Restoring wolves to the northern Rocky Mountain region—an idea first floated in the 1970s—has always been more a political question than a biological decision.

In the American West, ranchers and farmers have held most of the trump cards since Europeans overran Native Americans. Backed by the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bureau of Land Management, they have won most of the battles over dams, development, and grazing rights on federal lands.

When conservationists began to win a few of the first battles over wolf reintroduction, the wolf became a symbol of the ranching industry’s slipping influence and the rising power of environmentalists, both in the region and in Washington, D.C.

Once the federal government decided that it had the backing of enough people across the country to take on the region’s agriculture interests, the decision was made to bring back the wolf to both Yellowstone and central Idaho under a plan that addressed the legitimate concerns of the livestock producers. The project was buttressed by a compensation fund administered by Defenders of Wildlife from which ranchers receive full payment for any verified wolf killing of livestock.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service brought some 70 wolves from Canada to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in 1995 and 1996. The animals are thriving. Wolf experts had predicted success, but no one expected to see the wolves doing this well just three years into the program. Biologists in Yellowstone are only beginning to understand the cascading impacts of the large predators on the region’s ecosystem.

One thing that is clear: Ranchers’ worries that the wolves would drive them out of business were baseless. Since wolves were brought back to the Yellowstone region, they have killed only about 80 sheep and 5 cattle. Ranchers in Wyoming and Montana lose more sheep to “tipover”—when a sheep rolls on its back and can’t get up again—than to wolves.

Those results show that wolves will not spell the end of western ranching as we know it. They make clear that the debate over wolf reintroduction is not really about wolves and their potential to kill livestock. The real issue is who controls the West, especially its public lands.

Indeed, some ranching interests still cannot stand the idea that the U.S. public forced them to accept a public policy decision they had fought so vigorously. The American Farm Bureau filed suit to block the plan.

In December 1997 a federal judge in Casper, Wyoming, declared that details of the reintroduction program violated the Endangered Species Act and ordered the removal of the wolves. Implementation of the order has been stayed pending appeal.

Should the courts back the Casper judge, the public should demand congressional action to ensure that these magnificent animals retain their rightful place in Yellowstone and the northern Rockies.