ALBERTON, MONT. -- Five inches of powdery snow covered the mountainside in western Montana as Ralph Thisted studied paw prints around an elk rib cage, still stained dark with blood.
The powder was too dry to hold prints well, and Thisted spent several minutes looking for a good example. Finally, he pointed at one depression the size of a man’s fist.
“That one looks like it may be one of the pups.” said Thisted. “The adults are larger.” How large? He formed his hands into a circle the size of a saucer.
For 2 1/2 years, Thisted has been witness on his Montana ranch to one of the most remarkable, and most controversial, occurrences in wildlife history -- the return of the gray wolf to the Northern Rockies.
A pack has lived and borne pups in this remote valley since 1990. It wasn’t supported to be here.
Thisted, now retired from the cattle business, watched the pack develop, observing through binoculars and a large spotting scope in his living room, rising before dawn to hide in a barn across the valley and record the wolves on videotape.
With the hunting season concluded, Thisted sighs in relief that none of the wolves -he would never say “my wolves” - fell to gunfire.
“They made it through,” he said with satisfaction. “I spotted them just the other day, all seven of them. But there’s always going to be somebody that’s out to get them.”
A half-centrury age, people took pride in killing wolves.
A shy but fierce predator capable of bringing down full-grown moose and elk, the gray wolf was poisoned, trapped, shot, bountied and even dynamited to extinction in the western United States by ranchers who feared losing their stock.
Now the wolf is coming back, moving through the forests of the Northern Rockies to new dens in the valleys and foothills. He is reawakening all the old fears and suspicions and hatreds, and generating new ones.
To many of his enemies, the wolf is not just a predator, he is “nature’s criminal,” killing animals that are not just prey, but defenseless victims.
But this time, the wolf has friends - environmentalists, animal-rightiests, movie stars and simple nature lovers.
They are turning the wolf into a celebrity of sorts, a symbol of what they see as the essence of wilderness.
“That’s not realistic,” said Steve Fritts, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who is coordinating wolf recovery efforts in the Northern Rockies.
“Some wolves will cause problems. They’ll go to places they shouldn’t go, do thing they shouldn’t do. We have to manage those animals, and always will have to manage those animals. Managing wolves is the cost, if you will, of having wolves back.”
When Fritts says “manage,” he means killing wolves that relatedly prey on livestock. The euphemism itself speaks to how prickly the question of wolves has become.
The wolf has always been more than a garden-variety predator. Culture and religion have turned it into a powerful symbol of evil that tugs at the dark corners of the mind.
Even in Yellowstone National Park, the wolf was not wildlife, it was “vermin” and activitely hunting with traps and guns.
Though there may have been a few stragglers into the 1940’s, for all practical purposes the wolf was gone by 1930.
More than a half-century has passed. Times and attitudes have changed.
Endangered Species Act became law, and the gray wolf was formally listed in 1973. Now, the Fish and Wildlife Service is drawing plans to return the wolf to those dame mountains and valleys where it once was pursued.
“Around the campfire, wolves cast pretty big shadows,” said Hank Fischer, the regional representative for the Defenders of Wildlife. “They’re just so evocative of wildness. Our world is changing so much, people just yearn for some touch of wildness. Animals like wolves let them do that.”
Critics feared that people would be attacked. Biologist dismiss that concern, saying wolves are among the most reclusive of predators. They have been known to stand back and watch even when humans crawled into their dens and handled their pups.
Hunters argued wolves would decimate game herds. Biologists agree that game animals will be killed and hunters will be affected. One estimate is that the 100 or so wolves necessary for recovery in the three areas will kill 1,500 to 2,000 elk a year.
But they say the loss is unlikely to have any substantial impact on total game populations. Yellowstone National Pack alone has about 25,000 elk.
But the strongest arguments came from the stockmen who fear for domestic herds. They find the idea galling for two particular reasons.
First is the idea of physically bring in wolves and setting them loose, knowing they or their packs eventually may prey on stock at nearby ranches.
“If the wolves come in here naturally, it’s nobody’s fault,” said Scott Wiley of the Lost Trail Ranch near Marion, Mont.
“But of the wolves are reintroduced at the taxpayers’ expense, then I think we should definitely be pay for any damages.”
It is a federal crime to kill an endangered species.
“I raise these sheep,” says Bob Gilbert of Helena, Mont., secretary-treasurer of the Montana Woolgrowers Association. “I’m not going to let dogs or coyotes get in and rip up my sheep.
“But I’m supposed to sit there and watch this wolf get into my sheep, kill my sheep, and call (federal authorities) and say, “come and help me get this wolf out of there.” And in the meantime, my sheep are torn up and killed.”