You own this, but not this

Land ownership has been chopped into some really funny-looking parcels. With surface land it is usually pretty easy to tell who owns what; all the fences along the roads saying "Fill-In-The-Blank" Ranch. However, a foot below the ground a completely different company may own the minewral rights. I first ran into this concept in graduate school, and it took me some time to get my head around it. Raymond Firestone had sold the land to Bath Township to turn into a nature preserve, but the Firestone family retained the mineral rights. The most frustrating part was that an oil pipeline ran right past my research field, and when it burst the university had a heck of a time getting the company to do anything about it.
If I eventually figured out the difference between surface rights and mineral rights, I'm sure the ranchers out here understand it. However, to throw a monkey wrench into the proceedings, all wildlife, no matter where it is, is owned by the state. In other words, all wildlife found in New Mexico belongs to New Mexico. It seems that some ranchers have yet to grasp this statute. There are a couple around who don't like us to trap and radio collar lesser prairie chickens on their land because they don't like those unsightly collars on "their" chickens. The excuse has been that they weigh too much (the heaviest collar we have weighs about 3 grams).
I think it's a power play. "We're the landowners, you have to keep us happy, so therefore we can use whatever crazy reason (if any) we want to make you do our bidding." And generally, we will. When I hear that talk about wildlife on their lands being "their" wildlife, I just bite my tongue for the good of the organization. I hope a day comes when offending someone else is not a concern in the biological community because while some things may make a few people mad, they need to be said.

Bioenergetics

There are big predators and small predators, and the size food they can accomodate varies with it. Shrews are predators; they eat insects. Lions are predators; they eat zebras and gnus, sometimes even elephants! Even voles can be considered predators, though few people have ever heard the term 'seed predator.'
Unfortunately, the term predator comes with a lot of stigmatization. There was a bobcat in these parts a year ago, and the ranchers were convinced it was killing and eating their cattle. A bobcat is a little bigger than the average housecat, and incapable of delivering the kind of force it would take to kill a full-grown cow. Even so, someone shot the bobcat. I have no idea whether it cut down on livestock deaths, but I doubt it.
When I was in graduate school one of the things I looked at was seed predation by voles and what size seeds they ate. Not surprisingly, my results suggested that they ate the seeds that were smaller or had papery seed coats, and the larger seeds or seeds with thick coats stayed in my petri dishes. Caloric expenditure may be desirable for a lot of humans, but for a rodent that may not encounter food for several days it has significant detriments. If it takes more energy to get to the food than are given by the food, the rodent, wolf, moose, deer, etc. will be no better off for having taken the gamble. Some animals do, and may well die if it doesn't pay off. That's why a lot of predators prefer to pick off the sick and the weak rather than attacking a healthy animal that is well-equipped to defend itself. By picking off those animals, voila! The rest of the population is healthier.
Being a predator is not a bad thing, at least not if you don't have stock to protect. But in protecting that stock ranchers need to realize which predators are a threat and which aren't. It will take a lot of worry out of the ranching process.