Wolves need us to leave some land wild for them to survive

N.S. Nokkentved

Originally published Tuesday, March 19, 2002

Big paw prints crossed the deep snow covering the meadow along Big Smoky Creek in the Soldier Mountains of central Idaho. The remains of an elk calf -- hooves, some scraps of hide, a jawbone -- lie scattered on the blood-stained snow.

The gray wolf -- Canis lupus -- once again roams the Northern Rockies.

They're not warm and fuzzy. They are wild animals, and they are predators just like mountain lions. To live, they have to kill. That is their nature.

But they belong in wild country. They embody wildness. Once they were part of Northwest, including the wild forests of the Cascades and the Olympic Peninsula. They may return to Washington on their own -- some say they already have. But they've had some federal help in Idaho and Wyoming -- some of the wildest country in the West.

In 1995 and 1996, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service transplanted 66 wolves into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. They already were staging a return in northwestern Montana. Wolves in the three-state area now number nearly 600.

Wolf recovery obviously is not a biological issue. It is a social issue.

Wolves are doing well enough that federal officials are talking about removing them from the endangered species list.

But some people fear wolves will deplete elk and deer herds, and some fear they will drive livestock operations on public lands out of business. Others try to fan those fears by suggesting wolves will eat their children.

So far none of those have happened.

The federal government spends more money trapping, relocating or killing wolves that attack or kill livestock than the livestock is worth. And Defenders of Wildlife compensate the few affected cattle and sheep ranchers at market value for animals lost to verified wolf kills.

For some reason, mountain lions, which also occasionally kill livestock, don't seem to instill such deep hatred as the wolf. Perhaps it is because the cougar is a lone hunter that hides its kill.

Whether you revere them or revile them, their presence means that natural systems still function -- at least in some places, such as northern Minnesota and the northern Rocky Mountains.

Part of this country, at least, remains wild enough for wolves.

The important question now isn't whether wolves will continue to survive; the question is whether we as humans will leave enough land wild enough to support wolves -- whether we are willing to share the outdoors with them.

People on both sides of the issue ascribe human values to wolves -- noble creatures or vicious killers. But they are neither. In the words of wolf recovery head Ed Bangs of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Helena, Mont., "They're just animals."

N.S. Nokkentved covers the outdoors and other wild places for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5445 and at nnokkent@olympia.gannett.com.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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