"Fuck em. They eat livestock, pets and humans. Humans can fill the void if a predator is required to control the population of some species. Just like they did here with wolves back in the mid 1800s."

No they can't. White men with guns and an attitude of superiority are the real problem here (as they are across so much of the world, and have been for a couple of thousand years). Until they arrived there was no problem with wolves and humans existing together as they had done for thousands of years. Wolves have been driven out of everywhere us and our ancestors have rocked up. Here in the UK we need to reintroduce wolves to start re-balancing the ecosystem, but rich white men with guns who robbed the land off the original inhabitants won't have it as it will interrupt their 'sport' (the last wolf in Great Britain was shot in the 1700's).

Like it or not, extirpation of wolves is detrimental to the environment and humans cannot replace then as keystone predators: the way wolves influence an ecosystem is down to more than what they eat. They influence the behaviour of prey such as elk and moose and this in turn means over browsing is checked. I can recommend a superb book called The Wolf's Tooth by Cristina Eisenberg, which discusses the impact of wolf populations on ecosystems. Of course there is a balance we need to strike here as people have to make a living, but we need to dump our cultural baggage and move on. There are areas where control is necessary, but there are alternatives to blasting the living shit out of everything in sight.

Here's a plea from the heart: Here in the UK we destroyed our native ecosystems over hundreds of years, and with this shower of toffs in power efforts are continuing to slaughter our remaining wildlife despite the fact the evidence shows this is a disaster. In the times I've visited the US I've been struck by the fact you have wilderness, room for large keystone predators like wolf and cougar and the animals they prey on. What you have is special beyond words, and you guys are guardians of this treasure for every man, woman and child on this planet.

I might have said this before, but when we were hiking in the backcountry of Yellowstone a couple of years ago I had an epiphany. Two UK hayseed brits complete with bear spray set out into old growth forest where (according to the warning) grizzly and brown bears were passing through and of course, there were wolves about. We didn't see any (we did meet a really confident ground squirrel), but walking through those woods I felt a feeling I'd never experienced before, the fact I wasn't the top of the food chain. It sent a tingle down the spine, made you really look at what was about, be aware of your environment and heightened the senses. This is what it felt like for our ancestors on the plains of Africa. This made me feel really alive.

I love the stories you guys tell and have the greatest respect for you and have learnt much, but sometimes I don't think you know how lucky you are to have what you have. Once it's gone, it ain't coming back, and then we all loose.