Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation on Wolf Management

[Waterengineer]

Coloradosherpa:

Do you really believe your own post????? LOL!!!!!!!!!

I want some of that you are smoking.

You write:
.........And I would also like to see the grizzly return to the southern rockies. There is a very small group of them in the San Juans of Colorado, but they are so few in numbers as to be basically extinct, although one did maul an outfitter in 1979. Anyways.
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Small group?!?!?!? LOL

1979!?!?!? LOL

 

[Art Eatman]

Waterengineer, there have always been stories about "a grizzly" in the southern Rockies. It's generally an off-color, large black bear, but folks want to believe--so they believe. Can't have any species without a breeding population, and "Them they ain't go no of."

Other places, it's coy-dog "wolves".

But that's the way people are...

 

[doofus47]

On one hand I recognize that wolves were present in colorado at an earlier period in history. I think that the current numbers of elk in the state is probably inflated compared to "them days" when elk had to worry about wolves 24/7/365 instead of a few hunters. So if wolves were to make a serious return to Colorado, I would suppose that the elk herd numbers would drop. That may not be a completely bad result, initially, since the number of hunters is dropping and the herds are growing. Personally, if I had to work harder and cover more territory to find elk b/c they were always more alert and moving b/c of wolf packs I could accept that as a new variable.

That said, back in "them days" elk had room to move if the wolves were taking too high a toll. That isn't so much the case nowadays since people have pretty much surrounded the elk and confined them to the mountains.
Since the numbers of hunters is falling as a general (unfortunate) trend, the probability that the remaining hunters would be able to put a divot into a wolf population is about nil. I don't yet have a dog in this fight, but I have to think that the long-term outcome of introducing wolves would be negative for elk populations in colorado. And, as my daddy used to say "there's no taking that bullet back."