I am a conservationist. I am also a realist. There simply is no room for wolves in our world today. We do not need them. They serve no purpose whatsoever. I think the argument of the wolf and bison is non-sequitur. While I agree with that the near extinction of the Bison for hides or as a method of starving native Americans was unconscionable, that agrument in no way translates to the wolf. Yes, the wolf is an animal and is due consideration by us. So lets do that. The bison, all species of deer, grazers and browsers are prey animals. Cows and sheep and dogs, cats and children are also prey animals. Wolves, coyotes, mountain lions and bears are predators. But only the canines are pack hunters. And that is the problem and the distinction being missed. A cat kills a deer a week. A pack of wolves might kill one a day. Coyotes kill and kill and then eat the organs and intestines of their prey while they are still living, often wasting the meat altogether.
Deer do not consider humans a prey species or competitor. Prey animals see humans for what we are, predators and competitors. Regardless of whether overly emotional people find that designation offensive, it remains true. Fortunately, we are also able to adjust our behavior to consider other species and our obligations to them, predators like wolves, bears and cats can not. They eat, sleep, kill and make babies who eat, sleep, kill, and make babies. While you consider all this, know that the only reason we have all the wildlife we do is thru management. That management allows game population levels that would be unsustainable without hunting and land management programs. When we reintroduce predators into a world where we are the dominant predator there could be only one outcome and it was entirely predictable. We created a world abundant in prey species. Due to our cultivation of the land, there are likley more deer in America today than when the Pilgrims landed. We manage those species thru hunting and culling. But then we want to fool ourselves into believing that God's world requires balance without considering that wolves don't follow laws, ours or God's. Cats don't know that joggers are not prey. Wolves and bears cannot read the sign that says, "please don't eat the cows, or me". Reintroducing wolves and coyotes was human hubris, nothing more. Deer herds are being decimated. In New England small game such as rabbits, partridge and pheasant etc. are becoming extinct due to the huggers tolerance of coyotes. Only now when it is a manifest disaster are people coming to understand that you cannot have both. What people need to accept is while God's plan requires balance, it also allows predators to breed based on the food supply. Lots of deer - and coyotes and wolves have larger litters. They will continue to breed to meet the abundant food supply until they effect that supply. That's when man and beasts must interface. And they do that with often horrible consequences.
The simple fact is there is no place for other apex predators to be left unchecked in our world. Predator populations MUST be kept to a controlled minimum, if allowed at all. Predators are not touchy feely cuddley critters. Having witnessed how they kill up close and personal, I'm for erradicating them in the lower 48 states. I was there when the conservationists succeeded in reintroducing wolves in Idaho against the warnings of ranchers, who for generations have free ranged their cattle. Their warnings that the wolves would kill cattle fell on deaf ears. Well wolves kill cattle. They kill sheep. They kill deer and Elk and moose too. Then they kill muffy and skippy and mittens. They kill rabbits and, oh lest I forget, they kill other predators when they can. The wolves population is almost out of control. They coyote's is. We are seeing coyotes living in large cities. You know what they hunt their? Cats and dogs. Both game and domestic species are dying. On Cape Cod they opened a coyote den when dogs and cats were disappearing. In just one den they found 38 pet collars that solved several years of missing pets.
And if we cannot articulate an actual use or need for wolves and want to rest on God's plan, God gave us dominion over the animals too. That is was also part of his plan. Sometimes dominion must be the lessor of two evils.
Just sayin
