Wolves, Greater Yellowstone 'tribes' and property rights

From the Civil War until Earth Day, the states surrounding Yellowstone had a coherent culture, politics and economy. The glue holding this together was the use of natural resources. Water was to be dammed for mines and irrigation, trees cut for lumber and grass grazed by livestock. Big game exists to be enjoyed and hunted. Many hunters and the outfitting industry organize their lives around fall hunting, mainly for big game. Roughly half of this land is in federal and state ownership. The public lands not in parks were traditionally available for livestock grazing and big game hunting. For every person holding grazing permits on these public lands there were thousands holding a big game license. Together the ranching and hunting interests make a powerful and vocal constituency. The U.S. Biological Survey killed the last wolf in Yellowstone Park in 1927. A few years after Earth Day in 1970, a few individuals began studying, and others advocating, reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone Park. In 1994, the environmental impact statement (EIS) on wolf reintroduction generated over 150,000 comments. The Wyoming Farm Bureau protested with a lawsuit and the Idaho state government opposed wolves' return. Demonstrating a shift in control, in 1995, 66 Canadian wolves were released in Yellowstone Park. While wolves account for only a low percent of total livestock losses, it is culturally huge, a bright marker of the transfer of control from the cowboy "tribe" to the Greens. In terms of population, wolf reintroduction has been a great success. It represents a shift of control from one "tribe" to another...more

This "shift in control" also affects hunters. Dr. Baden writes:

In Yellowstone Park, elk comprise up to nine-tenths of the winter diet of wolves, some 22 ungulates per wolf annually, twice that predicted by the EIS. During the 2004 hunting season, the elk permits issued by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks for the hunting districts contiguous to Yellowstone Park dropped by 50 percent. The next year it went down to 100, less than one-twentieth the number issued in 1995. Wolves have expanded their range far beyond the park boundaries. Our place is 78 miles north of West Yellowstone, a park entrance, and wolves kill elk in the Cottonwood herd that winters on our and nearby ranches. Some big game outfitters claim that their business, often marginal at best, has been devastated by wolves.