about the hunters? They are quite vocal in their opposition—do they have a valid argument? Do ranchers?” I ask.
“As for the effect on the total game population, there have been local impacts, for sure. Wolves are a part of that. We’ve added one more mouth to feed out there. However, weather has an even greater impact on game populations, always has. You really have to look at every small area, case by case, before you can label the cause of the population change. We’ve gone through waves of panic, and of depredation—some cattle, sheep—but now things are settling a bit.”
She speaks calmly and her statements are thoughtful, rational. It’s difficult to imagine anyone on either side of the argument taking offense, or even disagreeing with her.
“What do you, though, Liz, think about wolves coming back onto the land?” I ask.
She makes it clear her response is personal, not Montana FW&P’s position. “We’re trying to make a place for wildlife on the landscape. To do that, we need to build tolerance for wolves, which means setting hunting and trapping guidelines, allowing that for hunters. There also has to be some control. Some way for ranchers to feel supported, heard. And we do all of this both for perception, and for real management needs.”
I feel her walking a line, a line every state wildlife agency employee understands. She knows where her agency’s funding comes from: hunting tags. Montana hunting and fishing licenses brought in forty-eight million dollars to the state in 2014. Liz knows it’s hunters who provide the bulk of funding for her miniscule, overcrowded office, this cramped conference room with its exposed brick walls, and the helicopter which takes her out on observation and collaring missions, where she’s able to actually put her hands on those loved, feared, and hated canines. She admits the department is missing input from wildlife lovers and watchers. Almost all of her interactions are with hunters and ranchers. Hunters who pay for her department’s existence and ranchers who side with the hunters, at least as far as wolves are concerned.
I’m curious about the time she spends outside of these walls, away from paperwork and politics.
“I keep learning, all the time,” she says, her eyes brightening. “I do observation flights frequently, counting wolves, counting pups. They really are charismatic—they’re fascinating animals. And they share so many traits with humans—I think that’s why we’re so drawn to them. Collaring wolves is an experience without equal—there’s nothing like it I’ve ever done in my life.”
Doug Smith had described experiencing the same excitement Liz feels. After twenty years in the park, researching, studying, and processing wolves, he’s never lost the thrill, that powerful response to seeing a wolf, let alone touching and working with one.
“What would it be like if wolves were to move into Utah, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, in a significant way?” I ask Liz.
“Going through the public uproar is just part of the process,” Liz replies. “Most Montanans really value their landscape; they love the land and the wildness of it. Take the Bitterroot Valley, as an example. It’s well-populated, diverse. Ranchers, hunters, retirees, people living in trophy homes—they’re there because of the beautiful landscape. But you know, if you’re going to live there, you won’t be able to let your dog roam, or keep chickens out. When people feel that we as an agency are managing the wolves, it helps them create a better long-term approach to co-existence. If we’re purely pro-wolf, they feel discarded. We need to let them know we understand their needs. We’ve been able to do great proactive work in the Blackfoot watershed, utilizing a range rider and other tools, because keeping ranchers around is really a community goal.”
Doug had said the same thing, but shared concern about the “social carrying capacity,” the level to which we as a society are willing to tolerate and live with wolves, and wondered if we’ve already surpassed it. When wolves were stripped of their protection in 2011 in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, liberal hunting regulations leapt into place. Already, close to two thousand wolves have been killed in those three states. Thirty-plus years ago they were labeled endangered, twenty years ago they were brought back and allowed to reestablish, and now the governments in states where they live are working hard to bring their numbers back down to the legally mandated minimum. In Montana, that’s thirty breeding pairs. In Wyoming, outside of Yellowstone itself, ten. In Idaho, fifteen. In Utah, poised to deal with state management if the federal endangered species classification is terminated, that means two breeding pairs. Some people are in an uproar over this. Others want even more wolves killed. And then there are those who have reached their caring capacity, who are tired of the hubbub, who no longer really care about wolves at all. Some people are embittered, angry that their lives are affected by so many outside forces, and scapegoat the wolf. Some shy away from these controversies, overwhelmed by the shifting world—changes in climates and economies—believing the solutions are out of their hands.
Doug believes man and wolf can coexist. The problem, he says, is that not only do we compete for prey, but we are too similar. Wolves form life-long bonds, use highly sophisticated non-verbal communication, parent their young, make use of extended family, defend their territory, and are the top predators in their natural environment. Man’s desire to be the hunter places him in direct competition with a powerful, competent creature. In some, Doug says, wolf hatred runs deep.
Unearthing the roots of today’s anger toward wolves is something many, from Barry Lopez in his book Of Wolves and Men, to Doug Smith, have attempted to do. Ralph Maughan, who hosts the Wildlife News—a website chronicling wolf news from the start of the reintroduction in 1995 to the present day—believes he has one answer. He claims it wasn’t until almost a decade into the restoration that a “militant anti-wolf narrative” developed, led by key politicians in wolf-recovery states, and some who aligned themselves with the Tea Party or similar anti-government groups. The wolf became a scapegoat for the recession, any decline in ranching economy, and the fact that a hunter was unable to track and kill his intended prey. Today, Ralph claims, what we see is cultural conflict. He argues that the current controversy over wolf restoration in the West is not really about wolves at all.
It’s the end of Liz’s work day, and she’s stayed late just to talk with us. I don’t believe I’ve accessed Liz Bradley’s true feelings about managing wolves in Montana, but I realize she wants to keep her job. She likes working with wildlife, and it’s clear that she loves working with wolves. Before we part, she bends forward, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and rests her elbows on her thighs. She leans into her words.
“The most important thing we can do today is have our children develop a love and appreciation for the natural world. Once that’s established, the rest of the decisions come easy.”
Not so very long ago there was a mountain. As mountains go it fell somewhere between Sagarmatha—Nepal’s Goddess of the Clouds—and Magazine Mountain, a bump in the flats of Arkansas. It was an ordinary mountain, unnamed and taken for granted by all who lived upon or traveled its sloping sides. That number was significant, from insects and earthworms burrowing in its soil to the bushy-tailed foxes in their earthen dens to the red-tailed hawks and robins, warblers, thrushes, and hummingbirds whose nests dotted the aspen whose roots hugged each other deep below the pine-needle- and brown-leaf-covered soil. At the seam where the mountain met another, where the creek flowed, lived a beaver colony, replete with fish and frogs, water striders, bluebirds, mallards, grebes, and songbirds, whose voices soared from the glade.
If we were to count the flowers, the penstemon, the lupine, all of the balsamroot and Indian paintbrush and wild hollyhock, the lives supported by the mountain would climb to numbers we can barely comprehend. Thick with conifers, aspen, scrubby oak, the occasional twisted and gnarled juniper, the undergrowth is springy and green, gathering sunrays filtered by towering trees. Last fall’s leaves and needles carpet the soil which is rocky, nutrient rich, bustling with insects and earthworms that tunnel
