In thinking about wolves and the faulty proposal to remove them from endangered species status, my thoughts turn quickly to Aldo Leopold. Leopold, 20th century forester, wildlife manager, conservationist, professor – and hunter – is perhaps best known for "The Land Ethic" from A Sand County Almanac. He is also known for another essay from the same book, "Thinking Like a Mountain." In that essay, Leopold describes a change of heart he experienced upon hunting a pack of wolves:
We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.But as biographer Curt Meine has documented, Leopold did not, in fact, come to appreciate the value of wolves as a young man. Rather, a lifetime of experiences as a forester and a wildlife manager eventually convinced him of the folly of exterminating wolves to create a "hunter's paradise":
Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.With the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone producing positive effects on the local ecosystem, Leopold's views have been vindicated. We would do well to learn from them, remembering that we too are dependent on the other species around us.
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