Cattle and carnivore coexistence in Alberta: The role of compensation programs

In Alberta, Canada beef producers share the landscape with large carnivores where interactions can lead to negative outcomes. We had 672 Alberta beef producers complete an online survey in spring 2014 to access the occurrence and outcomes of cattle-carnivore interactions.•We found that a majority (64%) reported losses from carnivore depredation. The average rate of calf depredation was reported at 2%, but the rate was highly variable between producers (ranging from 0 to 25% calf loss annually). The direct annual economic loss to depredation for survey respondents was $2 million. This can be extrapolated with a number of assumptions provincially to $22 million.• Alberta's Wildlife Predator Compensation Program (WPCP) paid out an average of $220,584 annually from 2011-2013. The WPCP was under-utilized,64% of producers did not report to the program,and did not adequately address financial burden experienced by producers from 2011 2013.•Producers identified a series of challenges with the WPCP including the excessive burden of proof and the effort to value ratio being too low.•We provide recommendations to improve the WPCP based on a literature review and our survey findings.