Wolf Reintroduction: How the Wolves Came Back

Roots of the Modern Environmental Movement

John Muir and Gifford Pinchot, fathers of the modern environmental movement, began the slow replacement of what was once a religious imperative to dismantle and subordinate the natural environment with a limited but increasing sense of responsibility toward nature. The conservation and preservation movements emerged and gained substantial public support. John Muir began writing about the spiritual value of wilderness. Although the tail end of the wolf killings extended into the conservationist era, the beginnings of a public reconception of the wild world was born.

During the time of Muir, Pinchot, and other early conservationists, much legislation protecting the environment was passed. Congress set aside Yellowstone as the first National Park in 1872. Yosemite, Mt. Rainier, and Rocky Mountain National Parks followed close behind. The National Park Service was established in 1916 to protect and conserve the nation’s preserved parks. Governmental wolf bounties came to an end in 1935 in order to comply with a newly established National Park Service Policy. However, concerns regarding the preservation of nature were still, by far, secondary to human interests. Human interests prevailed in the controversy when the dam and reservoir proposed for Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley received construction approval to serve the expanding water needs of nearby San Francisco. The Hetch Hetchy controversy of 1913 starkly defined the camps within the conservation movement.

Conservationists such as Gifford Pinchot urged that the dam be built, saying that there must be a balance between human needs and conservation. The conservationists advocated wise use of resources, not locking land away from the public’s needs. In the Hetch Hetchy controversy, for example, conservationists believed that the benefit gained from supplying water to thousands of humans in San Francisco far surpassed the loss that came from destroying the Valley’s pristine state.

Preservationists such as John Muir did not agree with the compromise and wise use ideas of the conservationists. The preservationists believed that once land is set aside, it should never be subject to human development or destruction. Advocates of preservation desired above all to protect the land and its creatures from human invasion. The debate over the Hetch Hetchy Valley and the larger issues that the controversy symbolized was fierce. Ultimately, a consensus emerged: human interests surpass those of nature. The preservation movement was temporarily defeated.

The next major environmental awakening came with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962. Carson’s book opened wide the hidden and extreme uses of pesticides in the environment. In scientifically accurate detail, she cataloged literally hundreds of different chemicals used to control pests of all kinds. Most shockingly, Carson pointed out and clarified the connections between the use of pesticides and the near-massive wildlife deaths experienced at the time. One of the first scientists to note that these chemicals negatively affect human health, Carson urged Americans to recognize the interconnectedness of all aspects of the ecosystem, and to begin to remedy the impending catastrophes associated with improper and excessive chemical use practices.

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring provided the impetus for a series of strict environmental laws. At least partially as a result of the awakening produced by her book, the United States Congress passed the Clean Air Act (1963), the Wilderness Act (1964), the Rare and Endangered Species Act (1966), the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (1968), the National Environmental Policy Act (1970), the Clean Air Amendments of 1970, the Water Pollution Control Act (1972), the Marine Mammal Protection Act (1972), the Pesticide Control Act (1972), and most importantly to wolf reintroduction, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973.

In 1973, the same year that the ESA was passed, the Fish and Wildlife Service listed the Rocky Mountain gray wolf as an endangered species. The ESA created a mandate that the government must attempt by all means possible to recover the populations of species listed as endangered. For the wolf this meant reintroduction.

Although the reintroduction of wolves to the Rocky Mountains was first advocated by Aldo Leopold in 1944, it was not until significantly later that any real work toward reintroduction began. Creating a plan to reintroduce wolves proved difficult and faced great opposition. Yet while the political controversy of wolf reintroduction raged, Canadian wolves had their own expansionist ideas: they were beginning to recolonize the Pacific Northwest on their own.