The slaughter of the buffalo was a tragedy for all Western Indian tribes—including every tribe in Montana—because the animals were everything to Native people. Bison provided food, shelter clothing and tools. They were central to spiritual practices. Their destruction was also a central part of the federal campaign to subdue and dispossess tribal nations.

But before the last smoke from the buffalo guns had cleared, Native visionaries had acted. A Salish man known as Attice trailed a few surviving bison across the Continental Divide to Montana’s Flathead Valley. That small herd would become critical seedstock for rebuilding bison herds in both the United States and Canada.

Through Attice’s efforts, state and federal agencies across the West were later able to establish small herds on refuges and wildlife management areas. Over the last 50 years, Western tribes have also led determined efforts to restore buffalo on reservation lands.

Tribes have also benefited from partnerships with conservation organizations that share a vision of big, healthy bison herds grazing across large landscapes. Chief among these partners is American Prairie, which for the past 25 years has worked to restore intact grasslands on public and private lands adjacent to Montana’s Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. As part of its work, American Prairie has also provided both technical expertise and buffalo to many tribal nations rebuilding their herds.

Yet even with these initiatives, there are only a few thousand truly wild buffalo today, and they occupy just a tiny fraction of their former range across the American and Canadian prairies. Why?

The persecution of bison continues—nowhere more so than in Montana. Governor Greg Gianforte’s administration has opposed any expansion of wild buffalo populations and has relentlessly pressured the federal Bureau of Land Management to reverse earlier, positive bison decisions.

Bowing to this pressure, the BLM has denied a request by American Prairie to convert existing federal grazing permits from cattle to bison in eastern Montana. What’s worse, the BLM has terminated other bison grazing permits the organization had lawfully held for years.

Given the stakes, the Coalition of Large Tribes—advocating for more than 50 tribal nations, including the Blackfeet Nation and the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana—has filed a formal protest of the BLM’s unprecedented and unlawful decision. Federal law is clear: statutes affecting tribes must be interpreted in their favor, and ambiguities must be resolved to protect tribal rights.

The consequences of the BLM’s illegal action are immediate and profound. Terminating these permits disrupts herd genetics, intertribal gifting traditions, treaty territories, and longstanding cooperative relationships. It also establishes a dangerous precedent for other federal agencies engaged in tribal co-stewardship and wildlife restoration, not only for Montana tribes but for tribes everywhere.  If bison being managed for conservation can be categorically excluded from federal lands, decades of collaborative progress are jeopardized.

Perhaps most alarming, this decision amounts to rulemaking by fiat. In order to reach the result demanded by the Gianforte administration, the BLM acted without meaningful consultation with either tribes or the public.

Federal law is clear. Actions and decisions affecting tribes require consultation, yet no meaningful effort has been made by either the BLM or the Gianforte administration to fulfill this binding obligation.  If this failure to consult is allowed to stand, tribes across the West will be harmed by the precedent. 

Montana and the federal government face a defining choice: They can cling to outdated policies that ignore history, science, and treaty obligations, or they can honor tribal leadership, uphold the law and help restore a species that once defined this land.

The future of Montana’s prairies depends on that choice.

The writers are Montana state legislators and contributors to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. Tyson Running Wolf is a member of the Blackfeet Nation who chairs the Montana Native American Caucus in the state legislature. Tom France represents Missoula in the Montana Legislature and works with the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council on buffalo conservation issues.

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In 2024, Cody Roberts of Daniel, Wyoming mowed down a wolf with a snowmobile, dragged her into a bar, tormented her in front of patrons while she was still alive, and later killed her. The public reaction to this brutality—across the United States and abroad—was overwhelming shock, especially after learning that the wolf’s torment carried only a small fine.

But the state Legislature declined to act to make wolf-killing-by-snowmobile illegal. In Wyoming, one can still run over some animals so long as the stunned animal is “quickly” killed.

Sublette County Attorney Clayton Melinkovich, however, convened a grand jury in August 2025 to take up the case. Though this was an unusual move in the Cowboy State, he secured an indictment against Roberts for felony animal cruelty, which included a maximum sentence of up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

By accepting a plea deal in February, Roberts avoided a trial, and last week, on March 5, he appeared before Sweetwater County Judge Richard Lavery in Sublette County District Court to change his plea to “guilty.” Judge Lavery did not immediately sentence Roberts; instead, he is waiting for a pre-sentence investigation report from a probation and parole officer, who must first conduct a substance abuse assessment of Roberts.

