They were not erased by the modern hunter, but by farmers who didn't want them eating their sheep and, in many cases, by professional wolf-killers hired by states. The renowned conservation writer Aldo Leopold's earliest work was killing bears, wolves, and mountain lions for the forest service.

Unfortunately it wasn't until we'd nearly erased wolves and grizzlies (cougars have always been too wily to be wiped out) that we decided it was actually good to keep them around. Now we've got them back--but being back, they will need to be managed, and that includes hunting. Not wanton extermination, but rather a season tailored to remove a specific number of wolves in order to reach what the state fish & wildlife department considers appropriate.

While you are correct that modern hunters are not to blame. Eradication by farmers was actually the final straw to an otherwise stressed population that had already lost a majority of it's natural habitat.

State-sanctioned kills + poachers + roadkills + farmers + smaller habitats...

It does not sound like conservation to me...

It is worth noting that a predator like the wolf needs a huge hunting area to thrive. Otherwise they starve. If you manage the habitat there is no need to kill them in cold blood.

A farmer that protest his livestock is, guess what, a hunter. What is up with the semantics on murdering livestock?

Wolves are not livestock, which is a term for animals useful to humans.

Wolves murder livestock. Perhaps we should get rid of all the guns and forget history so wolves can murder again huamns again

Murder? Really?

I am using the language of GP, but you are attempting to use it to undermine my point. So... really?

Human hunters are, as of right now, an integral component of keeping wild animals from overpopulating. If you pull the human hunters, the herd sizes will explode (since we've driven away/contained their natural predators), and many of them will starve to death.

Whatever your thoughts on hunting, it's part of the predatory/prey cycle throughout the world. It's also a not-so-distant tradition from our history that goes back millions of years.

So you are saying that we should kill animals, in cold blood and painfully, because we broke their habitats.

What if instead of killing them, to patch a flawed system, we work on rebuilding their habitats?

Also there are many ways of controlling the numbers of a species, killing them is just the easy one.

Eh, a hunter spends hours or days to kill one animal reasonably quickly. A farm slaughters thousands of animals after raising them in absolutely cruel conditions. If I had the goal to make animals suffer fewer creature-hours of pain then faced with the choice to either ban hunting or ban livestock, I'd go with livestock.

However if you're vegetarian, vegan, or raise your own livestock then I salute you as having a consistent stance on the issue.

A hunter can fail, because he is human. He can inflict a tremendous amount of suffering killing an animal, sometimes leaving the offspring alone to die of starvation.

But if I had to choose between hunters of industrial farming, I choose hunters, of course. It is just I think we can try to fix both problems.

And yes, I am vegan.

Wolves are not livestock.

No they aren't. What's that have to do with anything?

A human can eat any animal. A human can't eat any vegetation. What point are you trying to make exactly?

That people don't kill wolves to eat them. So it makes no sense to compare killing wolves for sport to killing livestock.

The semantics is strong with this one. Livestock is a word, it doesn't change what it is. Killing for sport, population control, or any other reason is hunting.

Personally I only aim for the guilty ones, but occasionally wildlife court takes too long and I have to make snap judgements.

This season I bought a license to shoot one deer. It was somewhat expensive. Without limited hunting the sides of highways would be knee deep in killed animals and wrecked cars. Something has to keep the population in check. Wolves might help do this, but then they would overpopulate and have no predators.

I'm not a hunter, but hunting does provide a revenue stream for wildlife protection & management. Presence of wolf tags might also make the presence of wolves more acceptable to both hunters and ranchers.

Hunters aren't a breed. I don't understand these comments more than I don't understand a human's desire to hunt