What is meant by primeval character is not up for debate. A total of nine wolves in the Frank Church wilderness were killed last January in contravention of the spirit and letter of the Act, which was passed by Congress in 1964 to protect those tracts of land “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man,” where the land retains “its primeval character and influence” and is “managed so as to preserve its natural conditions.” Elk bring in wholesome revenues for the state in the form of hunting licenses and fees, and large herds of elk-preferably unnaturally large herds, fat and lazy and without threat from native predators-provide local guiding concerns a major source of profit. And the wolves howl and hunt and take down elk for dinner, which was the behavior that prompted the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to hire its mercenary.
Here the cougars slip through the forests.
Ragged with mountains and cut by chutes of whitewater, the Frank Church is a forbidding and trackless place. LAST WINTER, as if to flip its middle finger at the fiftieth anniversary of the Wilderness Act, the state of Idaho dispatched a hunter-trapper on horseback to track and slaughter two packs of wolves in the Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness, the largest wilderness area in the contiguous United States.
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