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We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realised then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes — something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.
These are the most moving lines from forester and philosopher Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, his breakthrough work in ecological preservation which was published in 1949, almost a year after his death and has since become a cornerstone of environmental ethics.
At one point in time, wolves were persecuted in the United States to the extent that by 1926, Gray Wolves had completely vanished from Yellowstone National Park and the 2.2 million acres of wilderness was left to elk and deer who roamed freely without fear of an apex predator. The result was an ecological disaster. The massive elk feasted on the riverbanks, wiping out young trees, causing soil erosion and taking a toll on the biodiversity.
