CLARK - Outfitter Ray Heid knows the snowy mountains around his ranch may soon be home to wolves moving south from Wyoming.
In this tiny town north of Steamboat Springs, these mountains are also where he makes his living, taking families on summer horseback trips through the sun- dappled aspen and guiding hunters into the Mount Zirkel Wilderness each fall.
So, like many Western Slope residents, Heid is uneasy that old foes are once more close at hand and that state officials are only now asking for advice on how to manage them.
"I'd like to have them around," he said on a bright spring day as he waited for a string of horses to bring the morning's guests back to the stable. "I'd love to hear them howling in the wilderness. But people don't realize what a burden they'll be. And I'm concerned because they're going to be here in a hurry."
In next-door Moffat County, just miles from where wolves were sighted by Wyoming biologists last year, most residents have a zero-tolerance policy.
"I believe it's inhumane to allow a single wolf back into Colorado because there's nothing you can do to keep them from getting killed," said T. Wright Dickenson, a local rancher and chairman of the board of Great Outdoors Colorado, a conservation organization. "There's a reason why they're gone. It's the right reason, and we don't want them back."
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In this tiny town north of Steamboat Springs, these mountains are also where he makes his living, taking families on summer horseback trips through the sun- dappled aspen and guiding hunters into the Mount Zirkel Wilderness each fall.
So, like many Western Slope residents, Heid is uneasy that old foes are once more close at hand and that state officials are only now asking for advice on how to manage them.
"I'd like to have them around," he said on a bright spring day as he waited for a string of horses to bring the morning's guests back to the stable. "I'd love to hear them howling in the wilderness. But people don't realize what a burden they'll be. And I'm concerned because they're going to be here in a hurry."
In next-door Moffat County, just miles from where wolves were sighted by Wyoming biologists last year, most residents have a zero-tolerance policy.
"I believe it's inhumane to allow a single wolf back into Colorado because there's nothing you can do to keep them from getting killed," said T. Wright Dickenson, a local rancher and chairman of the board of Great Outdoors Colorado, a conservation organization. "There's a reason why they're gone. It's the right reason, and we don't want them back."
Full Story Here
Oak
