A community portrait, reflected in wolf management
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
By Ben Cannon
Jackson Hole, Wyo.-I have to say, one of the things I really enjoy about my job as a reporter is the contact I have with a wide range of people in this valley. Sometimes, especially when you’re first cutting your teeth as a young journalist working in a new place, that can be a double-edged sword. It forces you out of your comfort zone and out into the community.
Last week, I ran into a personal and professional acquaintance, and we chatted for a moment about Wyoming’s newfangled state management of gray wolves. I won’t name him here, but he is a true conservationist of the natural world. To him, Wyoming’s approach to managing gray wolves, which can be indiscriminately killed in nearly 90 percent of the state, is a real tragedy. I asked him how you change minds steeped in emotional history.
“If I knew that, well…,” he replied.
Later, during the weekend, I was in Hoback for a barbeque at a house along a beautiful stretch of the Hoback River.
Standing around a bonfire, I met several 20-somethings who grew up in that residential node in southern Teton County. Also present at the gathering were some mutual friends who make their homes in Sublette County. Sublette County has already seen its share of wolves killed – 13 so far – a result of years of pent up angst about the animal and the threats to ranching it represents to some. Earlier that day, two good friends of mine had even traveled near Bondurant on snowmobiles, hoping to see a wolf and kill it with their rifles.
The other barbeque attendees, several of whom were from families that first homesteaded here nearly a century ago, dittoed the sentiments that a dead wolf, with an exception here and there, is the best kind of wolf. The near eradication of the gray wolf in the area (proponents of the heavy-handed wolf management often like to assert that some wolves were always here), after all, was largely viewed as a victorious war won by their ancestors.
Generations later, the federal government had, as some see it, overstepped its rule and encroached on the autonomy of a Western state.
While talking about the issue with a guy wearing a cowboy hat and rodeo promotional vest, I rather sardonically conjured an image of worlds colliding. Given that, theoretically, a gray wolf could be shot in the South Park area just south of town, I imagined the backlash likely to happen were that to happen. I thought about a wolf killer basking in masculine pride, and also someone whose heart broke for the animal’s death.
It’s not that I want to see a wolf killed around here, but the duality of a community that attracts gentle observers of nature and also counts among its residents the kinds of folks I mentioned, is just something I am terribly fond of about this place.
And the truth is, it does seem like the “predator” management facing wolves in much of Wyoming will sufficiently eradicate those animals living or roaming outside of the zone in the northwest part of the state, where they can be hunted only in limited numbers with special permit.
I’m not sure I would frown if someone told me he or she had killed a wolf. I think that kind of reaction sort of misses the point. For better or worse, the plan falls on the state and the individual has every right to pop some hot lead in a wolf wherever they are considered predators, nuisance animals. And while I don’t need any blood on my own hands, I love that Jackson, a largely peaceable bubble in one of the world’s great ecosystems, has the issues – and people – that it does.
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A community portrait, reflected in wolf management | Planet JH News Article: Editorial
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