Aldo Leopold wrote an essay in the Sand County Almanac about an event he encountered when hunting for deer. A pack of wolves were playing beneath where they were sitting. The group of men unloaded their rifles on the wolves with the objective to kill. Aldo says it was then when he noticed a green glow from the wolves eyes disappear as it died. He began to question and think like a mountain. Thinking like a mountain means to to keep a balanced ecosystem around the environment to keep it healthy. Competition and predation are parts of theses processes. Aldo was raised to shoot each wolf he encountered so that the deer would strive. If there is nothing to control the population of deer then the vegetation on the mountain will deplete into a bare mountain.
I was very sad to think of a bunch of men shooting innocent wolves for no apparent reason. I felt that these men were stupid about their belief in controlling the deer population. We must think before we believe in trying to control a certain aspect of a population. The mountain would go bare and the deer would eventually die off. Succession would begin all over again and species would evolve again. Either way we try to control a population, there is always a way a new community will arise naturally.
Marquette is having a wolf issue on Isle Royale. That last alpha female died when she fell into a hole. The population will be wiped out after the last male dies. Marquette and Upper Peninsula biologists are talking about adding wolves to Isle Royale. My opinion on this topic is not has not been made. I would need to research and imagine what would happen if we left nature alone. We can't save everything and have done a large amount of damage by introducing a species to save another. Ecology is a sensitive world of connections.
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