Decrying wolves.

Denver

For more than six years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tinkered with proposals to bring the grey wolf back to the Rocky Mountain West. Then, shortly after the November elections, wildlife biologists suddenly decided they could wait no longer. Before anyone could say, "Repeal the Endangered Species Act," Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's troops were ferrying the tranquilized canines to helicopters as packs of wolf groupies howled their support.

The timing could hardly have been worse. Winter storms buffeted the Rockies, making it difficult for biologists to capture the Canadian grey wolves and dangerous for helicopters to fly them to their new homes in central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. A lawsuit filed by ranching interests sought to halt the project, and Western lawmakers were threatening to put the wolf program on ice.

Fish and Wildlife officials barreled ahead anyway, insisting the wolves had to be brought in immediately to give them time to get used to their new habitat before mating season. In all probability, the project's newfound urgency has less to do with the wolves' libido than with the carnivores in the new Republican Congress. An offshoot of the Endangered Species Act, the animal-recovery program has long had its critics among rural Westerners. With eco-warrior Democrats in charge of the Congress, their gripes weren't widely heard. But last November's Republican sweep ushered in a posse of "wise-use" conservatives who had made it clear they would try to delay or even block the wolves' arrival.

After the Fish and Wildlife Service's fait accompli, furious Western lawmakers sank their teeth into Mr. Babbitt at House and Senate hearings on the wolf program. "It is my sincere belief that Secretary Babbitt abused his power by rushing the introduction of wolves back into Yellowstone," said Representative Barbara Cubin (R., Wyo.), "because he realizes the 104th Congress is going to reauthorize the Endangered Species Act and make it more representative of what it was originally intended to be." Senator Babbitt denies the charge.

Even some environmentalists will admit there are problems with the wolf-reintroduction program. In a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, attorneys note that grey wolves have been migrating steadily south from Canada for years. Some have already reached Montana, and wolf packs are expected to settle in Yellowstone in about thirty years on their own initiative.

So why is the Federal Government spending upward of $13 million to helicopter-lift two hundred wolves over the next five years? Wildlife biologists say thirty years is too long. They want the predators here now to help reduce Yellowstone's burgeoning elk and bison herds and to give scientists a chance to study them before they arrive naturally. Taxpayers might argue that, for $65,000 per animal, the Fish and Wildlife Service could afford to send the biologists on weekly junkets to Alberta for wolf observation.

The real reason for the wolf program seems to be the popular appeal of charismatic megafauna," those large, dramatic species like grizzly bears and wolves that give the untamed wilderness its lure. Witness how Mr. Babbitt rhapsodized about the wolf and confessed his guilt over his family's "tragic" role in clearing the wolves out of northern Arizona in the early part of the twentieth century. "My family has been cattle and sheep ranching going on five generations in Arizona, and my grandfather and his brothers were part of the movement to eradicate the wolves from the lower 48," Mr. Babbitt said at the House hearing.

Clearing Mr. Babbitt's conscience comes at a high price, paid mostly by ranchers. In Canada, 41 per cent of livestock found dead have been killed by wolves, says Jim Streeter, policy director of the conservative National Wildlife Institute. Only a week into the reintroduction program, a repatriated Idaho wolf was shot after attacking and killing a newborn calf.

Even environmentally correct ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson sided with the ranchers, citing his experience chasing mountain lions off his New Mexico ranch. "If wolves proliferate like they once did, the ranchers are going to be driven out of business," said Mr. Donaldson on This Week with David Brinkley. "Now, that may be wonderful for people who say, `I love wolf,' but they may have to subsidize the rancher or find some other work for him."

Ranchers do have some recourse, but not much. Under the terms of the wolfreintroduction program, they can shoot only wolves caught in the act of killing or devouring their livestock. Since cattle and sheep are often spread out across hundreds of acres, however, many ranchers stand a better chance of winning the lottery than of nabbing a wolf in flagrante. Even if he should be so lucky, the rancher had better hope he actually owns the ill-fated cow or sheep. Only the owner of livestock under attack may use lethal force against the reintroduced wolves. In the Idaho case, the wolf was shot by someone other than the rancher or his employees. The unknown perpetrator may well have been acting out of concern for a neighbor's cattle, but he could face up to a year in prison and $100,000 in fines if caught.

As stiff as the terms of the wolf-reintroduction program are, they will get stiffer if environmentalists have their way. The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund has sued to bring the wolves under the long arm of the Endangered Species Act, which would prohibit ranchers from shooting, harming, or harassing the wolves in any way, even if they catch them brunching on their livestock. Worse, federal wildlife managers could fence off thousands of acres now used for grazing or recreation if they deemed those activities a threat to the wolves' health, shutting down ranches and throwing hundreds of people out of work. Warned Senator Alan Simpson (R., Wyo.), "I can assure you that if ... federal land managers restrict public access to large tracts of land in parks or national forests in the name of wolf protection, there will be backlash."

The Sierra Club attorneys note that wolves who cross the border from Canada into the American Rockies are considered endangered because their numbers are so few - in Idaho and Wyoming, that is. In Canada, the grey-wolf population exceeds sixty thousand. In Alaska, the wolf population has grown so large (about seven thousand) that local officials worry the predators will decimate the region's caribou herds.

Western lawmakers will probably move to overhaul the Endangered Species Act before the worst-case scenarios can come to pass. But even Mr. Babbitt's critics admit it would be virtually impossible to track the wolves down at this point and fly them back to Canada. The only realistic option would be to hunt and shoot them from the air, which would generate intense public opposition. But if they can't remove the thirty wolves already there, Western lawmakers can see to it that no other wolves join them. As one Western Republican aide put it, "A lot of us think that funding for the wolfreintroduction program would be a great place to cut the budget."