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. © 2016 The Author(s)

In this article, I share river restoration techniques for land owners whose ranch property boundaries extend to the middle of a river. These lessons learned may help other ranchers save money and time if they should decide to tackle similar river restoration projects. Restoration techniques include fencing, vegetation replanting, and addressing the challenges encountered from floods, droughts, and stray cattle. Dramatic changes in vegetation composition occur more quickly than originally planned. © 2016 The Society for Range Management

The concepts of animal units, animal unit months, and animal unit equivalents have long been used as standards for range management planning, estimating stocking rates, reporting actual use, assessing grazing fees, ranch appraisal, and other purposes. Increasing size of cattle on rangelands has led some to suggest that the definition of animal units and animal unit months requires revision. Range managers need to understand these concepts and arbitrarily changing them would lead to confusion. The Rangeland Assessment and Monitoring Committee reviewed this issue and concluded that the existing definitions are adequate to accommodate increasing size of cattle. © 2016 The Society for Range Management