Wolf makes it all the way to Colorado

Beyond all odds, a young female wolf from Montana has crossed the vast divide from Yellowstone, through Idaho and Utah, and is now in Eagle County, Colorado.  No one would probably have ever known of this wolf's incredible journey had it not been for a GPS collar that she is wearing.  The collar tracks her movements by satellite and sends the information back to biologists studying wolf movements in the region.  Wolves were once common in Colorado and biologists estimate that there is still enough wild prey and habitat to sustain several thousand wolves again in the state.  Wolves are important to the Colorado ecosystems as they can help bring better balance between their prey species (elk and deer) and their habitat. 

Aldo Leopold spoke to this important balance when he wrote:

"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.

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.

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades. So also with cows. The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf's job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.

We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau's dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men."

~ From Thinking like a Mountain by Aldo Leopold.

With any luck this wolf's courageous journey marks the beginning of the wolves return to their ancestoral home in Colorado.

Comments

[gpcreative]

I have a web video show called The Dog Files. This month we did an episode about a Wolf Sanctuary in New York State called The Wolf Conservation Center. I think you might like it. You can check it out here. http://www.thedogfiles.com/2009/01/14/wolffile/