As Wolf Populations Rebound, an Angry Backlash Intensifies

[Brenda]

By Jim Robbins • December 12, 2024

Next month will mark the 30th anniversary of a landmark wildlife experiment: the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park. The gray wolf had been nearly extirpated throughout the northern Rockies and had been federally listed as endangered since 1974.

Diane Boyd, a wildlife biologist who had started collaring and tracking wolves that entered northern Montana from Canada in 1979, supported the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s broader reintroduction effort in the West over the last 30 years. “The return of wolves has been wildly successful beyond all expectations,” she says today. “It’s amazing.”

Thanks to reintroduction efforts and protections of the federal Endangered Species Act, which forbids any killing of the animal, wolves are now abundant across the West. They number roughly 3,000 and are now living not just in the Northern Rockies, but in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and among the giant sequoia groves of California.

In the United States, the assault on wolves has ramped up in several northern Rockies states where restrictions have been lifted: Hunters and ranchers are shooting and trapping wolves legally, running them over with high-powered snowmobiles, slaughtering pups in their dens, and pursuing their prey after dark using night goggles, a practice considered unethical by the hunting community. Advocates for wolf protection are still fighting to restore the species, but as the wolf expands its territory, resistance to such efforts — or to any restoration of protections — is growing more widespread and more fierce.

Such views are common in Western states, where the topic of wolves is so emotional that the animal is treated like no other protected species, with both science and the law often taking a backseat to politics. For example: Wolves were listed as endangered in the Northern Rockies until 2011, when Montana Senator Jon Tester and Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson, at the behest of the livestock and hunting industries, attached a rider to a must-pass defense bill that delisted them in those states. It was the first time Congress had directly removed an animal from the endangered species list for purely political reasons.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/wolves-united-states-europe

America is the most perverse and violent nation on Earth with exponentially diminishing ethics.