If the plea deal is accepted by the court, the prison sentence is suspended and fine reduced to $1,000. Roberts would also be prohibited from hunting, fishing, consuming alcohol, or entering bars or liquor establishments, and would need to complete a substance-abuse treatment plan.

Animal cruelty does not occur in a vacuum. Decades of research show strong correlations between the abuse of animals and various forms of interpersonal violence. By insisting on a felony charge, mandated treatment and strict conditions, the County Attorney has affirmed that cruelty to wildlife is wrong on its own terms and has implications to the health and safety of the human community as well.

This was a disturbing case, and the victim was a wild wolf—an animal deemed a “predator” under state law, and one frequently vilified by Wyoming lawmakers. Yet despite the heated rhetoric surrounding wolves, several polls show that Wyomingites did not approve of Roberts’ actions. We also know from newer surveys that hunters, ranchers, rural Wyoming residents and people calling themselves conservatives all hold a broad reverence for both wolves and grizzly bears.

The attitudes of Wyoming’s wildlife authorities appear to be shifting as well. In another, more recent case, three Wyoming men were charged with tormenting a moose by trying to ride it.

These and other developments make this a moment of reckoning for lawmakers and wildlife officials who have repeatedly resisted outlawing vehicular killing of wildlife, or who have shied away from strengthening anti-cruelty laws.

For too long, Wyoming has been an outlier in tolerating extreme cruelty toward its wild carnivores. But the disposition of the Roberts case shows that the state does have tools and even the willpower to protect animals. This case began with the malicious use of a snowmobile to run down an animal. Now, several polls show that Wyomingites oppose killing wildlife with vehicles, which gives public officials in the next Legislative session an opening to prohibit this debased practice.

When Cody Roberts proudly showed off his maimed wolf on social media, he made more news than he anticipated, spotlighting Wyoming’s heartless “predator-zone” policies, where wolves and other animals can be killed cruelly by almost any means.

It’s up to state legislators now to strengthen existing legal frameworks, close exemptions for animals labeled as “predators,” and do away with the “predator zone” encompassing over 80% of the state.

The plea deal does not undo the suffering inflicted on the wolf, but it does create legal precedent and moral momentum. Prosecutor Melinkovich has shown what principled enforcement of animal cruelty law can look like. Lawmakers can do their part by prohibiting intentional vehicular killing of wildlife, which would go a long way toward creating a legacy of just and compassionate wildlife stewardship.

Wendy Keefover is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She works as a wild carnivore advocate for Humane World for Animals.

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The study, covering roughly 8.6 million acres in six management units, will run for at least three years with the goal of indiscriminately exterminating “as many (lions) as possible.”

Buying into this ancient predator-prey superstition are the nonprofits Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife and Utah Wild Sheep Foundation. Each has contributed $150,000 to the cull.

Wildlife managers have no idea how many mountain lions roam the state because estimating populations is essentially impossible. Lions are solitary, elusive and range over vast territories they defend. Unlike ungulates that compensate for mortality with fecundity, predators don’t “overpopulate,” and they’re much slower to recover from culling or hunting.

I asked veteran mountain lion researcher Dr. Rick Hopkins, board president of the Cougar Fund, what science supports a claim that killing mountain lions generates more deer. “None,” he replied. “For years, agencies have made such claims, but when pushed to provide evidence, they can’t. Predator control has never worked anywhere.”

Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources estimates the state’s mule deer population at 295,200—73 percent of the “long-term goal.” That goal is based more on desired hunting-license sales than science. Still, considering the natural ebb and flow of deer populations, 73 percent isn’t bad.

Mountain lions have little or nothing to do with the decline of Utah’s mule deer. Predator populations are limited by available prey. What we learned in Biology 101—that predators control prey—is incorrect: Prey controls predators.Utah has experienced prolonged drought, which peaked in 2022. Reduced forage starved female deer so that fewer fawns were born, and those fawns were sickly and therefore less likely to survive winters. When record-breaking snowfall occurred during the winter of 2022-2023, there were massive mule deer die-offs.

Utah’s mountain lion cull follows hard upon a 2023 state law that opened up year-round, mountain lion killing without requiring permits. Both this law and the current cull outrage environmental and animal wellness communities. The Western Wildlife Conservancy and Mountain Lion Foundation have filed a lawsuit (ongoing), asserting that the law violates the state’s Right to Hunt and Fish Act, which requires a “reasonable regulation of hunting.”

