Wolf policy set the stage for tragedy of tortured animal and public outcry

As people from Wyoming and beyond join in righteous indignation over an ugly incident in which a man tortured and killed an animal simply because it was a wolf, we would do well to examine the policy framework that set the stage for tragedy. As in all tragedies, the result is not just the downfall of the main character. The story has layers of irony — not situational irony, which would be a surprise, but tragic, dramatic irony with an air of inevitability, not fully recognized by the participants but strongly sensed by the audience.

One man has become the public face of Wyoming by torturing an animal — running down a wolf on a snowmobile, taping its mouth shut, dragging it to town broken yet alive, showing it off at the Green River Bar, and then finally killing it. In doing so, he confirmed stereotypes many Americans have about hunters, rural Americans and the Cowboy State. 

The irony isn’t just that an ethically challenged hunter undermined the social license of all hunters while bringing the treatment of wolves to national attention just as non-governmental organizations are suing, again, over the status of wolves in the Northern Rockies. It’s also that those who hate wolves regularly tout the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, a set of principles that guides hunting policy based on the idea that wildlife is held in public trust, to be scientifically managed, and only killed for valid reasons. Yet, the treatment of animals legally classified as predatory is hardly consistent with the model.

I last stopped at the Green River Bar, the oldest building in Daniel, my kind of place — heretofore known for its slaw dawg — while paddling the Green River from its headwaters in the Wind River Range, across western Wyoming to Utah and Colorado. I was investigating possible corridors from the Northern to the Central and Southern Rockies, routes by which animals like wolves, wolverines or perhaps grizzlies might reoccupy habitats to the south. The conclusion was clear: Absent persecution by people, it could happen, but Wyoming’s policies are a thinly veiled attempt to restrict large carnivores to the mostly federal lands of Greater Yellowstone. In the Predatory Animal Management Area or “predator zone,” wolves can be shot on sight, year-round, for no reason.

The people I’ve worked with in Wyoming are almost all conservationists; many of them are also hunters and ranchers. Most of those folks don’t kill wolves except to reduce livestock conflicts, and most of them wouldn’t condone the events that culminated at the “GRB.” 

Nevertheless, a series of policies set the stage. Apparently, there is nothing illegal about running an animal down with a snowmobile, provided that animal is classified as a predator. That happens more than most of us would like to admit, and not just in Wyoming. But perhaps most of all, that stage is the predator zone — which has prevented nationwide recovery, and, ironically, federal delisting. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will finally develop a nationwide recovery plan for the gray wolf across its historic range, likely identifying suitable habitat throughout the Rockies. Had such a plan been in place a decade ago, it seems unlikely that Wyoming’s state plan would have been approved. Or perhaps wolves would have been delisted where they are abundant (Greater Yellowstone), but not where they remain rare (the predator zone). 

In any case, nothing was stopping Wyoming from setting policy in what is now the predator zone. A new federal listing may force the state to remove or redraw the predator zone.

I submit that an adequate regulatory mechanism would take a live-and-let-live approach, incentivize conflict reduction, and retain lethal control as a backstop to address repeated conflicts. The recent outrage suggests that many Americans would agree that such a policy is needed.

Gov. Mark Gordon, Game and Fish Director Brian Nesvik, Wyoming Speaker of the House Albert Sommers and Sublette County Sheriff K.C. Lehr have condemned the recent incident. I’d prefer that they had done so before the story went viral, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt considering the legal state secrecy around wolf killings. Now, I’d like to see Sublette County’s lawmakers and candidates lead the state Legislature to revise animal cruelty laws to cover all wildlife. 

Wyoming, a state known for its live-and-let-live mentality, could at least pass laws to protect a wild animal’s right to die with dignity and not be run down by a snowmobile and suffer in a bar. And to the species that so reminds us of ourselves, on to which we project so much human meaning, the Equality State could extend the right not to be killed simply for being a wolf.