I am not on either side here as I don't have enouht information. but I thought I would share a little here since there was mention that the western states were comparing the wolf study to Minnesota. what you need to keep in mind is that "most" of the wolf population in MN is in the northern area (more in the NE). Most of the farmers (ranchers) are in the southern and western areas. that to me means the wolves shouldn't effect the farms as much as maybe the western states, because they aren't in the same area.
I have personally seen 3 wolves chace down what looked to me to be a healthy 6 point buck (still in velvet) when I was hunting bear in north-eastern MN. I have never seen a deer as tired as that deer was.
I did 2 quick searches on mn wolves and some on farm land. I found this site and it seems to have some good info on it and should be a good source. Here is a section of it:
Wolves occasionally prey on Minnesota livestock wherever the two coexist, but most depredations occur in north-central and northwestern counties where farm density and livestock production is highest within the wolf s range. Fritts (1982) estimated that there were about 12,230 farms (at least 80% having some livestock) in the wolf range in 1979, containing 234,000 cattle, 91,000 sheep, and an unknown number of turkeys, swine, horses, goats, chickens, ducks, and geese. Recalculation of the number of farms based on more recent census data (1982 v. 1976; Minnesota Agricultural Statistics 1984) showed about 7,200 farms. This figure is lower than the previous one because a more restricted wolf range was used in computations of farm numbers-based on a refinement of the known wolf distribution (Mech et al. 1988a); and a real decline occurred in farm numbers in wolf range estimated at 13% from 1976 to 1982. A further decline in farm numbers from 7,200 to 6,800 was revealed by the 1987 census data, but total land area in farms declined only 1%. Farm size averaged 141.6 ha in the wolfrange during the study, tending to be larger in northwestern counties and smaller in northeastern counties.
now it seems that the number of farms are declining pretty steadily. I am not sure if there are other issues involved in this because I am not going to spend the time on researching it. The actual web site this came from is
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/1...live/study.htm
I also agree with whoever said that the wolves where gone for so long that the elk don't know how to defend themselves from the wolves. This thinking might be why Canada doesn't have such a problem....the wolves have always been there.
I agree with the local states regulating the wolf population if there needs to be regulations. People in thousands of miles away don't see it first hand and don't get the phone calls from the ranchers. it doesn't effect them so it becomes low priority by human nature.