Yellowstone wolf: native species or invasive species?
Living in Jackson Hole has its pluses and minuses. And like anywhere in America, once you head out of town and talk to people you find different opinions about important matters. Ranchers in the West are the old breed, the people who tamed the West, the people who work through the long hard winters protecting their cattle. They make their living off the land. On the other hand the people in Jackson make their living off tourism. We continue to “tax” our visitors, pay our bills and along with our oil and gas royalties, stuff the state treasury and our pockets with enough cash to get through our winter ski season. Not a bad life.
I had the pleasure of spending some time out in the center part of Wyoming on a real ranch talking to people who had lived, worked and survived off the land for several decades. While we agreed on many things, the issue of wolves in the eocsystem was not one of them. And their opinions on what should happen to wolves was about as strong as Sarah’s view of the health care bill. Respectively, they see it from a different perspective.
But the overriding question here is about reintroduction of extirpated species into an ecosystem. Is it the right thing to do? Is it the law? How do you mitigate the impacts? The reintroduced wolves came from Canada – a place with no bison which was the original yellowstone wolves favorite food. According to the ranch manager these reintroduced wolves are decimating the moose and elk population on this particular 100,000 acre ranch. And the rancher said wolves should be killed off to protect the elk and moose that people hunt and generate income to the community and ranch itself.
The people in Jackson want to protect the wild and beautiful wolves as an integral component of the natural ecosystem. We in Jackson make our money off California tourists trying to escape the reality of living in a dying, bankrupt state. But the ranchers in central Wyoming make their money off the land – the cattle, hunting, fishing. The more wolves then the less elk and moose, more predation on cattle and sheep, more work for the ranchers. Less money.
So we reintroduced a species from Canada that only eats moose and elk into an ecosystem with abundant bison that is a much harder kill. Those who make a living from cattle say kill the wolves, those who make a living from tourism say let the wolves live. Seems we are back to the wealth extraction from the environment issue… again.
Some say that these wolves are invasive species – like a weed, a dangerous fish, a predator that will slowly disrupt the natural balance of the ecosystem that has existed since the 1930s in Yellowstone. Others say the wolf brings back the natural balance of predator-prey relationships in a ecosystem that was out of balance. Since we do a lot of fish work, we could recommend that cutthroat trout be reintroduced into all greater yellowstone rivers to offset the imbalance of rainbows and brown trout. I doubt those who have an economic interest in fishing would agree. Just like the Wyoming ranchers, we all tend to pick what is in our economic interest rather than what creatures can exist in ecological harmony.
If you have an economic interest in an ecosystem then pure conservation is not possible. You do things to enhance your income, your wealth, your standard of living. More wolves helps Jackson, hurts the ranchers. The government is just doing its job and they work for the people. They do not get to vote. Every time we try to “fix” what we humans “broke” there are consequences. Maybe the lesson learned from the reintroduction of Canadian wolves into Yellowstone is to protect ecosystems from ecologically breaking in the first place. That is what we are trying to do here at Marine Ventures. Peace.
