Wolves used to roam wild in the American west. Settlers 'Go West' and, well, settle. To survive, the settlers plant crops and raise livestock. The livestock are easy pickin's for the wolves, so the wolves flourish.
Angry settlers start to hunt wolves to prevent livestock losses. The settlers do their job so well that the wolves are hunted to near extinction. The rest of the country decides this is a travesty and supports the reintroduction of wolves to the area; only this time the wolves are protected by the federal government. This doesn't sit well with the ranchers (From Reuters, via ENN.com):
Ron Gillett, head of the Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition, wants to "immediately remove them by whatever means are necessary."
"They kill everything, all of the game first, then the predators, then each other," he said, adding that they are outsiders.
"These are Canadian wolves," Gillett said. "The only place they belong in Idaho is in a zoo, neutered."
But the biologists beg to differ:
Wildlife biologists say wolves roamed Idaho long before the region's settlement and the threatened species was hunted to near-extinction before strong nationwide support prompted its reintroduction to the American West.
Carter Niemeyer, self-described "educator, peacemaker, moderator and referee on wolves" for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Boise, said studies show that the numbers of livestock and game killed by wolves are low. "But I know they don't want to let facts get in their way," he said of anti-wolf activists.
So we are back to where we started. Sounds like a classic property rights dispute. The question then, who has the right? Do local property owners have the right to protect their land from wolves? Or does 'society' have the right to protect the wolves? It looks like the locals are going to win this round.
Next week, Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and Interior Secretary Gale Norton are expected to sign an agreement that would place management of an estimated 500 gray wolves into state, rather than federal, hands.
Different Idaho groups, including hunters and livestock producers, pressured state officials to give them greater control. Officials in Boise then asked Washington to make the change.
The agreement would give ranchers permission to eliminate wolves that harass livestock. It also would empower state wildlife managers to pick off wolf packs that make a dent in the state's deer and elk populations.
But what happens if the wolves are over-hunted again?
