With wolves entrenched, debate has shifted

For Ed Bangs, 2009’s first wolf hunting season in Montana and Idaho proved that the federal Endangered Species Act works. As one of those instrumental in their reintroduction in the Northern Rockies in 1995, Bangs said the season was evidence that the wolves have advanced from a species threatened with extinction due to poisoning and trapping in the early 1900s to a predator whose numbers are so abundant that they need culling through hunting. That abundance comes with a high price tag for ranchers like Kathy Konen near Dillon, who lost dozens of ewes and lambs over the past decade to wolves, including more than 120 mature, prized Rambouilette rams in one attack last summer. Yet to others, such as Louisa Willcox and Matt Skoglund with the National Resource Defense Council, the claims of wolf recovery remain premature. They believe the reintroduction of wolves in the Rocky Mountain region is a success story in that wolf numbers are back from the brink and people are now talking about how to live with wolves, not whether to live with them as was angrily debated a decade ago...read more