Colorado rancher hopes for wolves

A western Colorado rancher is testing scat found on his land to determine whether wolves finally have returned to the state, and he's eager to get them back. "It seemed logical to me, based on what happened in Yellowstone National Park, that keystone species like wolves might have a positive effect on biodiversity and restoring the health of aspens on this property," said Paul Vahldiek in a statement released by the Wildlands Network. Vahldiek has already spotted wolf tracks on his 300-square-mile High Lonesome Ranch, but the DNA tests would be the first concrete evidence the species has reestablished itself in Colorado. It's safe to say ranchers and wolves haven't gotten along in recent years, not in Idaho, Montana or Wyoming, where the predators were reintroduced in the 1990s, or New Mexico and Arizona, where rural residents have fought against the reintroduction of the Mexican gray wolf. The canines are blamed by some for devastating livestock herds and threatening people. Vahldiek clearly doesn't share all those concerns. The release from the Wildlands Network, a strong advocate of the predator returning to the Rocky Mountain region, says he became interested in wolves during a talk at a conservation meeting at the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch...read more

COMMENT

This seemed a little fishy to me. Then I found a Wildlands Network release at New West which describes Mr. Vahldiek as "majority shareholder and CEO of The High Lonesome Ranch". Doesn't sound like a typical rancher to me.

The release goes on to state:

Committed to conservation of private lands and wildlife, Vahldiek has been working for several years to determine the baseline ecology of the ranch. To further that work, the rancher hired landscape ecologist and large carnivore specialist Cristina Eisenberg to study predator-prey relationships on the land...His interest in the ecological benefits of keystone species led him to attend further meetings on large landscape-scale conservation convened by the international conservation group Wildlands Network, and he recently became a member of that organization’s board of directors...While he remains committed to conserving his ranch and abiding by the laws and regulations pertaining to any new wolf inhabitants, Vahldiek also is committed to conserving this landscape as a key wildlife linkage within what Wildlands Network calls the “Western Wildway,” a 5,000-mile-long stretch of plateaus, canyons and mountains between Alaska’s Brooks Range and northern Mexico’s Sierra Madre...

Turns out Mr. Vahldiek is President of Amene Investments "a closely held Texas based company."