The Mountain Lion Foundation dismisses the mountain lion cull study as a “lethal program without rigorous science,” and reports: “Decades of peer-reviewed research across the West show that intensive predator removal rarely delivers sustained or landscape-scale recovery of prey populations. Instead, it often destabilizes predator populations, leading to younger, transient animals, increased conflict and little long-term benefit for deer.”

And this from Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action: “The science shows that healthy lion populations create robust and healthier deer herds, with lions selectively removing deer afflicted with the 100-percent fatal and highly contagious brain-wasting scourge known as Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) caused by malformed, self-replicating proteins called ‘prions.’”

All threats to mule deer pale in comparison with CWD. The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a hunter-support group, calls it “the number one threat to deer hunting.”

In Utah, CWD has been detected in 356 of the few mule deer checked. Symptoms include fearlessness and loss of coordination, behaviors inviting lion predation, and thereby removal of disease vectors.

What’s more, mountain lions are resistant to CWD. They deactivate prions through digestion, removing them from the environment. That further protects mule deer as well as possibly protecting people. In 2022, two hunters who ate venison from a CWD-ravaged deer herd in Texas died from prion disease. Given the rarity of human prion infections, this seems an unlikely coincidence.

The Idaho Capital Sun quoted Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease at the University of Minnesota, as follows: “We are quite unprepared. If we saw a (CWD) spillover right now, we would be in free fall. There are no contingency plans.”

Dr. Mark Elbroch of Panthera, a nonprofit dedicated to conserving wild felines, told me this: “Heaps of science show the beneficial contributions of mountain lions. Humans are healthier when we live with mountain lions.”

So are mule deer.

Ted Williams, a longtime environmental writer, is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West.

A mountain lion drinking, photo by David Neils, Wild Nature Photography.

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As Miracle’s story spread, the cub became the object of fascination for thousands of people. Perhaps that’s no surprise, as many of us are intrigued by the grizzly’s power and strength, along with the reality that it’s an apex predator, like us.

Miracle’s survival is precarious. Since she left the protection of her mother so early, she’s on her own finding food before hibernating. Seventy-seven grizzlies died in the Yellowstone area last year—the highest number yet. As of September 2025, 63 bears had been killed; at this rate, the number of dead bears will surpass last year’s record. What’s going on?

You could say that grizzly bear recovery in the Lower 48 is a success story. Prior to European settlement, an estimated 50,000 bears roamed throughout the Lower 48. By 1970, though, only about 800 remained, with perhaps 130 of them in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

In 1975, grizzlies were listed under the Endangered Species Act, which ended their indiscriminate slaughter, and bear numbers slowly rebounded. Today, the Forest Service says an estimated 700 grizzlies live in and around the Yellowstone area, with maybe 1,000 more in the Northern Continental Divide region of Montana. Despite the increase in numbers, mortality rates are on the rise.

Most wildlife managers say the current rate is not a matter of concern. They say the species is stable.

And yet, is it? Roughly 200 cubs are born in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem recovery area each year, but of those, only around 40 survive. Wildlife managers assure us bears are doing well, but is this sustainable—especially when the mortality rate keeps inching upward year after year?

The most obvious reason for bear deaths is us. We are everywhere. 2024 marked the second-busiest year in Yellowstone National Park’s history with more than 4.7 million visitors. In August of 2025, the park was on track to see a 2% visitor increase over 2024.

On top of increased visitation, the human population in the Rocky Mountain West where grizzlies roam is growing steadily. Teton County, Wyoming has seen a 10% increase in residents over the last decade. The population in Teton County, Idaho is up 74% since 1990. Gallatin County, Montana has grown about 40% in the last 10 years.

On the ground, you can’t miss the impacts of growth: Trails are crowded. Parking is at a premium. You need reservations at restaurants, and the traffic is often stop and go. Not surprisingly, bear-human conflicts are more frequent: Vehicle collisions kill bears, interactions with landowners kill bears.

Grizzlies might do fine with more people if their habitat were intact and healthy, but much of their home ground has been in moderate to severe drought for several years, according to U.S. Drought Monitor. This year’s berry crop was dismal. Whitebark pines, whose seeds are an important food source for bears, are threatened by beetles and blister rust.

All this forces grizzlies to search out new food sources, and some of the best ones turn out to be ours. Our cows and sheep. Our apple trees. Our bee hives.

