Except for the uninterested, and there a quite a few of them, the 21-year old controversy over wolf restoration in the West is not really about wolves. Unfortunately instead, it has become another “values” contest. To some degree it has also become another red versus blue dispute.

When wolves were first reintroduced in 1995, with a second batch in 1996, there was some genuine debate whether this was the best way to restore them to their native range in Idaho and Wyoming, or whether it was best that they slowly come back to the Northern Rockies on their own by southward migration from Alberta and British Columbia.

Experts and average folks alike discussed whether a wolf reintroduction would take hold or wither and die, whether or not the wolves would reduce elk and deer populations. Would they kill thousands of cattle and sheep each year? Would they be a threat to people in the woods?

Much knowledge has now been gained. There are at least a hundred scientific studies about the reintroduced wolves. I thought about making this a summary but this would have to be expanded into at least a small monograph.

At the outset, there were those dead set against wolves no matter what. They came mostly from public land ranching and some agricultural related interest groups like the Farm Bureau Federation.

Other people were completely in favor of the new wolves right from the start, but many folks seemed genuinely open to new information. The militant anti-wolf narrative didn’t develop and spread until about 5 years had passed.

Politicians played an important role spreading this opposition narrative. In 1995, a Republican Senator from Montana, Conrad Burns, predicted the wolves would kill a child within a year. It didn’t happen, nor did anything like it happen in the wolf recovery zone in the next 20 years. However, in the U.S. Senate Burns was able to cut off funding for the scheduled second wave of reintroduction in 1996.

The wolves were brought south that year anyway using some departmental excess funds, donations from non-profits, and volunteers. The Democratic Governor of Wyoming Dave Freudenthal repeatedly told the media that the 30 or 40 wolves then in the state were doing the impossible — literally destroying Wyoming’s economy. Soon other politicians, almost all from Western rural areas took up the anti-wolf cause, increasingly using militant language.

This rural geographic base of political support for anti-wolf gives it a political advantage because localities can elect people. In fact, all American elections except for the President come out of geographic districts. Pro-wolf opinion is often the majority nationwide and this is true even in Western states. It comes mostly from the cities of the West and is distributed around the country with much less geographic clustering. It is rarely concentrated enough to win elections.

Those familiar with politics will recognize the political logic of having a concentrated local viewpoint in opposition to a widespread, more numerous, but nowhere densely clustered view in the other direction. The concentrated view or interest is likely to win. This breakdown is common in political issue after political issue. This is one of the most important lessons to be learned about practical politics.

Besides the unfortunate political logic faced by pro-wolf groups, the wolf advocates have also been taken to task by some of their friends for making mistakes both tactical and strategic, but there is a good reason to believe that the current situation of a slowly declining wolf population due to human mortality coupled with very unpleasant anti-wolf rhetoric would have happened regardless of any tactics the pro-wolf groups used.

For example, from the beginning pro-wolf groups gave financial compensation to livestock owners who lost animals to wolves. Public opinion surveys have shown this tactic in no way improved rural perceptions of wolves nor did it change the belief that wolves drive owners of livestock to the wall financially. The non-violent demeanor of wolves toward humans — no dead children, no attacks on people period — made no difference either.

In fact, the wolf issue was fit into the quiver of anti-government arguments at large that emerged after 2008. Wolves served as a scapegoat to take some folk’s minds off the real causes of the terrible economic disruptions of the Great Recession.

The pro-wolf argument was and remains about the beauty of wolves, the need to restore natural ecosystems, and that wolves have few negative impacts and many positive ones.

On the other hand, the anti-wolf position hardened into apocalyptic tirades. The wolves are said to be the worst thing that has ever happened to big game with the elk and deer in an advanced state of decline. Moreover, they say the agricultural sector of the economy has been delivered a blow to the gut.

While no group is immune to believing conspiracy theories, the anti-wolf position relies on them. The nice thing (or actually the bad thing) about conspiracy theories is that they are almost immune to facts. For example, giving a clear factual rebuttal of a conspiracy theory usually just leads its believers to simply say it shows the fact giver is part of the conspiracy.

Regarding the wolf restoration, many anti-wolf people have been led to believe it is a conspiracy to bring a gigantic non-native beast to Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, from the “far away land” of Canada. Instead, they say, any efforts to recover wolves should have been to restore a supposedly timid, small, and best of all, never seen, native wolf of the Rocky Mountains, canis lupus irremotus.

It is further said that wolf recovery is part of a greater conspiracy to end hunting, destroy game animals, bring in more federal control (or perhaps even United Nations control under something named Agenda 21), destroy gun rights, and the like. The motivation for the conspirators is malice, and under Agenda 21 the goal is the removal of the residents of small towns and rural areas to create a gigantic wildlife preserve.

Wolf advocates have traditionally relied on the federal government to offset what they saw as the backward policies of the Northern Rockies states toward all large carnivores.

Unfortunately for them, after friendly President Bill Clinton, there came two Presidents who were of no help or who aided their opponents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Neither President was personally involved with wolf policy, but their appointments and nominations to key Department of Interior positions ranged from being uninterested in to against wolf restoration. Obama is now about to preside over a disastrous delisting of the Greater Yellowstone area grizzly bear.

Despite these setbacks for those who support wolf restoration, the wolf population has only declined somewhat in Idaho and Montana since an amendment in Congress forced them off the endangered species list. Remarkably the wolf population in Wyoming outside of Yellowstone Park is now growing again after the Wyoming wolf hunt was stopped two years ago by a federal court decision taking wolf management away from that state. In fact, the Wyoming population is now at 383 wolves. This is its highest point since the restoration began. Wolves have also naturally spread to Washington, Oregon, and northern California. These are states that seem more favorable to the concept of wildlife that more into account than an animal’s value for hunting and trapping.

While this is very speculative, perhaps twenty years from now we might see wildlife distributed differently than now which is by geography and habitat rather than by politics. In the future, red states might have big populations of a couple kinds of large grazing animals, designated as “game,” plus varying numbers of other animals, deemed to be “varmints.” The game would be managed much like livestock, e.g., cows are privately owned “slow elk.” Actual elk are public owned quick cows, good for hunting adventure.

By then blue states might have allowed or promoted a much larger variety of wildlife, and they would be treated like wildlife as well as game. The category of varmint would be abolished.

Regardless, the issue will remain unpleasant because it is really about the cultural values of rural versus those of urban and suburban areas. Reason will not prevail. The facts be damned!

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Note: this article is a revised version of one published in the Idaho State Journal on May 1, 2016.