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Whatever their other attributes, and they are many, wolves are killers, plain and simple. As such, they have earned their share of enemies, no less here, not far from Yellowstone National Park, than in Minnesota, particularly in the north.
Craig Borash lives in West Yellowstone, Mont., but grew up in Chanhassen, where, as a kid, like a lot of young Minnesotans, he learned to hunt and fish. He continues those activities in the West, successfully hunting deer and elk in Montana with his bow, reaching the mountainous backcountry each fall by horseback.
"I've probably killed 40 big-game animals," he said.
But hunting in these parts isn't what it once was, Borsah says, due -- there's little disagreement here -- to the re-introduction and subsequent proliferation of wolves.
"It's just not the same," he said. "Fewer elk, deer and moose, more wolves."
Those who defend the presence of wolves there argue that nature is more balanced, particularly in Yellowstone National Park, than was the case before wolves were returned. That's true. But it's also true that wolves, as a population, don't seek to balance themselves with populations of prey animals in given areas.
Rather, they kill, repopulate and move on, expanding their territories, and in the process diminish still further numbers of deer, elk, moose and other wildlife they prey upon.
Last year, Montana hunters were allowed to kill a relatively small number of wolves. But a recent federal court decision -- yet another one -- ended that thinning, at least for now.
In Minnesota, similar court decisions have excluded the state from management of its wolves. It's in Minnesota also that the loss of untold numbers of deer and other animals to wolves each year is a burden borne by a relative few.
Dog owners, for example, in the north sometimes lose their pets to wolves. Hound hunters feel less free to lose their charges in the woods in both Minnesota and Wisconsin due to the threat wolves present. Deer hunters who have invested heavily in recreation land in the north find their properties devalued because wolves have killed off many deer or scattered them. And livestock owners spend both time and money protecting their animals from wolves.
Dave Mech, the world-renowned wolf expert from Minnesota, has long been a proponent of reintroducing these predators, not only in the United State but abroad. But Mech knows, and has often stated, that the public's tolerance for wolves is finite. When they threaten livestock and other property too often, or crowd people too closely, widespread human backlashes will ensue, he says.
But is that the case? Or, more accurately, are game animals and the people who hunt them, as well as livestock owners, the ones -- virtually exclusively -- who pay the price for the "re-balancing" of nature that wolf advocates aspire to?
Certainly that would seem to be the case in Alaska, where wolves have gained new protections, their numbers have correspondingly increased significantly and moose populations -- and the people who hunt them -- have suffered.
There's no suggestion here that an easy answer exists. Wolves are cool animals; no one argues otherwise. But one wonders whether the groups that advocate for their continued and seemingly unlimited expansion do so with greater concern for wolves themselves -- or the continued padding of their organizations' membership rolls, enlarged as they so often are by people who never have nor never will see a wolf but who are somehow comforted by their existence "out there," wherever out there might be.
Someday, one federal court or another will come to its senses, Minnesota will be allowed to manage its own wolves and these animals will again be hunted, though on a limited basis. The same, presumably, eventually will be true in Montana and perhaps other states.
When that occurs, wolves will be better off. Not only because they will again learn to fear people in places where such fear has been displaced by familiarity, but because the people who now must pay such a disproportionate price for their expansion will, finally, have a seat at the wolf-management table.
For too long, that table has been front and center in federal courts scattered hither and yon.
In the end, a re-balancing of nature that takes people, or a significant subset thereof -- hunters, in this instance -- out of the equation is no re-balancing at all. People are predators also, and their long-standing dependence on hunting, if largely today for recreation, should not be discounted to the degree it has been in Montana, nor in Alaska and, not least, in Minnesota.
In a few weeks, the Montana archery season for big game will begin, a fact not lost on Craig Borash. Hunting there won't be what it once was, he knows that, and he knows also that if he is lucky enough to arrow a deer or elk, he'd best pack it out as quickly as possible. Otherwise, the wolves that didn't kill the animal he was lucky enough to target for himself likely will tear at the carcass overnight -- a reminder once more that he, the hunter, is the loser in this modern re-balancing of nature.
Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com
