It's not clear just when the wolves in Yellowstone National Park sense that the helicopters are coming, but with their sharp eyes and keen hearing it's certain they notice them fast. Last week one of the choppers suddenly appeared, flying low over a meadow where 14 gray wolves were bedding down in the crusty snow. The wolves immediately scattered, but not so fast that a crew member in the helicopter wasn't able to take aim with a modified rifle and fire a net over one of them. As the large pup thrashed in the net, another man leaped to the ground and injected it with a sedative. In short order, the crew corralled five more wolves and then spent an hour or so checking the health of the animals, drawing their blood and outfitting them with radio collars. Then, as the wolves awoke, the men edged away and waved them back into the wild.
The wolves that were netted last week are members of one of the most lovingly tended--and now hotly debated--animal populations in the world. Part of a group of 90 or so gray wolves, they are among the first of their species to tread the snows of Yellowstone in 65 years. Hunted almost out of existence in the western U.S., gray wolves have been making a triumphant comeback since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced two groups into the park's 2.2 million acres and into another large patch of wilderness in nearby Idaho. In the three years since the animals' release, conservationists have nursed the nascent packs along in a program that is being lauded as one of the most successful wildlife projects of all time.
All that threatened to come to an end last month when a federal judge ruled that while the program's goals might be noble, its methods are illegal. The only solution, he declared, is to remove the transplanted animals. In the cruel calculus of the wild, "remove" could mean "kill." If the judge's decision survives appeals, the next time the helicopters appear, the rifles may be loaded not with nets but with bullets. "This is a defining issue of right and wrong," says National Wildlife Federation president Mark Van Putten. "It would be morally wrong to exterminate them a second time."
The relationship between humans and wolves has always been a troubled one. Just a century ago, more than 100,000 of the fearsome predators roamed the West, helping themselves to the abundant prey and vast territory they found there. Early settlers, who saw the wolves as threats to both their cattle and themselves, generally killed them on sight. Ultimately, the government placed a bounty on the wolves, encouraging hunters to shoot them, trap them and even burn them alive. Before the middle of the 20th century, Canis lupus was wobbling on the edge of extinction.