The Gray wolf was once the most widespread and successful large predator in North America. In the US, the species was found from coast to coast. That is, until Europeans arrived. We came to America with stories like Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs, stories that were designed to keep little children from going out into the woods and getting into trouble, but that also gave wolves a bad rap. Once Europeans came to the US and moved west, wolves were virtually eliminated from the landscape until there was only a small sliver of a population left in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, near Canada.
In more recent years, wolves have been making a comeback. A very slow comeback, but they have regained some of their historical territory. With the help of reintroductions into Yellowstone National Park, they now also exist in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Even so, their numbers are far below what they once were, and further reintroductions to their former range could help them along. So why isn't this happening?
Many people are opposing the reintroduction of wolves into the wild. Nobody seems to want a wolf in their backyard. The main parties opposing wolves are ranchers concerned for the wellbeing of their livestock, hunters who fear that wolves will remove too many game animals from the population, and laypeople who believe that wolves pose a danger to humans. These groups, mainly ranchers, are a major political force that make reintroductions very difficult. The truth is that their beliefs are simply not supported by facts.
Wolves are not a significant threat to livestock. In Minnesota, less than 1% of all farms in the state experience any predation on their livestock by wolves each year. Also in Minnesota, from 1997 to 1999 there were unusually low deer and moose numbers, which led biologists to believe that wolves in the state might start showing a preference for livestock since they were much more abundant than wild prey. This never happened. Wolves continued to prefer wild prey to domestic animals. There were very few livestock killed in these three years, and the victims were a few calves, diseased adults, and sheep. Wolves did not kill any healthy, adult cattle. A study in Idaho from 1999 to 2000 examined calf survival to see what impact wolves were having, if any. Of the 13 calves that died, only four were killed by wolves. Lastly, between 1987 and 2001, wolves were responsible for the deaths of 148 cattle, 356 sheep, and 37 dogs in northwest Montana, Idaho, and Yellowstone. This may seem like a lot at first, but when put in perspective, it's actually a very low number. Normal annual livestock losses in this area, even before wolves were in the picture, were 8,000-12,000 cattle and 9,000-13,000 sheep from completely natural causes like disease, injury, or complications during birth. If you're still not convinced, compensation programs are in place to pay back ranchers for any livestock they lose to wolves. The program is funded by Defenders of Wildlife, and the amount of livestock actually killed by wolves is low enough that Defenders have consistently been able to have enough to pay these farmers.
Hunters are another group that often oppose wolf reintroductions because they think that wolves will take too many deer, leaving humans with nothing to hunt. Again, this simply isn't true. When hunting, wolves target the most vulnerable individuals: the very old, the very young, the diseased, and the injured. Wolves take this strategy because, as you can imagine, healthy adult deer are very fast, very strong, and very hard to catch. With wolves killing the most unfit deer, this leaves strong, healthy deer in the population. This actually leaves human hunters with the "best of the best" deer to hunt. Wolves only kill about 10% of the deer population anyway, as they can only take so many deer before they reach their population's carrying capacity. When a population reaches its carrying capacity, it means that if it takes any more prey, there will not be enough left to feed the population. The "laws of nature" actually prevent wolves from taking too many deer in this way.
Finally, there are still people who believe that wolves are a danger to humans. This belief is based on folklore and is very misguided. Wolf attacks throughout documented history have been extremely rare, and generally fit into three categories: attacks by rabid wolves, attacks where wolves treated people as prey, and attacks where wolves responded to being provoked. Most attacks were by rabid wolves. The attacks in which wolves apparently treated humans as prey turned out to actually be attacks by wolf-dog hybrids that people thought they could keep as pets. These were not pure wolves. The few attacks by healthy wild wolves were by wolves who were being actively provoked by farmers chasing them with weapons and so retaliated, but none of these attacks were ever fatal. Since the 20th century, wolf attacks on humans have been virtually non-existent, with no attacks in North America. This is likely due to the fact that the incidence of rabies in wild animals has greatly declined, and rabid wolves were the culprit of most historical wolf attacks. Healthy wolves just do not attack people.
Wolves simply do not pose any real threat to humans, and there is no reason to fear them making a comeback in the wild. These animals are keystone predators, which means they are at the top of their food chain, and so they help to keep all of the organisms below them in balance. They help keep deer from becoming overpopulated, which in turn helps keep vegetation from being over-browsed, which then provides more food for other small animals. Wolves are important for the ecosystem in this way, and their absence has been very apparent, as overpopulated deer have been a major problem in recent times. We need to keep reintroducing wolves if they are ever going to recover in the wild. With continued education of the public, I believe this can happen.
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