Wolf Reintroduction: How the Wolves Came Back
by Colette Palamar, M.S., Environmental Science,
University of Idaho
Introduction
By the late 1920s European Americans no longer faced
direct contact with wolves. The
wolves  were gone. Whether killed
or chased into wilder lands, wolves ceased to be a
functioning part of the American
environment, including the Pacific  Northwest ecosystem. A
slowly increasing sense of human stewardship toward the
environment paralleled the disappearance of the wolf.
Understanding the general roots of the modern
environmental movement and the evolving politics and
philosophies allowing the reintroduction of wolves is
helpful in comprehending the context within which wolf
reintroduction took place. In this article I discuss the
roots of today’s environmental movement, the
wolves’ natural recolonization of Montana and the
possibility of natural recolonization as an alternative
to reintroduction, the background of the reintroductions
in Idaho, how they were actually carried out, and the
current status (as of February 1996) of the continuing
wolf reintroduction project.
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