ChristineB: Your wolf pet gives me no heartburn. Your admiration and appreciation for wolves, ditto, gives me no heartburn. To me it seems questionable to have introduced the wolves in the first place back into Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, but I am no wildlife management expert and don't know all the angles. However, the more I hear from people in this thread, the more I'm leaning to the side that something is substantially amiss, and corrective measures need to be put into place. It is questionable, in my mind, to introduce an animal only to have to take substantial measures to control it. Some disparaged my analogy to smallpox, but I fail to see the shortcoming of this analogy. To what good purpose were wolves reintroduced? I haven't heard a good explanation. Relative to reduction of overbrowsing by elk, I have a splendid sugggestion to address that problem -- allocate more elk licenses. Of course, this presumes the number of elk are above a target population -- as for example in Colorado where the game management people there have made it known present elk numbers are below a target number and they are attempting to whittle this number down through permit allocation policies. The reintroduction of wolves is history, however, and the question is what should be the future course. It seems to me that the right thing is to attempt to confine these animals to the park structure into which they were originally introduced. How is that to be accomplished? There's the rub. Not easy, I suspect.

I guess all of those who have been belly-aching about the wolves on this thread, myself included, should consider how our positions can be supported by the legislators accountable to us and get a letter in the mail to them. While this may have limited results -- wolf policy is NOT a high priority for most legislators, I suspect, and they probably don't associate their political future closely with their position on wolves. But what else is available? I guess those of you living in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho can pull the strings of your local Department of Fish and Game. Other suggestions? What US agency advocates this wolf policy and opposes Wyoming dealing with the problem?