I heard a wolf howl last evening, at dusk, right near our house.  Three long, outrageous, unmistakable howls, rolling down from the snow-covered ridge above -- a lone voice that seemed to emanate from a stand of limber pine and Douglas fir. 

I was watering the goats, when I heard the first howl.  They were butting and bumping against each other, and me, eager for hay.  They didn't seem to hear it.  Neither did Kiybu, our geriatric and somewhat deaf dog.  Kiybu's response would have been different, just a few years ago.  Once, while skiing not far from here, we (the dogs and I) heard a wolf howl, Kiybu, the alpha female of our pack, had tucked herself behind me, as if for protection.

It's a good thing that this wolf doesn't live in Idaho's wild Lolo country, where Idaho Fish and Game Department is gearing up to slaughter every last wolf -- maybe 75 animals total.  We expect a proposal any day now -- and are sharpening our legal tools for action, again.  There, as elsewhere, wolves are being scapegoated (or scapewolved?), wrongly blamed for reducing elk-when, according to experts, forest succession after long-ago fires have been the cause of a slight elk decline in the Lolo area. 

Still, there are record numbers of elk overall in the region -- so many elk, in fact, that they are still being hunted this winter to reduce numbers in some places where they exceed sustainable levels.  With such abundance, we should be able to share a few elk with wolves.  But facts matter little, if they get in the way of the Old West, wolf-killing mentality.  (Got a problem?  Kill a wolf).

It will be a long time, generations maybe, for the traditional Old West view of nature to die out.  But eventually, it will be replaced with more compassionate views towards the increasingly scarce wildlife and wildlands of the West.  In the meantime, there is an important role for NRDC and our partners to play in keeping wolves alive and healthy in a region where anti-wolf  forces are well armed.

After the last howl died out, I stood among the impatient goats, and listened to the silence.  Snow fell softly, and so did the darkness.  How strange is the silence, after it is split by the howl of a wolf. 

Then I locked the goats inside the barn, for protection.