And what management costs would those be? Once the animals are introduced, they can take care of themselves. Sure, they might be required to be moved or even killed every now and then if they came into contact with people, but this thread has proven that there's no shortage of people anxious to do THAT last job privately.

It seems that a lot of people think that wolves dine solely on trophy deer and elk, which is not the case. They like targets with the least risk: the very young, the sick, the weak, the old, and sometimes the unlucky. A healthy adult deer or elk can do serious harm to a wolf, possibly even killing it, either immediately or by starvation if the animal is injured and can no longer hunt. Rabbits, rodents, and other small animals also make up a large part of their diet.

Yeah, I can hear your next argument: What about when a wolf kills Farmer Bob's only cow? As far as that argument goes, I seem to recall that the Sierra Club had a reimbursement program when the Mexican grey wolf was reintroduced to NM, and not one farmer or rancher ever claimed it. The government also has a program to reimburse farmers for lost cattle, and last I heard, the program was rife with abuse, with farmers and ranchers trying to claim animals that clearly died of other causes as wolf kills.

Now, which of these scenarios is preferable from the human standpoint:

1.) A pair of wolves kill a doe and eat it.

2.) A doe crosses the road at the wrong time and gets pasted by a car, totalling the car and possibly killing the driver or passengers in the process.

I don't know about you, but I'd pick #1. A deer totalling a $35,000 car would pay for a lot of cows.

And I'd be really glad to see data that shows that wolves are any kind of threat to humans. More people died in the US last year by falling off ladders than have been killed by wolves in the entire history of our nation.

It's my opinion that we should live on nature's terms, and appriciate what whatever diety you follow has given us. We're part of nature, not above it. Isn't that why we go out hunting and fishing? To keep in touch with the natural world? After all, it's far cheaper to go out and buy fish and meat at the store. It's somewhat dismaying to me to see that people who claim to love the outdoors would have no hesitation about putting a bullet in a wild animal that poses no danger because of old prejudices and the false opinion that they're 'stealing' 'our' game.