Annihilation took 42 years.
Now, 75 years on, the return of gray wolves to Utah is expected in the next decade, as individuals branch off from up around Yellowstone, where more than 700 are thriving.
When the federal government eventually strips the wolf of the endangered status that has aided its recovery in the northern Rocky Mountains, management of Canis lupus will fall to the states. So the Legislature in 2003 wisely ordered up a management plan that was made public this past week following two years of sometimes ferocious wrangling. The 96-page result is a solid, reassuringly complex, framework to build upon. It is void of the shoot-on-sight simplicity of its territorial antecedent, though it could be a bit kinder to the newcomers.
The 13 members of the Wolf Working Group - farmers, ranchers, scientists, big game hunters, wolf activists and wildlife bureaucrats - are all nice people. But there was zero expectation they would make nice when thrown together to answer the howl of the encroaching wolf. That they managed, nonetheless, to achieve even a rough balance speaks well of their forbearance, heavily taxed as it was.
An important aim of the plan is to study, safeguard and track the animals, in part through application of GPS collars. But concern for wolf safety is hardly absolute, nor can it be. Protecting livestock is given necessary weight, including the ultimate right of ranchers to kill wolves that prey on, or repeatedly harass, their herds. It is a sound feature of the plan that ranchers are entitled to government compensation for any livestock losses.
The wolves' welfare will, unfortunately, also be subservient to that of deer and elk populations "when they cause unacceptable impacts to big game." What is unacceptable is up to the Wildlife Resources director. Wolves interfering with development of big game populations can be relocated, which is good, or exterminated, which should be the rarest of exceptions. Given the political power of Utah hunting organizations, however, it probably won't be.
It is enough that Utah finally has a working plan for the wolves that will, over time, give their human admirers and the wildlife environment far more than their renewed presence could possibly take away.
