working in Sublette County government, and as elected officials. I respect citizens who serve the public as elected officials, and my criticism in this column isn’t a reflection of my personal feelings towards any commissioner. In addition, I hold Sublette County Sheriff KC Lehr in high esteem and believe he runs a top-notch department. (Unlike a previous sheriff.)

4. My dog in this fight – first and foremost – is as a long-time advocate for government transparency.

Cat Urbigkit is an author and rancher who lives on the range in Sublette County, Wyoming. Her column, Range Writing, appears weekly in Cowboy State Daily.

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By Cat Urbigkit, Range Writing columnist

Ranchers sometimes complain that their views aren’t reflected in mainstream reporting, but when invited to do interviews, we often decline. We let our designated industry spokespeople do the talking, and while that may work, it also results in reporting that remains distanced and insulated from what is happening on the ground and reporters are kept away from witnessing a rancher’s connection with animals and lands.

I’m one of the ranchers who often declines interviews, but I try to weigh the merits of the requests rather than automatically saying no. Because I’ve written extensively about conflicts with wolves, we get frequent requests from film companies wanting to visit, but most of these requests are declined, for a variety of reasons. When it’s obvious that we’re just a stop on the way to film wolves in Yellowstone, there is little incentive for our involvement.

This year, we were contacted by a production company working on a science-based series focused on the intersection of people and predators. I liked what seemed to be their honest curiosity about the issue and its complexities, and we agreed to host the film crew. Their visit coincided with our lambing season, and my family scrambled to have all the ranch work covered while my time would be spent with the visitors.

I met with the first two crew members to explain what to expect. As they drove into the lambing grounds, if a lamb suddenly jumped up and ran toward their vehicle, please stop, shut off the vehicle and wait for a ewe to retrieve the lamb.

That happened numerous times, as newborn lambs, startled by the sudden stimuli, raced toward the moving object. While the crew stopped and waited, ewes approached to claim their babies, giving an opportunity for filming the close bond and communication between lambs and their mothers.

I also explained that the sudden presence of a group of people approaching the lambing flock would not been seen by the livestock guardian dogs as a welcome presence, but as a threat or intrusion in the otherwise tranquil landscape.

The last time a film crew came to the ranch, a videographer tried to follow behind a guardian dog while holding a large piece of recording equipment low to the ground, getting a dog-level view. The dog, Panda, had barked and warned the guy to back off, but when he persisted, I had to quickly step in as the enraged dog wheeled around to take out the equipment.

I shared that story with the new film crew, so they were careful enough with Panda, but when one filmmaker tried a similar maneuver with guardian dog Harriet, I once again had to jump in front of the filming to intercept Harriet as she lunged to take down the equipment stalking her. {For the record, Harriet’s full name is Harriet the Horrible, and she suffers no fools among her flock with its newborn lambs.}

It quickly became apparent that Panda still held a grudge against film crews, so I ended up driving him to our camp where he was tethered away from the visitors. Harriet generally sulked amid her sheep, tolerating the crew since I was present. The other dogs either watched from scattered locations in the brush with their sheep, or left to chase coyotes.

It was a two-person crew for the first two days, but on the third day, three more people arrived. The show’s host and I had a good conversation sitting on the ground as we bottle fed orphan lambs I had transported to the location specifically for that purpose.

I wanted the crew to get to know some sheep up close, to share some of what we ranchers see, feel, and experience. That proved key to the success of the entire adventure as each crew member made a connection with our animals. Lambs followed us around as we walked, and they chewed on cables and tried to stick their noses in lenses as they busily tasted everything in the world around them.

The visit mostly went off without a hitch, but there were a few bumps. We had agreed to allow some drone filming, so long as the device was kept high enough not to disturb the sheep.

The drone operator got a little too enthusiastic and came in too low, so when I saw a ewe move away from her twin lambs, I yelled from a neighboring hilltop to get the drone up higher. By the time I had walked back to the crew vehicle, they jokingly expressed relief that I had left my Henry rifle down at the road and didn’t have it with me when the drone moved too low.

In the three days the crew were here, they were able to witness our young herding dog Fly as she moved a yearling steer away from a ewe in labor, without disturbing the ewe. They filmed Harriet’s tenderness as she tried to nap while being pestered by a lamb.

They watched me feeding salty crackers to an adult ewe who was penned at camp as she recovered from a difficult birth. They watched Awbi, a large guardian dog, gently roughhousing with small herding dog Fly, and were able to see how each type of dog does its very different job in the presence of the other.

When we hiked to the top of a hill where Harriet was perched early one morning, we found Harriet was keeping watch atop a coyote den. They learned why guardian dogs are so valued and treasured by those share their lives with these magnificent beasts. They witnessed these canine cousins of the wolf that spend their entire lives in service to another species – a species considered prey by their wild relatives.