Wyoming U.S. Representative Harriet Hageman has introduced legislation to take away endangered species protections for grizzly bears, which would be a major blow to their survival. “People shouldn’t have to live in fear of grizzly bears rummaging through their trash or endangering their children,” Hageman said. Such comments are deliberately inflammatory.

I have heard three people describe surviving a bear attack decades ago. All three insisted that the bear was only acting in self-defense. One even remembers how awed he was by the diamond-like glint of water droplets on the bear’s fur as she ran toward him.

I’m not sure what would happen if I faced a charging bear. I just want enough wherewithal to pull out my bear spray. While I hope I never have to deploy that spray, I am willing to take the risk to know wild bears roam the landscape. If grizzlies were gone, something vital would be missing from our world.

While grizzly bear mortality may not yet be alarming wildlife managers, I hope we’ve gotten a wakeup call.

Molly Absolon is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She hikes and writes in Yellowstone bear country.

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Just 286 wild lobos roam Arizona and New Mexico, and perhaps 35 inhabit Mexico, while 350 are in captivity. Humans have nearly wiped these wolves out.

Irrational wolf hatred hampers recovery, that hatred issuing from people who want to control public land, and from some hunters, outfitters and ranchers. For example, last April, the Catron County Commission, a loud voice for private control of public lands, unanimously passed a resolution proclaiming a lobo “emergency.”

The commission has been declaring lobo “emergencies” since 2006, when fewer than two dozen lobos populated the entire Southwest.

Audrey McQueen, a New Mexico Catron County Commissioner, hunting outfitter and board chair of the County Livestock Authority, was quoted by Outdoor Life magazine as follows: “We are scared. We’ve had deputies posted at the school this year so our kids can go out and play.”

There’s no record of lobos ever attacking humans. Kids face more danger from poodles.

McQueen also complained that Mexican wolves have “changed (elk) behavior.” Translation: Elk now act like elk, fleeing when hunters stop their trucks. The biological problem facing all living lobos is that they are descended from just seven survivors, making inbreeding a concern. If they lose the protection of the Endangered Species Act, their populations will continue to diminish and inbreeding will increase. Arizona Representative Paul Gosar, a Republican, has already introduced an “Enhancing Safety for Animals” bill that would remove Endangered Species Act protection for lobos.

Until 2023, lobos were thought to have mostly escaped the genetic damage of inbreeding. But that year, Greta Anderson of the Western Watersheds Project learned from a public-records request that conjoined toe pads, called “syndactyly”—a symptom of severe inbreeding in canids—was seen on the carcass of a captive lobo raised in this country and released in Mexico.

Now that researchers are looking for syndactyly, they’re finding it in both wild and captive lobos. A solution, Anderson explained, would be letting lobos occupy the northern part of their natural range where a few could hybridize with northern gray wolves, as they did historically. A new shot of northern gray wolf genes in the lobo population would relieve the genetic bottleneck.

But a federal recovery plan imposes an artificial boundary—Interstate 40, which slices off the top third of Arizona and New Mexico. Whenever possible, all lobos that cross to the north are returned to the south. This boundary, insisted on by the two state wildlife agencies, is making true recovery impossible.

South of I-40, lobos are classified as a “non-essential experimental population,” meaning it’s fine for managers to kill them if they are deemed problematic. It’s only north of I-40 that lobos are fully protected as “endangered.”

A draft recovery plan prescribed three U.S. subpopulations, each with at least 200 lobos: one south of I-40, two north. But then-Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican, wrote an editorial excoriating the plan, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ran for cover.

The current plan prescribes only a single subpopulation of 320 lobos, all south of I-40, and a subpopulation of 200 in Mexico. The Mexican subpopulation is a fantasy.

There’s scant public land in Mexico, and ranchers there still poison wolves. Biologist David Parsons of the Rewilding Institute led lobo recovery from 1990 to 1999. “We’re not paying attention to the best available science required by the Endangered Species Act,” he said. “This artificial boundary precludes expansion (and) Mexican wolves remain at risk of extinction.”

The current practice of cross-fostering lobos—placing captive-bred pups in dens to be raised by wild wolves—would work if lobos had decent genetic diversity. But pups take two years to reach sexual maturity, and mortality is naturally high in the wild.

That’s why Anderson, Parsons and other wolf allies advocate adult pack releases.

“Cross-fostering is a tool in the toolbox, but it’s very slow and very labor-intensive,” said Anderson. “And some of the (parent) wolves are being used over and over again, sending basically the same genetic content into the wild.”

