Livestock Protection Collars in the United States, 1988-19931

The livestock protection collar (LP Collar) i: one of the few technical innovation: developed over the past 20 years fog managing coyote depredation on livestock Invented by Roy McBride in 1970, the LF Collar was researched at length by the Denver Wildlife Research Center (DWRC; and several cooperators before being approved for use with Compound 1080 by the U. With this transfer, the LP collar registration passed to APHIS along with other vertebratd pesticide registrations. APHIS has continued to support the collar registration (#56228-22) as well as a related, manufacturing-use registration (#56228-26) for the technical Compound 1080 needed to make LP Collars LP Collars have not been used under the APHIS registration, which made no provision for training and certification of collar users. However, the APHIS registration makes it possible for individual states to establish applicator training and certification programs, and to authorize certified applicators to obtain and use collars. Collar use by state-certified, rancher applicators began in April 1988 in Texas and soon thereafter in Montana and New Mexico. Wyoming has trained a few applicators, but collars have not been used in that state except in a research project in 1990. Collars have not been used in South Dakota. Texas Animal Damage Control (ADC) personnel began using LP Collars in 1990. These workers were trained and certified by the Texas Department of Agriculture, just like other LP Collar applicators in Texas. Now that the LP Collar has been available for 5 years, it is appropriate to assess progress toward the implementation of this new technique in coyote depredation management. In this paper, I attempt such an assessment by summarizing and analyzing collar use from 1988 through 1992. The Compound 1080 LP Collar consists of a 2 x 6-inch, inflatable rubber bladder with velcro neck straps to hold the bladder in place under the throat of a sheep or goat. Each collar contains 30 ml of 1080 solution (10 mg sodium fluoroacetate/ml), 15 ml in each of two toxicant compartments. All collars used to date have been manufactured by Ranchers Supply, Alpine, Texas. For detailed instructions on the collar and its use, see the EPA-approved technical bulletin (Connolly 1985). Approximately 3,000 LP Collars were distributed to state-certified, rancher applicators in 4 states from 1988 through 1991 (Table 1). Collars were placed on 2,753 sheep or goats for a total of approximately 111,700 collar use nights (1 use night = 1 …