When the professional filming was concluded, each of the five crew members took turns holding lambs and taking selfies on their phones. They were tickled to learn that lambs like to cuddle and fall asleep with friends.

Our last task was to film me reading aloud from one of the books I’ve written for children. The crew wanted to do this in my house, but I suggested since the book was about sheep and their guardian dogs, perhaps it would be more compelling if there were lambs present during the reading.

While waiting for equipment and lighting to be retrieved, I sat down with the book in an outdoor chair and set a sleepy lamb across my lap. That’s when the crew understood that this read-aloud had some real potential.

They moved my chair into the middle of a small pen with a half-dozen young lambs, and I proceeded to read the book to the attentive lambs as they chewed on the edges of the pages, and my fingers, with one lamb sleeping in my lap the whole time.

In the end, three days of filming a segment about our experiences with wolves resulted in many hours of footage of beautiful sheep and their guardians thriving in wild landscape, and each crew member had been personally charmed by those sweet lambs.

Two young filmmakers were able to witness a ewe giving birth. They were initially taken aback while watching the ewe’s labor, but soon marveled at the beauty of new life as the lamb and its mother vocalized to each other and the lamb began to try stand on its legs for the first time.

I pointed out the lamb as we passed a few hours later, so they could see the bright white lamb already walking alongside its mother. I learned that neither filmmaker had ever seen a birth of any kind, and I’m confident this was an experience they will never forget.

The show is expected to air next year, so we’ll have to wait to see what makes the final cut. But as a shepherdess, I’m content that what began as a discussion about wolves became an intimate view of sheep ranching in Wyoming.

Reporters and filmmakers can only get these views if we allow these glimpses into our lives and provide opportunities for personal experiences. There is risk involved, but the rewards may be significant.

Cat Urbigkit is an author and rancher who lives on the range in Sublette County, Wyoming. Her column, Range Writing, appears weekly in Cowboy State Daily.

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By Cat Urbigkit, Range Writing columnist

Last week’s massacre of elementary students at a school in Texas, coming so soon after another deadly rampage in a grocery store in New York, generated many sincere but inadequate expressions of “thoughts and prayers” and once again predictable declarations for and against gun control. There were plenty of people making statements, but few were actually communicating.

It seems that earnest deliberations directed toward reducing gun violence and mass shootings are a rarity. Those who dare to discuss whether universal background checks or instituting age limits on certain firearms may reduce gun violence are promptly labeled “gun-control advocates.”

For some, any regulation addressing gun safety is seen as an attack on the Second Amendment. But how is regulation of gun safety any different than the voter ID requirements pushed by many of the same constitutional rights advocates? Using the same standard, aren’t voter ID laws an attack on voting rights? Doesn’t that mean those who advocated for such laws are “voter-control advocates?”

Just as predictably as Republicans pointed to mental health issues and the presence of evil in society as the cause for gun violence, Democrats pointed to gun ownership in America as the root cause. Both sides are busy issuing statements, attempting to score political points while blaming the other party.

Conservatives blame godless liberal policies for violence, while liberals blame the Republican religious-like worship at the altar of the gun, or claim they are captive to the gun lobby. Anyone within either camp who notes that the opposing party just might have a point is condemned.

That’s where we are at as a nation, stuck in a quagmire of virtue signaling instead of working to save lives. There are a few points both sides should agree on: anyone who would shoot and kill a group of innocent people is deranged; and we need to reduce the risk of such attacks in the future.

Since I don’t envision many of our political leaders crossing the aisle for in-depth policy discussions on this issue (especially in an election year when all the action is focused on playing to the base), I suggest that the first step we all can take is to silence the language of hate.

None of us should be engaging in language that promotes hate or hatred of anyone. We must reject political candidates who engage by claiming their opponents “hate you.”

Reject their narratives that call their opponents communists or fascists and other such deceitful pettiness aimed at dehumanizing their opponents. Reject their efforts to invoke fear and distrust. Reject the stoking of hatred and violence that they claim are merely jokes or hyperbole. Reject their claims that every elected official they disagree with is corrupt.

If their campaign is centered on “fighting the enemy” don’t expect them to come to the table to talk solutions. Their rhetoric indicates a desire to continue to fan the flames and make headlines, not seek out solutions. Our political opponents are not our enemies.

As President Abraham Lincoln stated in his first inaugural address: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.”

Lincoln concluded his address with this: “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

It’s time to call up those better angels, and the words we use in doing so matter.

Cat Urbigkit is an author and rancher who lives on the range in Sublette County, Wyoming. Her column, Range Writing, appears weekly in Cowboy State Daily.

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