My point of view as an Idaho native is that the reintroduction should never have happened. The wolf native to Idaho was the subspecies irremotus, and always existed in small numbers even into the 90's. see this article:
http://www.idahoforwildlife.com/fil...tdoorsman No 48 April 2012-Native wolves.pdf
and this article:
http://www.lobowatch.org/adminclient/Species/go
By introducing the subspecies occidentalis, we effectively killed off the remaining native wolves.
Even one of the most vocal wolf lover advocates agrees that the subspecies that we introduced is not the native wolf species for Idaho/Montana, see here:
http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com/tag/canis-lupus-irremotus/
But they don't care because to them any wolf is still a wolf and we shouldn't worry about the details. I'm not saying that irremotus was any better than occidentalis but we should have worked on helping that species before we started throwing a new species into the mix.
I agree and recognize that in Yellowstone park the elk were overpopulated and this resulted in damage to plantlife by overbrowsing. Since the introduction of wolves into Yellowstone there has been more streamside vegetation and the numbers of smaller mammals have increased and an argument could be made that certain things have improved. However outside of Yellowstone the role of predator to keep elk populations in check was occupied by humans. Wolves are unnecessary for a "balanced ecosystem" because humans took their place.
As things currently stand, elk and moose populations are declining rapidly due to wolf predation. The wolves are very near to exhausting their prey base in certain areas and perhaps then the wolves will also begin to die off. We're very close to seeing this happen in the Bitteroot valley in Montana and the selway lochsa area in Idaho. What will happen when this extends across more of their range?
I believe that wolves still do have a place in our mountains but they should be managed like any other animal and not revered as some sacred and majestic symbol of all things wild.
The fact is we can never return nature to its original state, having read many accounts of the early west from the fur trade era on to the mid 1900's it is clear that many things were different from even what we think of as the natural state. There were fewer elk and wolves than there are today in Idaho. Bighorn sheep were far more common and Bison ranged into more high ranges and other areas than people realize. In some areas, deer were less numerous than they are today. Nature is a changing thing and to try to restore it by introducing wolves or any other animal is useless because we really don't know what condition to restore it to.
Bottom line is we didn't need to introduce wolves for the purpose of restoring "balance" that may have been true in Yellowstone where hunting is not allowed, but everywhere else had human hunters to control ungulate populations. I also think that it would be impossible to kill off wolves using traditional hunting and trapping methods. Efforts to eradicate wolves in the first half ot the 20th century focused on poisoning. Wolves are here to stay but we must manage their populations and reduce their population where necessary.
