In an eyebrow-raising love letter to apex predators over actual people, The Colorado Sun published a piece titled “The man who led Yellowstone’s wolf reintroduction has a lot to say about Colorado’s.” Unsurprisingly, it features none other than Doug Smith, the guy who thought tossing federally protected wolves into ranch country was a solid idea and not an economic suicide pact.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Doug Smith thinks if you don’t like predators eating your livestock, you should change your ways, not kill the predators. Cool logic.
- Ranchers are now being told to use RAG boxes (yes, that’s real), guard dogs, night shifts, and Jedi mind tricks to outmaneuver wolves.
- Bureaucrats in Denver decided that rural folks should bankroll wolf babysitting programs while pretending this is “helpful.”
- Conservation elitists claim “half the population” wants wolves, conveniently ignoring that the other half actually lives near them.
- This isn’t about balance, it’s about power. And as usual, the costs fall squarely on those with dirt under their nails.
My Bottom Line
Let me decode this circus act for you: wealthy urbanites in Gore-Tex jackets wanted big bad wolves back in Colorado because they watched too many nature documentaries narrated by British guys with soothing voices. Now, ranchers, who already work sunup to sundown just to stay afloat, are told they must spend more time, money, and mental bandwidth fending off apex predators so some Denver vegan can feel virtuous at brunch.
Night-penning? Shepherds? Radio-activated RAG boxes?! That doesn’t sound like conservation, that sounds like a government-mandated medieval LARP session. And who’s picking up the tab for all this nonsense? Not Boulder. Not Aspen. It’s your local rancher trying to keep his last cow from becoming wolf chow while CPW tells him he should just be more “coexistent.”
Here’s a truth bomb: these eco-policies don’t restore nature, they rearrange extinction priorities based on Instagram likes and latte foam designs. And while I believe in being good stewards of God’s creation (yes, even the furry murder machines), stewardship doesn’t mean sacrificing human livelihoods on the altar of agenda-driven biology.
If wolves were killing MacBooks instead of cattle, you’d see emergency legislation overnight.