Meanwhile, wolf haters are shooting lobos on both sides of I-40.

Ted Williams, a longtime environmental writer, is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West.

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Still, the Wyoming state Legislature failed to make illegal what Cody Roberts did. After running over the young female wolf with his snowmobile, Roberts paraded the dazed animal—its mouth taped shut—through a bar in Daniel, Wyoming. Then he shot the wolf dead.

In reaction, the Wyoming’s governor and legislature passed a bill with no substance, HB 275, blandly labeled “The treatment of animals.” In passing it, Wyoming lawmakers sanctioned killing wildlife with vehicles.

At a hearing before the vote, representatives of Wyoming’s agricultural community defended the practice. One argued that without access to M-44 sodium-cyanide bombs that are now virtually prohibited, they needed to run over wolves and other wildlife with vehicles to protect their livestock.

For a while it seemed that the old ways of the Cowboy State would persist without question. But over a year later, an attorney for Sublette County convened a grand jury to examine Cody Roberts’ actions, and last week it indicted Roberts on “felony animal cruelty,” an offense punishable by up to 2 years in prison, a fine of $5,000, or both.

Wyoming’s decision leaders may not realize it, but this indictment means that they face a new landscape, which increasingly demands responsible, nuanced responses, as well as humane policies involving animals. This ethic has already emerged in the West. For the most part, Wyoming leaders seem to be taking bad advice from the wrong people and find themselves badly out of step with the rest of the nation.

In a better world, those who work with animals—whether wild or domestic—would use ingenuity to prevent negative interactions with wildlife. Using the blunt force of a snowmobile to “manage” wildlife isn’t wildlife management at all: It is state-sanctioned cruelty.

Roberts needs to be punished. But what’s really at stake is achieving a changed relationship with wildlife in Wyoming. Ethics, not indifference, and a responsible attitude should prevail. And the state’s politicians and leaders need to be at the head of the parade on passing and enforcing laws that reflect the values of their fellow citizens.

In two separate polls, an overwhelming majority of Wyoming residents—including 74% of sportsmen—agreed that running over animals with vehicles is neither ethical nor “fair chase.” Our poll showed 71% of Wyoming residents do not approve of animal cruelty.

The coming years could pose a rare opportunity for sportsmen, conservationists—and also the agricultural community— to find common ground, building a future where humane wildlife stewardship is the norm.

I believe this can happen because precedents exist. Simultaneously with the passage of its HB275 wolf bill this year, another nightmare had been brewing: Two legislators proposed a bill to allow year-round hunting and trapping of mountain lions. But hunters and wildlife advocates stood together and shouted a collective “No!”

The Legislature listened. That moment proved something important. When we rise above division and focus on fairness and respect for wildlife, we can protect what makes Wyoming wild and wonderful, and we can do it together.

By dragging that muzzled wolf into a bar, Roberts also dragged Wyoming’s outdated treatment of wildlife into broader public view. In the harsh glare of what became a global spotlight, he may end up having done Wyoming a strange kind of favor. His grotesque actions exposed to the world what many here already knew—that cruelty to wildlife is not tolerated by most

Wyoming residents, even if it happens to be protected by law. Those who might think the state should ignore such cruelty grow ever fewer in number.

If there’s any justice to be found in the matter, it rests with the prospect that Roberts’ brutality could spark real change for the better for wolves and other wildlife, for ethics and for Wyoming’s future.

Wendy Keefover is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She works as an advocate for native carnivores for Humane World for Animals.

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The company’s press release claimed the pups to be “the world’s first de-extinct animals … brought back from extinction using genetic edits derived from a complete dire wolf genome, meticulously reconstructed by Colossal from ancient DNA.”

Experts in paleogenetics pointed out that only 14 genes, with 20 differences between living gray wolves and extinct dire wolves, were involved in the “edits.” Pontus Skoglund, head of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at Britain’s Francis Crick Institute, posted on BlueSky: “Would a chimpanzee with 20 gene edits be human? … These individuals seem optimistically 1/100,000th dire wolf.”

Conservationists noted other concerns.  What is the plan for dire wolves and other “de-extinct” species?  Where is the habitat for an animal that was adapted for preying on now-extinct megafauna like ground sloths and giant bison?  How might dire wolves and gray wolves co-exist, and could they hybridize? 

