I'm not saying wolves don't belong there or can't play a part. What I'm saying is this isn't the same as running down to Napa and getting a distributor cap for a 72 Chevy pickup where it doesn't have to be the factory-made original. There aren't drop-in replacements for biological species. Take the honeybee, for example. If that insect went extinct, along with it would go numerous flowering plants, in fact, a great deal of our food supply. We can't think that we can drop in more hummingbirds and call it good. With the wolves, yes, you can drop in an analogue species. But that doesn't make it the same as before. Man, in his hubris, can't assume problem solved, it's all good, we made it all better again, and call it a day. There are unintended consequences. Like Rumsfeld once said, there's things we know, things we don't know, and things we don't know that we don't know. Known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.
In the case of the wolf, there are, of course, a lot of emotions behind it. One faction tends to romanticize the wolf into something it truly isn't. They see this animal as proud and noble. Like when the Bald Eagle was selected to be our national symbol, it was assumed this was a noble animal that earned an honest living fishing. They didn't observe it long enough to see it scavenging carcasses. And now it'll hang around landfills to garner edibles there. And the wolf occupies a very high place in the human psyche because we tend to anthropomorphize it and assign it human values, as we do with many other animals we see as noble. It's no wonder so many people have this animal as a totem as opposed to a raccoon, squirrel, skunk, or an opossum. All these things that inhabit our subconscious in Jungian fashion combine to create the "perfect storm", as it were, to reintroduce first and ask questions later.
Another faction believes the wolf was wiped out for valid reasons and bringing them back presents the same challenges that led to spending so much time and resources to accomplish that goal. They tend to romanticize their own role as stalwart defenders of order and civilizing factors. They settled the land and made it safe for farming, ranching, and picnicking in the woods without Little Johnny being carted off for a midday snack by a pack of wolves. Nature has extreme limits and man has dominion over it all and, thus, we can and should do anything we want because we have the guns and brains.
Another faction seeks to bring science into the fray, forgetting that science also brought us nuclear weapons and is, ergo, not infallible in being able to recognize unforeseen consequences of allegedly good science. This faction also forgets that Nature does not necessarily follow what we believe to be science because science does not hold all the answers as to how the planet works, much less the entire universe. What was science 500 years ago isn't science now in many cases, but superstition and wrong conclusions based on what they knew or thought they knew at the time. When the hydrogen bomb was being developed, some scientists feared a cascade reaction that might destroy the planet but went ahead and developed it anyway. This is important to remember. Science doesn't necessarily act in humanity's---or the ecosystem's---best interest. Enter into this equation game management officials who believe in "scientific game management" strategies as if the planet limped along bereft of guidance, balance, wisdom, and direction for billions of years until fish & game agencies manifested. Of course game agencies protect the wilderness areas. But they are not always the final words of wisdom on the matter when these agencies start being staffed by people with a political or emotion-driven agenda. Then these people shoehorn science (or what passes for it, truth be told) into the debate to support their own personal wants and desires or to support those of various political officials who seek to get involved and whose wildlife knowledge descends from having seen Bambi and various other Disney interpretations of the natural world. If their funding is increased by supporting, say, introducing Meerkats into the Sequoia National Forest, they'll dig up some scientific tidbit to support that. One also has to question what the actual agenda and goal of wolf reintroduction is. Is this an effort to restore an area, or the ham-handed attempt of anti-hunting factions to manage game without human hunters? This is a valid question that needs to be asked. Who drives these efforts? Who funds them, aside from the game agencies? Who is getting together the petitions and why?
Finally, we have to ask the questions of what happens when the experiment (because that's what it is, really) goes pear-shaped? Do we just wash our hands of it, or not? Do we keep trying it if it fails? Or can we accept that we acted perhaps wrongly in the past and decide to put more effort into protecting the species that are in danger right now that we can---and should---save? Not to say we shouldn't act to save the wolf. We should and must. But we need more than emotion from all the factions involved.
