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Primer 5: Wildlife
WINNING THE WEST
by Paul Larmer
Wild animals are as much a part of the American West's mystique and grandeur
as its mountains, canyons and plains. Nowhere else in the United States can you
encounter wolves, grizzlies, buffalo, elk, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, golden and bald
eagles, condors, mountain goats, and moose, wandering more or less at will across
a varied landscape.
I have been intrigued by the West's iconic animals ever since I was a child, but the
reality of their existence didn't strike home until, as an eager high school biology
student, I took a trip from the Midwest to the West. Driving from the humidity and oak
forests of Missouri into the grasslands and sagebrush of the arid Great Plains was like
entering an entirely new world. When we first spotted a small group of pronghorn
antelope running alongside the highway on the eastern plains of Colorado, I was dumbstruck.
Later, as a youthful environmentalist and aspiring journalist, I discovered the complex --
and often disturbing -- stories behind the West and its wildlife. Some species were not
doing well at all, pushed into remote corners of the public domain by urban sprawl,
ranching, hunting and other activities. Big game herds, I learned, were as heavily
managed as livestock for the sake of maximum economic gain. And there were other,
more subtle threats, such as disease and inbreeding.
I learned that wildlife could become proxies in the endless struggles between
conservationists and industry: The northern spotted owl, in the Pacific Northwest's
diminishing old-growth forests; the sage grouse, in the overgrazed sagebrush sea of
the interior; and the grizzly bear and the wolf, in the last remaining wild areas of
the Northern Rockies. The storylines of these battles are marked by deteriorating
conditions on the ground fraught with anger, fear and resentment on the part of the human players.
But not all wildlife stories are depressing. On occasion, people have come together to
protect both wildlife and human economies. And often the animals themselves have shown
tremendous resilience. In the 1990s, the federal government reintroduced timber wolves
into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho, where they quickly reclaimed habitat
that had been lost to them for many decades.
But even the success stories bring challenges. Westerners have to face new and difficult
questions: When is an endangered species "recovered" to the point that it no longer needs
federal protection? Can we trust ourselves to not repeat the destructive patterns of
the past? In a rapidly changing - and warming - world, how do we share this land with
its wild inhabitants?
The answers to these questions are tied to an even more fundamental one: How far are
we as a society willing to go to accommodate wild creatures and the habitat they need?
Population growth and sprawl are constricting our options, but the West, with its vast
public lands and growing conservation ethic, still has a chance to ensure that real wild
animals wander the region for centuries to come.