Conservationists who say wolves remain imperiled after coming back from near-extinction last century blasted the decision, complaining that Idaho and Montana have approved increasingly aggressive wolf-killing measures including trapping, snaring and months-long hunting seasons.
“We are disappointed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is refusing to hold the states accountable to wolf conservation commitments they made a decade ago,” said Susan Holmes, executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition.
Antipathy toward wolves for killing livestock and big game dates to early European settlement of the American West in the 1800s, and it flared up again after wolf populations rebounded under federal protection. That recovery has brought bitter blowback from hunters and farmers angered over wolf attacks on big game herds and livestock. They contend protections are no longer warranted.
We need to restore the original balance, which involves a lot of wolves. But we’re forgetting a huge part of the equation, bison. If we release predators where we’ve removed all prey they would’ve eaten of course they’d going to come for the closest thing possible, cows.
We also need to repopulate north America with large herbivores. Let’s just pay farmers to release cows for them to hunt. Or breed bison to release, they do so way faster than cows.
Bison restoration is already underway.