It is interesting to read the letters this week about the wolves. I agree with Mr. Wray that the lands are not just for the sheep. They are also for the mountain bikers, the cattle, the horsemen and horses and the hikers, the backcountry skiers, the snow-machiners, the miners, the fishermen, the hunters, etc.
The aforementioned people and animals and products all put money and food in the economy of this state and country.
How much money have the cattle and sheep industries put back into the state economy over the last 150 years as compared to the wolves?
How about the monies spent by fishermen, hikers, hunters and skiers for recreation that is put back into the economy?
How much money have the wolves put back into the economy of the state and the country? None. We spent money in Canada to buy wolves that were already in Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine and Minnesota.
The only money the wolves put back in the economy is from the Wildlife Service spending it on wages for someone to ride around in trucks and airplanes, burning up a non-renewable resource keeping track of them.
Mr. Banning's letter is 100 percent right. Mr. Dutcher claims that these things don't happen. (His words at the meeting at the school.) I would suggest he get out of his "enclosure" where he raised his "pets" and talk to Indians and natives in the Yukon and Northwest Territory. It is too bad he cannot talk to my uncles, Adolph and Oalus Murie. They have passed on long ago. They forgot more about wolves than he will ever know.
The tree-huggers who snivel about the upcoming season for hunting have no one to blame but themselves. They are the ones who started the whole problem. The hunting will put money back into the state economy, not some doughnut hole lawyer's pocket in Washington, D.C.
Morgan Thomas
Hailey
