Wolves roam to survive. Let them.
By Greta Anderson, Western Watersheds Project
Originally published on August 11, 2024 in the Arizona Republic: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/letters/2024/08/11/arizona-indian-boarding-school-teach/74687691007/
A Mexican gray wolf family has been peacefully occupying the western slopes of the San Francisco Peaks and the Kendrick Mountain Wilderness. There’s no need to move them, except that their presence symbolizes a change that the agencies have been adamantly resisting: allowing wolves to wander north of the Interstate 40 boundary.
The Arizona Game and Fish Department claimed last month in these pages that it is committed to conversations about “What’s best for the wolf and what’s best for the recovery program. What’s the best way for her to contribute to recovery?”
This assumes that humans know better than she does. It belies their fixation on dictating the terms of wolves’ wildness, and of second-guessing the fact that she’s already found a good place on the landscape and is contributing to recovery in the way that comes naturally to her: by surviving.
The department likes to insist on strict adherence to the concept of “historic range,” and to keeping wolves within it. But wolves live in the present and face an uncertain future.
It’s time for the agencies to adjust to the reality that the wolves — and the best available science — say it is time to let them roam.
Greta Anderson, Tucson
