When an activist friend asked me to write an overview of the wolf situation, my first thought was: “What a daunting and extremely depressing task that would be.” But having followed the wolves’ story since long before their reintroduction to Yellowstone and the Idaho wilderness, I suppose it’s only natural that I take this on. After all, I’ve covered the issue many times in articles, on my blog, and I devoted two chapters of my book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport, to the plight of wolves.

At the time I wrote the book’s chapter, “From the Brink of Oblivion and Back Again,” wolves were still federally protected and their removal from the Endangered Species List was just someone’s bad idea that had yet to see its dark day—I never quite realized just how apt that title would soon be. Until recently I remained hopeful that…