In southwest Montana, just outside of Yellowstone National Park, range rider and rancher Hilary Zaranek faces predators more formidable than wolves.

“Between 2005 and 2015, grizzlies really came onto the scene on the ranch in a way that none of us were prepared for or even knew was possible,” Zaranek told a small gathering of local leaders, ranchers and environmental activists gathered at the Glenwood Springs Library on Sunday. “Now we’re to the point where we will have 17 adult grizzlies in a field in one night. It’s really quite something.”

Zaranek was the latest featured guest at yet another Coexistence Works seminar hosted by the Sierra Club and Colorado Wild. Through Coexistence Works, ranchers and environmental activists from around the nation have shared non-lethal livestock and wolf coexistence methods in the hopes of helping Colorado ranchers adapt to the growing presence of wolves.

Over the years, Zaranek and her husband Andrew Anderson have expanded their ranch across southern Montana. They now graze around 3,000 cows annually while sharing a landscape with grizzly bears, mountain lions and a decreasing number of wolves.

Being surrounded by predators forced them to learn a new style of ranching. Rather than fighting nature, Zaranek shifted from reactive wildlife management to proactive ranch management. 

“Flexibility is key,” she said. “So the less flexible we are as a ranch, in every way shape and form, the less opportunity we’re going to have to bend and move with the changes that we’re experiencing.”

During her presentation, Zaranek urged ranchers to take a hard look at the traditions they’ve inherited. Many may be deeply rooted in sentiment and tradition, which can make change difficult. 

“That’s the part of the conversation that I have noticed is really missing, and it’s really missing because it’s really personal,” she said. “What people do on the ranch is who they are, or that’s what they believe. … there’s all this identity wrapped up in every piece of land and every practice on that land — it’s just covered in meaning. 

“So it’s really hard to start pulling that apart and looking objectively at does this really make sense?” she added. “Does this really make sense for the land, for the time, for the economics?”

Zaranek has watched neighbors shutter their ranch after just a few livestock depredations. 

“Somehow we get to this point of the generation before me who have inherited a ranch, usually three or four generations down, that has tremendous sentimental value, but almost no economic structure or integrity because most of it is run based on that sentiment, or tradition, or both,” Zaranek said. “So the ranch collapsed. The wolves were really just the icing on the cake. They weren’t the reason, they were just the last straw.”

In 2013, Zaranek and Malou Anderson-Ramirez chose to adapt, and started the first range riding program in Montana’s Tom Miner Basin. Their goal is to create harmony between livestock, predators and the land. 

Effective range riders, Zaranek said, need to be skilled in stockmanship, ecology, soil science and entomology and above all, know how to bring these elements together. Their decisions should be based on an understanding of predator hunting behavior combined with ecological drivers and livestock vulnerability. 

She focuses on strategies that reduce livestock vulnerability while strengthening the overall ranch. The first step is controlling herd behavior and ensuring cows, especially mothers and calves, stick together. Ranchers can then consider ecological factors. 

“How can cattle start serving the land?” Zaranek said. “It might not be by grazing this area at this time, but it might be by grazing over here, strategically, for just this certain amount of time, in this particular season, given these particular circumstances, and when that no longer exists, we move, so cattle are now serving the land.”

Even small changes can ripple outward and benefit the whole system. 

“As long as coexistence requires an added effort and an added expense, it’s only going to be an added effort and an added expense. It’s not self-sustainable,” Zaranek said. “We had to make coexistence, we had to make living with wolves, tie into the whole bigger self sustained cycle on the ranch, which really means if I do one thing here, it’s going to have a ripple effect out -— one effort means a lot more, and it’s going to pull the whole thing into more fluid alignment.”