And the real question: Wouldn’t Colossal’s enormous financial resources be better used to conserve existing species? 

According to the Washington Post, the company has been valued at $10.2 billion and has raised $435 million in funding; billionaire and conservative mega-donor Peter Thiel is an investor.

Despite all this, there is one place where the scientifically dubious and ethically problematic goal of “de-extinction” has been embraced without reservation: the Trump Administration. 

In a post on X, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum claimed that most species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have not recovered “because the status quo is focused on regulation more than innovation,” and went on to hail Colossal’s announcement: “The revival of the Dire Wolf heralds the advent of a thrilling new era of scientific wonder, showcasing how the concept of de-extinction can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation.” 

Burgum’s endorsement of Colossal went even farther during a meeting with Interior Department employees: “If we’re going to be in anguish about losing a species, now we have an opportunity to bring them back. Pick your favorite species and call Colossal.” 

In fact, the Endangered Species Act has produced some spectacular recovery successes, including the bald eagle, peregrine falcon, and American alligator. And the law has succeeded in preventing the extinction of over 99% of listed species.

Burgum is correct that most ESA-listed species have not recovered sufficiently to be “delisted,” declared no longer at risk of extinction.  But the reason is not excessive regulation.

A peer-reviewed analysis of species listed by the law from 1992 through 2020 concluded that the reasons for the low rate of delisting were “small population sizes at time of listing, coupled with delayed protection and insufficient funding.” To this can be added the fact that by the time many species are listed, their suitable habitat has dwindled too much to support robust recovered populations.

The “innovation” needed to protect America’s biodiversity is not the high-tech resurrection of extinct species. It is simply to list declining species earlier, when their populations are still large enough to benefit from the protections that the law provides. And funding must be sufficient to support scientifically sound recovery plans.  The paper cited above found that spending per listed species declined by nearly 50% from 1985 to 2020.

Burgum’s statements ignore the most basic goal of conservation. It is not to preserve individual animals, it is to help populations sustain themselves in their native habitats, fulfilling their ecological roles and exhibiting the full range of their natural behaviors. 

The idea that species can be conserved by picking up the phone to “call Colossal” and order up a few genetically engineered survivors is a delusional and disingenuous fantasy.

Burgum has made clear that his management of the more than 500 million acres of public land under his authority will be all about energy extraction. On his first day in office, he released six Secretarial Orders, all of which were focused on increasing fossil fuel production. None mentioned the words “wildlife” or “conservation,” much less endangered species.

Endangered species such as sage grouse, gray wolves, and grizzly bears are inconvenient obstacles to “unleashing” fossil fuel extraction everywhere across the public lands of the West. We can expect many attacks on the Endangered Species Act from this administration.

But none is more wrong-headed—or cynical—than using those cute genetically engineered “dire wolf” pups to distract from the urgent needs of actual endangered species.

Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a conservation biologist and lives in Oregon.

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Writers on the Range has a simple two-part mission. One is to engage Westerners in talking to each other about issues important to the region. The other aim is to entice readers to look forward to these fact-based opinions, with the hope they’ll then want to keep their local journalism outlet alive and flourishing.

Our opinions this year covered a wide range: avalanche deaths that might have been prevented, by Molly Absolon; Ben Long’s profile of Diane K. Boyd, whose innovative career studying wolves in the wild covered four decades; Zak Podmore’s description of how dead pool is a strong possibility for Lake Powell. We’re happy to report that Megan Schrader of the Denver Post said that Long’s and Podmore’s opinions were among the paper’s most-viewed columns.

But it was what happened to wildlife in the state of Wyoming that garnered the most response from readers, who wrote letters of outrage or made our opinion go viral on social media. Wendy Keefover of the Humane Society of the USA was involved in both.

Her first opinion column, published in April, revealed that in Wyoming coyotes can be legally killed—though in this case the animal run over by a snowmobiler was a wolf.

We know a wolf suffered this assault because the snowmobiler showed off the dazed and muzzled animal at a bar, where it was photographed splayed out on the floor. Many readers were appalled, especially as the penalty for what amounted to torture was a minor fine.

The second column by Keefover was written with Kristin Combs of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, and it covered the sudden death of grizzly bear 399, Wyoming’s most famous bruin.

Starting in 2004, this prolific mother bear raised 18 cubs amidst the millions of visitors and residents of Jackson Hole and Grand Teton National Park. Her death, after colliding with a car, resulted in an outpouring of grief. The writers’ opinion calling for greater protection for grizzlies was shared on social media by more than 20,000 readers who visited our website on the first day it appeared.

