As a wildlife biologist, I know gray wolves are not sweet little puppies, that they need to eat and that they eat elk. But elk have persisted despite living with wolves for over 800,000 years. Peer-reviewed science has shown that weather extremes, human harvest and human-caused habitat loss are the major causes of elk decline throughout the U.S. State records in the northern Rockies consistently show increases in elk populations since wolf reintroduction there in the mid-1990s. Wolves will not eliminate elk populations. Don’t let mythology and fear inform your vote.
Joanna E. LambertLyons
