Michigan timber wolf, 1930s. This must be in a controlled setting as there's a person in the background.
Southern Rockies Nature Blog: CPW: New Wolf Pack Appears in Colorado: Wolves -- our spiritual teachers (stock photo). I have a longer blog post in the works about the upcoming Colorado ballot measure on the...This should be interesting.
It now appears nearly certain that wolves are now in northern Colorado. I'm of two minds about it.
Indeed, I've always been of two minds about wolves. When I was a law student I worked as a researcher for a professor who was studying the then proposed introduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park. The following school year he kept me on in the project and we became co-authors of an article that was published as a law review article. As a result of that I interviewed some figures who were involved on both sides of what was then a debate. I recall the Secretary of Agriculture for the state declaring that wolves would never be introduced under his watch, a prediction that would fail within less than a year. A wolf advocate of the time who was a big figure at the time has completely disappeared. A Federal government figure who was very much involved and who had wolves on his thin wooden business cards is now no doubt long retired, assuming that he's even still living.
Anyhow, at the time I was in favor of wolf reintroduction, but not for the Granola way that so many were. I figured that wolves were good for wild lands, and that was good for people who like wild lands, including hunters, and also, probably to some people's surprise, ranchers. I figured there's be hunting of wolves when they were reestablished, which means that I thought that the claims that they'd stay in the park were absurd.
I proved to be more right than wrong. The wolves left the park almost immediately and they can now be hunted, although that process turned out to be one that took much longer and involved much more drama and litigation than I imagined.
What I also thought about wolves, and said many times thereafter, is that wolves weren't the problem so much as the people who come with wolves, and I was also quite correct on that.
Way back then there were those I knew down in Albany County who swore that 1) wolves had never really been fully eradicated from Yellowstone and 2) that they had seen wolves in Albany County. I was sure that #1 was probably wrong and I'm now sure it was wrong. On #2, I'm not so sure now, although my guess is still that it was wrong. The people I knew then who claimed to have seen wolves had a lot of outdoor experience and insisted that a wolf was unmistakable. Having seen wolves now in Teton and Natrona Counties, I have to agree, they aren't mistakable for anything else.
So what do I think of wolves in Colorado? Well, I guess my opinion hasn't changed that much. My suspicion is that they'll be a pain for stockmen in a state that's rapidly going from being a Western one to a large suburb of Los Angeles in some ways, but has lots of wild left still. That may be a good thing as a dose of what's really wild helps keep thing wild. And a dose of reality, wolves aren't kind, may be a good thing for The Centennial State as well.
The artist here must have never actually have seen a moose.
As for the ballot initiative to introduce them? Well, if they've introduced themselves, that ought to be avoided.
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