“Lying was a sign of defeat, of psychic domestication, that had worked so deeply into our fiber that it passed as a form of truth. With only three or four generations in the West, we had learned to lie determinedly, almost religiously about what happened on the land. We didn’t know this country we had tried to possess.”
-C.L. Rawlins, “Broken Country”
That European-Americans entered the west carrying the collective cultural baggage of their predominantly northwestern European antecedents is not open to serious debate. Nor is it at all controversial to observe that in so doing, as the colonists that they essentially were, they largely transformed the west, not only by embracing modernity, but also by importing the norms of settlement, land rights, resource use and wildlife management that they, or their forefathers, had known in Europe. This was done with almost zero reflection as to whether or not Old World models were or were not applicable, and indeed, it appears that to white settlers of the 19th century, northwestern European traditions were self-evidently the proper framework for understanding how best to manage the vast and untamed wilderness that was The West.
There was no more question in the mind of the European settler that large predators were a "clear and present danger," than there is now, in the contemporary mind, with regard to terrorism, or organized crime. The widely diverse suite of cultures --ranging, as it did, from hunting and gathering and harvesting, to nomadic pastoralist hunters, to sedentary agricultural societies-- that already existed in North America was seen as deeply suspect and "obviously" inferior to "advanced" European mores. As such, as soon as Europeans established an organized presence in North America, they set about "taming" the land in part by exterminating its large predators, (one of which was obviously the human beings already there, but that is another matter that, although related, is too big to tackle here).
That Europeans were successful in almost completely exterminating large predators from the contiguous United States is not seriously contested by anyone and need not be examined here. It is enough to recognize that it happened and that by the 1950s, with the exception of a tiny population in Montana and a larger one in Minnesota, wolves were gone from the lower 48, taking with them whatever effects, both immediate and trophic, they once had on the various ecological systems they'd previously inhabited.
As for the attitudes and values that informed European extermination of large predators, while they have changed among many Americans, they have not changed among all, and where this divide is most evident is in the West where, for the most part, wolf reintroduction is fiercely resisted by rural citizens and heavily favored by those who live in towns and cities. Both views of the matter are worth looking into, especially if we're to have any real hope of ever resolving the issue in a manner that, while perhaps not wholly satisfactory to either party, is at least acceptable to both.
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Not only is the wolf a large intelligent pack hunter who can't really be told what to do and where to go, but often, the wolf's very presence, the fact that the wolf cannot be shot on sight as was the case for generations, appears to have been dictated by the whims of "city folks" who neither live near the land or know anything about it. To the rural Westerner, raised as he or she has been on ideals of independence, self-sufficiency and the deeply erroneous notion that as Westerners they have not ever been, nor ever will be, beholden to the federal government or any other outsiders in any way, this is an intolerable affront. It very much looks and feels as though they are being told by others how to conduct their affairs.
While there are many problems with this view --not least of which is the fact that "Westerner" identity is largely based on a mythology, built through generations of cowboy movies and other fanciful fictions that have little or no basis in historical reality-- it's worthwhile to take it seriously because whether we agree with its basis or not, it informs the opinions and beliefs of many rural westerners and accordingly must necessarily inform any accurate understanding of their position.
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Meanwhile, in contrast to the "rural" (for lack of a better term) view of the matter, there is, in broad and admittedly simplified terms, the "conservationist" ethos --one widely held by educated urbanites-- which has it that the land, the environment and its associated ecological systems, are best understood as belonging to everyone rather than exclusively to those who chanced to be born upon it. This view, in its most simplistic terms, has it as self-evident that proprietary rights to public lands are vested with the public, and not specifically with narrow ranching and hunting and resource-extraction interests, whatever their prior claims may be.
Taken to its logical conclusion, the conservationist view has it that partial restoration of the natural suite of apex predators in the American west will ultimately have the trophic effect of reinvigorating the larger ecosystem which in turn, will have knock-on effects that ultimately benefit everyone by creating a richer and more varied and more sustainable environment throughout the intermountain west.
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I say nothing at all about the validity of the two general ways of looking at wolf reintroduction that I have outlined above. My goal here is only to present the differing bases of perception as fairly as possible. In part two of this essay I will tackle some of the tougher issues and will attempt to draw some conclusions.
Thanks for reading.
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