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In the recent documentary film Crying Wolf, Exposing the Wolf Reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park, David Allen, President of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, takes the issue a step further, stating, “The Northern Yellowstone elk herd was the showcase herd in the world…I believe that the reintroduction of wolves is, in many ways, an assault on the sportsmen and hunting culture. The North American model of wildlife conservation is built around the sportsman, since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. We have the most bountiful, successful wildlife resources in the world.”
With Crying Wolf, filmmaker Jeffrey King depicts the introduction of non-native Canadian gray wolves into the Northern Rockies ecosystem as destroying the livelihood of back-country residents by deva-stating free range ranching. According to the ranchers interviewed in the documentary, it is fast becoming uneconomical to raise livestock in areas where wolf packs range, and big game hunting and guiding opportunities and occupations are quickly disappearing from the rural Northern Rockies.
Veteran wolf biologist, John Gunson, formerly with the Alberta Fish and Wildlife Division, and also featured in Crying Wolf, echoed the concerns of sportsmen regarding elk hunting, saying, pointedly, "Really, there isn't any room for harvest by man if you have a healthy wolf population."
And, that right there would be the reason they were introduced. Destroy the success sportsmen have worked decades to accomplish, using their own tax funds to do so. Followed by removing the ranchers from the land. If it were about reintroducing the wolf, they would have been inclined to use the Minnesota wolves to reestablish the population with the correct sub-species. It wasn't ever about reintroducing the wolf.
