LAST EDITED ON Mar-25-06 AT 08:41AM (MST)[p]The wolves in the Yellowstone area, in my view (I'm not a wolf biologist), need some hands on management through limited take (they may need it in other areas too). I believe their numbers have gone up much quicker than people had estimated, only a few years ago. I think there likely are enough wolves to open a take season on them, but to remove them completely would, to start, violate ESA, and in short, be completely irresponsible not to mention stupid ? that's right, I think it would be stupid to go back to the ?no-wolf? days. .
I also believe wolf management may be a little more complicated than just opening a season or issuing a few tags for their take. No matter what we do, we never can do just one thing. The systems are too complicated for that type of narrow thinking. I think total wolf/elk numbers, and their ratio to one another, might well be a management issue that will gather more attention but one that is very complicate. I know wolves and elk do live together and in fact they evolved together and in areas where their numbers are in balance, both are hunted. This does not mean they are killed in great numbers, but they are hunted.
However, I also believe that if we, as a society want more elk, we have to consider the mortality of both elk, and wolves, whether that is take by humans, cars, illness, predation, or natural mortality.. There always will be elk, and wolves together, the wolves will not kill all the elk. There always will be a demand to hunt elk and wolves. To me, the key to this balance is to determine how many elk, and how many wolves we want. I don't think we will get it right all the time, but we do need a goal and we do need an adaptive management plan that will allow us to increase or decrees harvest as necessary to meet our management objectives. We cant have it like it was in the early 90's, those days are over, so, lets move on and start the discussion about what and how to manage in the new generation where wolves and elk will live together...
It will be bad for everyone if we just turn our backs on this and let the wolves, bears, and elk all fend for themselves. We intervened, we value elk, some value wolves, and now we need to do the responsible thing and figure out how we all are going to have our demands met. I think it's possible, but it's going to look a little different than it did in the mid 90?s. .