They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  This telling photo was taken by the Western Watersheds Project in Idaho, where the life of a wolf is worth a mere pizza and a pitcher of a beer.

The hearing on our motion for a preliminary injunction to stop the wolf hunts in Idaho and Montana and restore Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in both states took place before U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy on Monday.  (See here, here, and here for more on the hearing.)

What next?  Now we anxiously await Judge Molloy's ruling. 

While we're waiting (with fingers crossed and a rabbit's foot rubbed hourly), wolves are being killed in Idaho and the media's coverage of the issue seems to intensify each day. 

Particularly noteworthy are an excellent editorial and a great blog post in yesterday's New York Times.

The editorial rightly finds that "[t]hese hunts are misguided and, at best, premature."  The editorial also discusses how wolves have prospered since their reintroduction in the mid-1990s and been an ecological boon to the region.  The editorial board eloquently observes, "You might almost argue that their prosperity was and is an expression of an ecological hunger for a top predator." 

Timothy Egan's blog post discusses a horribly disgusting remark made by Rex Rammell, a candidate for governor of Idaho, in the context of Idaho's and Montana's wolf hunts and, more broadly, the changing West.  At a political barbecue last week, someone cracked a comment about "Obama tags" (in hunting parlance, a "tag" is a permit to kill (e.g., deer tag, elk tag, wolf tag, etc.)).  In response, Rammell said, "Obama tags? We'd buy some of those." 

I'm still in shock from reading that. 

Egan closes with:

As for wolves, Rammell wants them all dead, dead, dead.  "I believe wolves need to be eliminated," he says on his Web site.  Does it matter to him that they roamed every Western state long before Rex Rammell starting tossing one-liners to red-faced Republicans blowing on their soup at the diner?

Probably not.  But judging by the success of tourism built around wolf sightings, the four-legged hunter is back in the West to stay.  Still, it would help all concerned if what we talk about when talking about wolves was just that.

I could not agree more. 

And now back to the waiting game; I'm off to search for a four-leaf clover.

(Photo courtesy of Western Watersheds Project)