San Marcos — Last week I wrote about the reintroduction of grey wolves to Yellowstone National Park. The wolves took to the park and the elk herds like ducks to water.

From the original 14 wolves released in 1995, now 171 wolves live in the park. They have spread far beyond the boundaries of Yellowstone.

More than 1,300 now roam parts of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming (discard last week’s typo-error of 13,000). So the program has been highly successful, but not everyone is happy about it. As Paul Harvey would say, “Let’s hear the rest of the story.”

What naturalists, conservationists and park rangers are rejoicing about most ranchers and hunters abhor.

Opponents of the wolf reintroduction see the timber wolf as a vicious predator. Wolves obey no game laws. They observe no boundaries — park boundaries, state boundaries or personal property fences.

Yes, man is also a predator. Man is at the top of the food chain.

But, unlike the wolf, man is a predator with a conscience. A wolf would kill the very last elk in Yellowstone. Man would enact protective laws to manage the herd.

Opponents push the fact that the mushrooming Yellowstone elk herd could have been managed by conservation hunting. Huge amounts of money could have gone into the financial coffers of the United States Fish and Wildlife service by selling hunts in Yellowstone. Some of the big trophies would have resulted in thousands of dollars that could have been used for conservation management programs.

If the Yellowstone elk herd has shrunk from 18,000 to 6,000 since the wolf reintroduction in the mid-1990s, what is going to happen when the wolf numbers grow from, the present 170 to 570?

And what about the wolf’s rapid population growth outside the park?

Already elk hunting outfitters are screaming. Ranchers are experiencing more and more livestock loss to wolf kills.

Although Defenders of Wildlife have established a $100,000 compensation program to reimburse ranchers in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Arizona for losses caused by wolves, reintroduction opponents have argued that the program is nothing more than a publicity tool. It is inadequate for addressing the problem of livestock loss to wolves, due to the fact that the program has apparently unrealistic criteria in confirming wolf kills. This can be problematic, as wolves often leave little physical evidence of kills the size of lambs and small calves.

In order to quell the political battle between the ranchers and the conservationists, while still ensuring proper management, the federal government has agreed to move the wolf from the Endangered Species list and allow state management of the species if Idaho, Montana and Wyoming all propose management plans that meet the Fish and Wildlife Service’s approval.

Currently plans proposed by both Idaho and Montana have been approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Wyoming is the only member of the trio who has not authored a plan accepted by the service.

Despite being approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service, Idaho’s proposed management plan is still shrouded in controversy.

The plan proposed by the governor of Idaho calls for the killing of 550 wolves, approximately eighty percent of the current population, and a reduction in the number of breeding pairs from 72 to just 10. This plan is strongly supported by many state residents. According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s guidelines the Idaho wolf population needs to stay above 100 individuals for the species to stay off the endangered species list and remain a viable, sustaining population.

So the controversy rages on.

On our recent trip to Yellowstone, I spent a day with a Wyoming hunter who has been my friend for many years. Like the majority of Wyoming hunters and residents he strongly opposes the whole “wolf thing.”

“Wyoming folks resent the federal government pushing their wolf thing down our throats,” he said. “The feds think we’re stupid and don’t know how to deal with the exploding wolf population”

My friend Marty continued, “Just wait ‘til the wolves spread into Colorado and begin to decimate the largest herds of elk in North America. We’ll get some help then. Colorado is not going to lose the millions of dollars brought into their state by elk hunters and wildlife viewers.”

I agreed.

I didn’t think the town of Estes Park would put up with wolves killing thousands of elk in Rocky Mountain National Park. Many of those elk visit the golf course downtown Estes Park. It’s a huge tourist draw.

Regardless of official “wolf status,” I think any wolf that crosses the scope crosshairs of a Western rancher’s 30-06 is in big trouble.



Jim Darnell is an ordained minister and host/producer of the syndicated television show, “God’s Great Outdoors.” His column appears every Thursday in the Daily Record.