We are going to read and hear quite a bit about wolves in the next few years. There is some evidence that that they are already in northwestern Colorado and soon there will be questions about whether we want them on the eastern slope and specifically in Rocky Mountain National Park. Quite a bit of ink is going to be spilled on this subject.
When I was young I read a book by Dorr Yeager, the first Naturalist in Rocky Mountain National Park, “Grey Dawn, the Wolf Dog,” a splendid imagining about a half wolf and the man who became its friend. In the story, the man and dog eventually find well, I’d rather not spoil the story.
The Estes Park Museum is publishing the first of Dorr’s books for young people, “Bob Flame, Ranger” and in the fullness of time I hope they will publish “Chita, the story of a Mountain Lion,” which takes place in our own Tahosa Valley, and “Scarface,” the story of a grizzly bear. Wonderful tales, well told, all. I have been urging the museum to publish of them for years.
It is the wolves that concern us at the moment, as well they should. We already have a few lions but grizzlies may never reappear. We have plenty of trouble with the blacks that supplanted them. The March 2010 issue of the National Geographic has a long article about wolves, with the pros and cons clearly outlined.
The usual arguments against wolves we’ve heard around here for years no longer have much credence. In Yeager’s books those who raised cattle for a living were in favor of the eradication of wolves on the eastern slope and on the plains. In our mountains today, however, the raising of cattle is very much restricted to a hobby or as part of a museum as at the MacGregor Ranch in Estes Park.
The crux of the matter is simply balance. The deer and elk now have only us and the lions to fear. As a result we have too many browsers and not enough vegetation to support them. They have eaten the willows and other plants that shade the streams and provide habitat for birds. The loss of willows, a prime food and dam source, is directly responsible for the disappearance of beavers in our valley.
We have sharpshooters culling the elk herds in RMNP, a job that was once that of the wolves. We have too many coyotes. They have decimated the marmot population. The coyotes eat small mammals and deprive raptors, hawks, owls and eagles of their food sources. When was the last time you saw a red-tailed hawk in our valley? When was the last time you saw a big owl on Big Owl Hill?
Too often we forget that we are part of a system, and one that has a fine and delicate balance we have disturbed, if not destroyed. We are at the top of the food chain, temporarily, but unless we recognize our responsibilities within it, we can, at least temporarily, raze the entire system.
Wolves had a place in our ecosystem 125 years ago in our valley, earned over millennia, a place that was part of the equilibrium. When we removed them, we created a imbalance that has now caused us to complain about bear intrusions and wonder why so many species we knew are no longer here.
In the coming months and years we will hear much more about wolves and whether we should allow them to return to our valley. It’s worth considering that if we disappeared from our mountains the balance would be restored in those same 125 years. We could, of course, restore the balance ourselves. The future, like all our lives, is full of choices.
David Steiner lives in Allenspark. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