We’re also pleased to report that a Writers on the Range column helped quash the state of Utah’s plan to allow a 460-foot telecommunications tower in the heart of Bears Ears National Monument. In his opinion, Mark Maryboy, former delegate to the Navajo Nation Council, blasted the state’s proposed tower as “a spear in the heart of the monument.” The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance told us that Maryboy’s column, which ran widely in the state, was a “major component” in the tower’s defeat.

A more recent column, by Jennifer Rokala, head of the Center for Western Priorities, was shared by many readers. Rokala insisted that no matter what exploitation the Trump administration planned for public lands, conservationists would fight back. As a reader put it in a letter to the editor of the Aspen Daily News: “You’re providing factual and great journalism that inspires and gives hope.”

We were inspired by several columns about Westerners trying to change the world, including Katie Klingsporn’s profile of a Wyoming principal, Katie Law, who never gives up on students at Arapaho Charter High School. Law was rewarded by seeing 14 students graduate this year, the largest class in the school’s history. Why did she work so hard? “I want to see these students succeed, and I’m going to do what it takes.”

There were other columns about extraordinary people or the novel ways writers understand the West, including Dave Marston’s piece about Amory Lovins, who insists that the energy gap can be closed, and others by Rebecca Clarren, Shaun Ketchum Jr., Rick Knight, Jacob Richards and Laura Pritchett.  Marston, the publisher of Writers on the Range, also revealed his struggle with bipolar mental illness.

Each of our writers—who are paid—is eager to start a conversation because they care about the West, and in particular, the public land that makes this region unique. And we suggest never skipping a column by Grand Canyon educator Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff, who can’t help noting the many foibles of tourists.

For example, whenever a hiker asks her on the trail: “Was the hike worth it?” Woodruff confesses she’d love to answer: “No, turn around now!”

Betsy Marston is the editor of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, the independent nonprofit opinion service that seeks to spur lively conversations about the West. She lives in Paonia, Colorado.

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Grizzly 399 wasn’t just another wild bear in northwestern Wyoming; she was a window into the secret lives of grizzlies. Over nearly three decades she raised 18 cubs amidst the millions of visitors and residents of Jackson Hole and Grand Teton National Park.

Her death speaks, as her life did, about the urgent need to better protect these intelligent, rare creatures from roads, human foods, farm animals and trophy hunters.

Grizzly 399’s life captivated millions of people. Attentive and patient, she worked hard to make sure her cubs had sufficient food and warm dens and were protected from male bears and other dangers.

The doings of her many families, the first in 2004 and the last in 2023, made her legendary, like the time she and her four cubs feasted on serviceberries right next to a road, gently picking berries among the leaves.

There was also the time she crossed the Snake River with four cubs following like the tail of a kite, while hundreds of people gathered to witness. These intimate glimpses inspired countless numbers of visitors to Wyoming’s wilderness and gave them a connection with the famous bear and her broods.

Grizzly 399 had always been careful around roads. She often waited at a highway’s edge until a photographer stopped traffic or she heard no vehicles coming her way. She frequently navigated busy highways and the streets around Jackson Hole.

In the end it was not enough.

Vehicle collisions, a leading cause of wildlife deaths, are just one more threat for grizzly bears. This year alone, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has seen record numbers of mortalities. By October 2024, at least 68 grizzlies had died—most killed because they came near humans or were shot by hunters.

With their habitats shrinking, their foods vanishing and more roads fragmenting their territories, grizzlies have become marooned on geographic islands for their survival. Their lands have been increasingly hemmed in by developments, energy projects and deadly highways.

Once 50,000 strong, fewer than 2,000 grizzly bears now survive in the Lower 48 states. Coexisting with them means addressing preventable conflicts by bear-proofing human-food sources or safeguarding livestock. Many of Grizzly 399’s cubs were killed by humans. Perhaps half of them survived to adulthood.

One Jackson Hole resident, for example, deliberately and defiantly fed them, despite the dangers of getting bears accustomed to human-provided meals. Teton County has since introduced tougher enforcement measures, including requiring bear-resistant garbage cans with self-locking mechanisms. The Wyoming Department of Game and Fish and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also required residents of Teton County to make garbage and bird feeders inaccessible to keep Grizzly 399 and her cubs safe.

