More Opinions Columnists

• V.B. Price: Preserving our water is greatest challenge the city, state faces
• Jeffry Gardner: End of The Trib is part of the demise of serious journalism
• Katherine Augustine: Time with friends from Japan provides treasured memories

MOST RECENT TRIB STORIES

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
  08:48 a.m., February 25, 2008
• Congressman is indicted
  08:37 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Series of attacks target Green Zone
  08:36 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Iran is defying U.N., agency says
  08:35 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Waterboarding approval probed
  08:34 a.m., February 23, 2008

TRIB IN THE BLOGOSPHERE*

• Ty Murray Invitational thrills fans in Albuquerque
• Is Rome Burning?
• Ominous Skies
• The Road to Invalidation
• Albuquerque company participates in “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”

*Note: The Tribune does not create and is not responsible for the blogosphere's headlines and stories. These links to blogs talking about ABQTrib.com are automatically generated. Use them at your own risk.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

SHARE THIS STORY [?]

Once upon a time there was a place in southwestern New Mexico that hated wolves, among other things.

It's name was Contrary County, because in addition to hating wolves, it also hated greenies, everything federal and all things government - from protected national forests and other public lands to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which was supposed to propagate Mexican gray wolves in their natural ranges in Arizona and New Mexico, including Contrary County.

Contrarians, who were sort of full of themselves, forgot their history and had become selfish, bitter, angry and resentful. They were Contrarians, first and foremost.

They didn't care that the wolves almost bit the dust, almost were exterminated, in part thanks to Contrarians and their like. They didn't care that Fish and Wildlife had a thing called a national mandate - so sayeth all the people - to bring back the nearly extinct wolf by ensuring it has the habitat - to, you know, live. You know, someplace like a home on the range, sort of like where the buffalo roam. A place like that. Kind of wild. Kind of remote. Kind of Western.

No matter. Contrarians had their own ideas, like the South had in 1861 when it said it wasn't part of America anymore. Ya'll know how well that went.

But no matter. In Contrary County, they'd decided that the rest of the country didn't know beans. In fact, so contrary were they that they deputized their own wolf lawman - sort of like a bounty hunter - to kill any wolf they thought was a problem. Which pretty much covered Õem all, since Contrarians figure the only good wolf is a dead wolf, even those on government lands abundant in and around Contrary County.

In fact, that's why Fish and Wildlife thought it was perfect for the Mexican grays to stake a claim to a tiny piece of their former range, a little piece of ground where they could live, mate, reproduce and raise pups. Not unlike what Contrarians themselves did after their ancestors stole the county from the Mexicans, who stole it from the Spanish, who stole it from American Indians, who were about the last to live in harmony with wolves.

Far as Contrarians were concerned, this land was their land, and the wolf was just a cattle-killing, elk-hunting, deer-slaying, trouble-making varmint. Shoot Õem on sight.

Never mind that America - of which Contrary was technically a part - had decided that killing wolves wasn't real smart, that wolves were a vital part of nature and that, by God, they deserved a tiny part of his planet to live on. Never mind the law, the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which protected wolves and other critters on the edge of extinction and ordered Fish and Wildlife to save them.

To Contrarians it was a danged tree-loving, federal-regulating, load-of-cow-pie law that made their cattle and their elk and their deer and their land wolf-bait. So they all got lil' red riding hoods and declared wolves a menance, especially to Contrary's kids.

And that's where the story has been stuck: looking for some good guys to write an ending in which we Americans all live happily ever after - you know, Contrarians and our wolves on our lands.