Bryce Andrews not only misrepresented Aldo Leopold in
his “Living precariously with wolves and cattle”
(HCN, 8/20/07), but he also failed to
acknowledge the other side of the public-lands grazing issue: Many
of us would rather have wolves and healthy rangelands than cattle.
Leopold’s famous essay “Thinking Like A Mountain” from
A Sand County Almanac adroitly identifies the
issue of how much the loss of the wolf has cost us. Andrews
paraphrases the line “fierce green fire in a wolf’s eye” completely
out of context and incorrectly. Perhaps he should join my AP
Literature course back in high school for a refresher. I teach that
essay as one of the most compelling and persuasive pieces ever
written in defense of the wolf – cow kills and all. When Leopold
watches the wolf’s light expire, he realizes with belated epiphany
that ” … there was something new to me in those eyes – something
known only to her and to the mountain.”
And so that
leaves us with the issue of public lands. Are not these everyone’s
lands as well as the rancher’s? When a rancher kills a wolf, he is
killing part of our inalienable rights. He is killing a vital check
and balance we are trying to re-establish before it’s too late for
land and wildlife health. And oh yes, I forgot to ask: How much
money did we, the government, reimburse this rancher for all of his
slaughtered cattle?
I am reminded of the mentality
portrayed in Nicholas Evans’ The Loop. The
problem is, this isn’t fiction. This type of wolf killing is not
responsible, nor is the writing. Hopefully, Bryce Andrews will have
time to reread Leopold when he begins his grad school program in
environmental studies; maybe the second time around he’ll truly
understand it.
Mark Doherty
Salt Lake
City, Utah
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Wolf lit 101.
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