Pardon me skipping all the posts above, but it seems to me that if they can use the wolves to cause a decline in game populations, they can make a case against allowing further hunting. That may well be the driving force behind this stuff. That Mule Deer maybe pressured too much matters not to them I expect.
If someone else already posted this idea well, sorry sorry sorry.
That is precisely the plan. They said so themselves 15 to 20 years before the 1st introduction in the Yellowstone area. I read exactly that in an anti-hunting magazine at least 15 years before they started planting them. It took them a lot of time to get their people into places of authority in the FWS and FS, but once they got that done, we got wolves.
They made some mistakes along the way. They never anticipated that wolves would become hunted game animals themselves. They learned and we will never see a grizzly hunting season in the lower 48.
