Wolf comeback turns predator into prey

The US Fish and Wildlife Service this week announced that it will now be easier for ranchers and others in the Northern Rockies to shoot wolves. Some environmentalists and animal-lovers object. But the new regulations in fact are a sign that the wolf - hunted to near-extinction over the past century - is making a healthy comeback.

Gray wolves reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s are thriving, to the discomfort of elk and coyotes, who used to have the run of the place, and to the delight of tourists who gather to catch a glimpse of the mythic animal and to hear its distinctive howl. The wolf's presence there has helped restore the ecosystem to something closer to the natural, which is part of the argument for allowing wolves to live elsewhere as well - as long as they don't eat too many sheep, cows, or game animals favored by sport hunters.

Meanwhile, administration officials say wolf populations in the upper Midwest have grown to the point where they can be removed from the endangered species list, and they've loosened the restrictions on shooting wolves from airplanes in Alaska.

Since the closing of the American frontier, the essence of wildlife management has been the attempt to balance conflicting values, especially when it involves predators who see domestic animals - be they cattle, llamas, or cocker spaniels - as lunch.

Wolves in North America have always been at the top of the food chain, highly efficient pack hunters who dominate other species - except for human beings, who traditionally treated Canis lupus as a threat, a competitor, or a game animal prized for its thick pelt.

Human hunters didn't have the stamina or especially the killing jaw of the wolf. But they did have steel traps and firearms, which more than evened the balance of power. By the 1930s, wolves had been all but eliminated from the Western United States.

Fifty years later, a few Canadian wolves began migrating south along a range from Idaho to Michigan, where they were protected as endangered species by the federal government. Then Uncle Sam, wanting to accelerate that trend to the point where packs could survive naturally, brought a few more wolves into this country.

Even though wolves still occupy just a small fraction of their original range here, the increase in numbers has exceeded expectations.

In the Northern Rockies (Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming) there now are about 825 wolves, with the number in Idaho alone growing from 35 to more than 10 times that number. The gray-wolf population in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan (where they're also known as timber wolves) now stands at more than 3,200. In Yellowstone, the original group of 31 transplanted wolves has grown to about 170 animals in 15 packs in the park (some 300 in the ecosystem that includes the park), which appears to be the carrying capacity for the Yellowstone region.

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