A long running joke in the West’s wolf saga is that reintroduction supporters will change their tune once endangered wolves/griz/pupfish/tortoises make their way to coastal cities. Then, those big-city elites will get a taste of their own medicine.
This just goes to show how little folks in the interior West and the coastal cities know about one another.
Everyone’s about to get a clue, however, as a wolf is roaming on the fringes of human civilization in the most populous county in the United States: Los Angeles.
Earlier this month, a radio-collared wolf, BEY03F, was photographed near Antelope Valley, about 60 miles north of downtown Los Angeles.
I realize 60 miles is just a short drive for Montanans, but in Los Angeles County, the 60 miles between Los Angeles and Antelope Valley traverses decades of change. There remains that kind of open country in Southern California, room for wolves and even antelope, despite the millions living on the coastal plain.
Mountains ring that coastal plain, and the world between the traverse range and the sea is vastly different than the desert on the other side.
BEY03F is a female, so wolves are halfway to putting pups on the ground. She was radio collared in the northern part of the state, where wolves returned in 2011, and she likely travelled this far south looking for a mate. Is there a male wolf nearby?
We may soon find out.
Are Angelenos terrified of their potential new neighbors? If the popular reaction to the presence of mountain lions in the Hollywood Hills is any indication, the answer is “No!”
A male lion, P-22, hung out near Griffin Park for more than a decade before he was euthanized in 2022. The remote-camera photograph of P-22 in front of the Hollywood sign, illuminated in the night, has since become an iconic symbol of the resiliency of wildlife on the fringes of one of the largest population centers in the world.
Of course, the stakes of wolf recovery are different in Southern California than in the northern Rockies. Wolves won’t be a blip in the economic engine of California, the fourth largest economy in the world.
But in the northeast corner of the state, or in the northern Rockies, wolves make a difference. They draw tourists, and their money, to a region that relies on tourism. But wolves complicate raising livestock, and they certainly change big game hunting, though I await evidence that wolves have dramatically reduced elk numbers. The species remains over population management objectives across much of its range and hunter success rates haven’t cratered, despite considerable fretting in the region.
The Wyoming-based Website “Cowboy State Daily” published a story this week featuring YouTube influencer Trinity Vandenacre. Vandenacre argues the tourism dollars generated by wolves is outweighed by the costs — legal fees, loss of hunting opportunities, underweight cattle pinching rancher profits. Is that true? In the story at least, he doesn’t provide any evidence to back this assertion.
He does claim hundreds of millions are spent in legal fights over endangered species, but the guesstimate, to be remotely accurate, must reflect endangered species litigation across the country.
Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks annual budget, for instance, is about $130 million.
As for hunting and fishing license sales in Montana, those numbers are stable. Out-of-state sales are on an upward trajectory, while resident sales are level, if down a bit from 2020, when COVID-19 restrictions made outdoor recreation an especially popular choice.
Vandenacre doesn’t dispute the 2021 University of Montana study that shows wolf tourism generates $82 million annually for Yellowstone National Park gateway communities. Solid data, not speculation, on the negative economic impact of wolves would help.
One thing’s certain, if a breeding pair puts pups on the ground in the nation’s most populous county, the big city princes of conservation are gonna party like it’s 1999.