Dear HCN,
Ray
Ring’s article “Wolf at the door” (HCN, 5/27/02: Wolf at the door)
gives one the impression that things are going so well with the
wolf recovery program in the Northern Rockies that any day now
wolves will be marching through southern Wyoming and into Colorado.
Much as we’d like that to be the case, the science does not support
that claim; to the contrary, the science indicates that the only
way Colorado and the rest of the Southern Rockies will see wolves
reclaim the landscape is through an active reintroduction
program.
In a paper due to be published in the
next issue of Conservation Biology, Dr. Carlos Carroll, Mike
Phillips, Dr. Nathan Schumacher and Dr. Douglas Smith indicate that
the Red Desert of southern Wyoming presents a formidable barrier to
the southward migration of wolves from the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem. The lack of adequate cover, low density of prey and high
density of livestock in southern Wyoming all combine to make the
area a “sink” for dispersing wolves. Even Ed Bangs, the director of
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf
Recovery Program, publicly admits this
fact.
Given this reality, and given the fact that
nearly 50 world-renowned scientists recently called upon the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service to do significantly more for wolves in
the lower 48 states, the success of the Northern Rockies wolf
recovery program should not be used as cover for administrative
efforts to abandon wolf recovery.
Multiple agency
and independent studies have concluded that the Southern Rockies
could support a robust population of wolves, and that a bipartisan
majority of the region’s residents supports an effort to repatriate
wolves to the region. Elk, deer and other wild ungulate populations
in the Southern Rockies ache for wolves to return to their
important role here. Likewise, the aspen in places like Rocky
Mountain National Park long for wolves to again keep the elk on the
move (thus preventing them from over-browsing the young aspen and
willows).
Reintroduction is the only sure way to
return wolves to the Southern Rockies and thus restore the balance
of nature. Our children and grandchildren deserve as
much.
Rob Edward and Tina
Arapkiles
Boulder,
Colorado
Rob Edward is director of the Carnivore Restoration Program, Sinapu. Tina Arapkiles is Southwest Regional Representative of the Sierra Club.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Wolf reintroduction balances nature.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
