Look People, There are intelligent Cattle ranchers out there
Today we hear the cry, mostly from outfitters and guides, that after years of building up elk populations, it’s insane to let wolves decimate the herds. It’s probably understandable that our collective memory forgets that settlers, homesteaders, miners and professional hunters took care of devastating the buffalo, elk and deer herds. The wolf, finding his natural prey absent, took what he could find, which many times came down to livestock, dogs and sheep. We stole the wolf’s livelihood out from underneath him and then tried to extinguish his very existence simply because we forced him to rely on domestic prey.
The elk herds have rebounded, not so much because wolves were damn near eradicated, but because we humans quit killing them off in such huge numbers. By putting wolves back into the ecosystem, we are putting a balance on the natural order of things.
And before you get on me about the unpleasantness of wolves killing elk, think about the many ways in which we have killed wolves over the years: we poisoned them with arsenic and strychnine (which in turn killed millions of other animals that feasted on their carcasses), dragged them behind vehicles and galloping horses, choked them to death in snares and raided their dens, beating the pups to death with blunt instruments or burning them alive in small fires. Fortunately for us, wolves are not vindictive.
People who push for the extermination of wolves call guys like me wolf-loving parasites, liberal maggots and other less-pleasant names. Whatever.