That point of view sends chills down my spine, truthfully.
I seriously have to wonder about folks who say, "Fork 'em and all the 'they were here first' stuff". I mean, really, don't they appreciate any wildlife that's not stuffed and displayed in a museum, book, or webpage? Or are zoos the only acceptable place for people to view living wild animals anymore? For the record, I'm not a bunny nor tree hugger, but in my work with the DNR and volunteer time spent at the Aldo Leopold Reserve near Portage, I learned quite a bit about conservationism, and just how poor a steward of our natural environment, be it flora or fauna, we can be. That doesn't mean I want Romeo up there in Juneau to be sent to Wisconsin to be my pet puppy dog, but it makes me wonder about how much effort it would take to relocate him, since one of the Alaska Fish & Game troops decided to basically wipe out the rest of his pack. Is he officially labeled a "nuisance" animal at this point? There are criteria when an animal is just too far gone, too dependent on humans, or has no hope of surviving in the right environment, regardless of rescue efforts. Has this already been determined to be the case with Romeo?
I'd love to see the timber wolf repopulation efforts here in Wisconsin succeed, just like the wild turkey story, and let's not forget how huge the whitetail deer population has become in the last 10 years or so. My gut feeling is there's plenty of venison in the state to keep the wolf population going, putting the ecosystem back on balance. Heck, the Ho-Chunk Indian Nation has a plan to get the American Bison herd going again, beginning with a certain 16 square mile former Army ammunition plant in Sauk County. So the wolves might have a fighting chance.
However, I fear they won't, simply because of the farmers and ranchers who'll scream bloody murder about the losses they'll incur to their livestock. (These are the same folks who have the tiny veal calf pens out next to Highway 19 on -17 degree days, but I won't even get into that)
That's too bad, really. I just got a couple of those IR-triggered deer cams to mount in my 4-acre nest egg of standing oak forest. When I took my stepson deer hunting there last November, I felt great teaching my SoCal asphalt jungle stepson about the critters and vegetation we witnessed. He called his grandmother when we got home and rattled off all that he learned, from wintergreen leaves to buck rut scrapes on saplings. I'd love for him to see a living, breathing Timber Wolf on the property he stands to inherit someday.