Utah the next state for Wolf Colonization?--1 mngmt plan for all of the Rockies..then the midwest....then the East

Wolves in Utah
After years hidden in the wilderness of the news cycle, wolves are now back in the news these days. Two wolves have been shot following Utah's most serious outbreak of wolf sightings and livestock attacks in at least 80 years.
On July 23, a sheepherder in Rich County trapped and shot a female wolf. In the previous two weeks, the same wolf surfaced three times -- stalking a herd of sheep, killing a calf and then killing several sheep. Earlier this month, another sheepherder killed a male wolf after it attacked two sheep in Cache County near the Utah-Idaho border.
Wolf sightings have been reported in Utah for years, but these are the first documented attacks on livestock since 1930 when Utah ranchers exterminated them.
Since people re-introduced wolves to Yellowstone in the 1990s, experts on both sides of the wolf debate predicted they'd eventually expand their range to Utah. One side welcomes them; the other side detests them.
Sunday Edition is joined by men on each side of the debate: Leonard Blackham, the Utah commissioner of Agriculture and Food, and Kirk Robinson, executive director of the Western Wildlife Conservancy.
Can wolves and people coexist in Utah?
"I don't think they can. Our population has increased so much in the last few years and just the amount of real wilderness, at least the kind of wilderness that they exist in, just isn't here in Utah," says Blackham. "So we think that with the livestock industry, with the wildlife, the sportsmen, hunting and simply the amount of recreation going on today, it just doesn't really make sense to have wolves in our area."
Robinson has a different opinion. "Certainly they can, they co-exist in other states and we do have a habitat in Utah that is suitable for wolves, not as much as in Montana for example, but there is good habitat here for wolves. And they will be coming through no matter what and eventually they will re-colonize Colorado and other states and they will move through Utah," Robinson says.
Ranchers tend to view wolves as pests, but not everyone agrees. "They are very intelligent beings, they have emotional lives, they have family ties and they perform an important ecological service for our ecosystems that we also depend on as human beings," explains Robinson.
Senate Bill 36 calls for the ability of the state to shoot a wolf if it has been identified as causing a problem.
Blackham believes this is the only method for dealing with wolves in Utah. "It is going to have to be dealt with that way, if we have wolves here they are going to get in trouble. I think that the amount of livestock we have and the way we are ranging our livestock, if they're here they are going to get in trouble," explains Blackham. "That's about the only solution."
Blackham believes that wolves are going to cause a problem with our livestock industry. Robinson disagrees.
"There are other ways, non-lethal methods for trying to prevent livestock depredation," says Robinson. "I would prefer to see those methods employed to the extent practicable and then if a problem remains, according to the state wildlife management plan for wolves, wolves can be removed. That's what happens in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana... but a wholesale campaign to eliminate them, we did that 80 years ago, and I certainly do not advocate that we try to do that again."