Somewhere on a remote mountainside in Colorado’s Rockies, a latch flipped on a crate and a wolf bounded out, heading toward the tree line. Then it stopped short.
For a moment, the young female looked back at its audience of roughly 45 people who stared on in reverential silence. Then she disappeared into the forest.
She was one of five gray wolves wildlife officials released in a remote part of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains on Monday to kick off a voter-approved reintroduction program that was embraced in the state’s mostly Democratic urban corridor but staunchly opposed in conservative rural areas where ranchers worry about attacks on livestock.
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It marked the start of the most ambitious wolf reintroduction effort in the U.S. in almost three decades and a sharp departure from aggressive efforts by Republican-led states to cull wolf packs. A judge on Friday night had denied a request from the state’s cattle industry for a temporary delay to the release.
It’s weird to think that ecologists, biologists, and other scientists who have studied this issue historically as well as other reintroduction efforts are “blindly” believing anything…
Meanwhile elsewhere… https://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/people-predators/public-perspectives-on-wolves-and-wolf-reintroduction-8-004/
“ Studies suggest that attitudes towards wolf reintroduction are influenced by individuals’ beliefs about the right for wolves to exist as well as their emotional responses to wolves.”
Great read! Very interesting.
I still think it was silly to have reintroduction of wolves up to a popular vote instead of leaving it up to the professionals. But it happened, I’m curious to see how far their range goes, the ones in WA go all over.