Upstate N.Y. May Be Next Area To Receive Wolves Idea Started As Sarcastic Threat, But Backers Are Pushing Ahead

Opponents of the federal wolf recovery program may have been joking when they suggested transplanting wolves into New York. But it’s no joke to wolf supporters.

Let those effete Easterners who clamored to put the big predators back in Yellowstone National Park have a taste of living with ‘em, close-up, the opponents’ argument went.

The location of choice was Central Park in New York City, but boosters might settle for the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York state.

Defenders of Wildlife, a group that supports the wolf recovery program, has been promoting the idea by sponsoring a tour of the Northeast by a pair of domestic wolves and their handler.

Next Thursday and Friday, Defenders will sponsor a conference in the New York capital, Albany, that includes a Who’s Who of wolf science and management in America.

“We’ll talk to people, give ‘em an idea what we went through” in wolf restoration, said Joe Fontaine, a wolf manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Helena.

The concept of wolves in the Adirondacks - home of Olympic venue Lake Placid - is not as far-fetched as it sounds, according to Defenders. Northern New York state contains considerable stretches of wild country, with plenty of deer and beaver for wolves to eat.

“Restoration of wolves to the Adirondacks would likely be just as feasible as the recent successful reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone,” Defenders said in a press release this week.

Well, maybe.

The millions of game-filled acres in and around Yellowstone have proved hospitable to wolves. But Adirondack Park, while measuring 6 million acres, also includes dozens of towns and villages, farms and resorts.

There is at least one valid comparison to the Northern Rockies, however: irate farmers who don’t want wolves.

“As an organization this is something we’re opposed to,” said Mark Emery, spokesman for the New York Farm Bureau. “We think it’s ludicrous.”

The idea is a long way from becoming reality and is being touted mostly by Defenders, a group that pays ranchers when wolves kill their livestock. (Call their office and you hear recorded wolf howls while you’re on hold.) There is no formal government proposal to return wolves to the Adirondacks, a range of 4,000-foot peaks that begins about 180 miles north of New York City, said Fontaine, one of several federal wildlife service people who will attend the Albany conference.

Fontaine said the agency’s main goal at the conference is to discuss with other professionals a national strategy for getting the wolf off the endangered species list and out from under federal protection.

Four biologists from Yellowstone will attend, as will people working on wolf reintroduction in North Carolina and in the Southwest, and academics from around North America.