Well, I am one of those left wing eco-terrorists who just totally despise trapping. The specific trapper, Coke Wallace, who is taking out the Toklat wolves seems especially ignorant to me. I have a lot of respect for science and research. Also, if you are going to put a family group of wolves in a national park where they are an attraction (bringing tourist dollars to the area that enrich local residents), and they become too used to humans, I think you have an ethical responsibility to protect them from trappers. Certainly there are enough wolves outside of this family of wolves the trapper could trap, and last I heard, there were plenty of moose in Alaska, as well.
The wolf problem is a lot more widespread than that, of course. All over the Northwest, yuppie vegetarian tree huggers support the reintroduction of wolves, and farmers resent them greatly. When I listen to the farmers talk, they are discussing their rights to farm and graze like they have been on their land forever, but really it has been only about 150 years at most. The wolves lived their for eons, and in my opinion deserve the run of the West. If those pesky farmers stopped rearing livestock and kept their dogs in at night there really wouldn't be very many problems. |