One takeaway is that grizzly bears can be managed with compassion. This needs to be the norm, not the exception, and we need to shift practices to prioritize coexistence over killing.

In bear country, people can make human foods unavailable, ranchers can employ electric fencing and remove cattle and sheep carcasses, and hunters can carry bear spray and accurately identify their targets before shooting.

Grizzly 399’s last surviving cub, Spirit, has not been seen since its mother’s death. Nearly two years old, the cub was last reported as healthy and may have a chance at survival. Its future—indeed, the future of all grizzlies—depends on people’s willingness to change behaviors.

It is especially important that we resist calls to strip grizzly bears of their Endangered Species Act protections, certainly until grizzlies are truly recovered, with genetically diverse and connected populations across secure habitats.

This means creating safe passages, including highway crossings, between their populations. We must also hold the line against trophy hunting. Removing Endangered Species Act protections, which are now under attack in the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and elsewhere, could set back years of conservation work.

With Grizzly 399’s passing, it feels as though something is missing in the Tetons—something vivid and wild that moved us. Her legacy calls us to act, to create a future in which grizzly bears and people live together in safety.

The writers are contributors to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. Wendy Keefover works for the Humane Society of the United States; Kristin Combs is executive director of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates.

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But I am against hunting mountain lions in Colorado. Today, I join many wildlife professionals and hunters who support Colorado’s Proposition 127—Cats Aren’t Trophies, on the ballot this November.

I’ve never been much for so-called “trophy hunting,” especially when the animals are chased to exhaustion by commercial outfitters using dogs and GPS tracking. Once these lions are perched helplessly in a tree, they are shot by a so-called “hunter.”

This kind of hunting violates a foundational value of “fair chase” that I was taught as a child. I was also taught that hunting is a form of harvest, yielding “free-range” delicacies that reconnect us to the land and water. Part of that connection is respect for the game we hunt, not desire to dominate or eliminate them.

But hunters are predators, and as a nation, we have long harbored a bloodlust for competitors like mountain lions. We have stoked societal mythologies and fears, and despite the wisdom of mid-1900s conservation scholars like Aldo Leopold, we have continued to scapegoat these creatures in the name of game management.

Maybe we do this to hide our own inadequacies. It is much easier to blame declining elk or deer populations on mountain lions or wolves than to grapple with habitat loss and fragmentation, drought and water scarcity or changing climates. Acknowledging those would require that we deal with our ever-expanding desires for more and cheaper and easier.

Yet here’s what’s important to know now: Emerging science tells us that these apex predators aren’t the enemy, they’re allies. They are likely providing an important ecosystem service in checking the spread of chronic wasting disease, CWD, an existential threat to healthy deer and elk populations, by targeting animals weakened by the disease.

Forty-two of Colorado’s 51 deer herds and 17 of 42 elk herds are infected with this 100 percent fatal, brain-wasting malady. The disease started in Colorado and spread across the Midwest and Rockies. It has killed hundreds of thousands of elk, deer and moose and it is getting worse.

The pathogen is not a virus or bacteria but a “prion”—a protein that slowly and painfully destroys brain tissue in deer and elk. There is no evidence that these CWD prions are “zoonotic” and can infect humans, but public health officials warn against eating CWD-infected game as a precaution.

Prions aren’t living things, so they can’t be killed with antibiotic or antiviral medications. They can only be “deactivated”, and amazingly, science is telling us that they are deactivated in the digestive systems of predators like lions and wolves. That is why these animals are our natural allies.

As a scientist, I know that correlation is not causation, but sometimes it can be a powerful indicator. There is good science showing that lions will selectively prey on CWD-infected animals because infected animals are likely easier to kill. Where there are no lions, there are higher rates of CWD-infected animals; where healthy lion population exists, there are low levels of CWD infection or none at all.

Killing 500 lions, every year, in Colorado is not simply unscientific and unethical, it is interrupting the animals’ vital work as a bulwark against CWD. In Colorado, 2,000 residents will buy a license to kill a Colorado lion (0.3% of nearly 6 million citizens, and 0.6% of state hunters), and 500 non-residents come into the state to buy a license for lions.

For as long as there have been hunters, and as long as hunters have been managing wildlife, we have scapegoated and persecuted apex predators, like mountain lions. It’s time we change. Mountain lions are our allies, so let’s start treating them that way. We need them to flourish.

Voting yes in support of Proposition 127 is a great beginning.

Dan Ashe is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He was the 16th director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, serving for nearly six years.

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