9/3/02 10:00 PM ET
ANNOUNCER: We are on an American journey. Go in search of America and you will find America looking back at you. Freedom, self-expression, reinterpreting the founding fathers' ideas from generation to generation. This is an exceptional nation. America's principles have been shaken, molded, adapted and assaulted. But they endure. If you are living the American experience "In Search Of America" is in some ways about you. Now, from New York, Peter Jennings.
PETER JENNINGS, ABC NEWS (Off Camera): Good evening, everyone and welcome to our series, "In Search Of America." We have had a fascinating time, which we will now share with you, exploring the soul and the character and the identity of this exceptional nation through the lives of many people. Our point of departure is Federal Hall in Lower Manhattan because this is where the first United States Congress met in 1789, where George Washington was inaugurated as the first President. That's him up on the pedestal. And where, in a few days, the current Congress will meet to mark the events of last September. Being here is a good reminder that America endures through all manner of crisis and challenge. Our series is a journey through American ideas conceived by the founders, reinterpreted by every generation since. We're going to begin with something very important to all of us: what role do we want government to play in our lives.
MALE ONE, CONGRESSIONAL ANNOUNCER: Mr. Speaker, the President Of The United . . .
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): No matter how much people love America . . .
PAT BUCHANAN, EX-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What's going on, this is America.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): There is nothing like government to get people riled up.
CHARLTON HESTON, PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION: . . . from my cold, dead hand.
MALE TWO, REPORTER: You will be arrested. So you're prepared for that?
MALE THREE, PROTESTER: Yes, we are.
MICHAEL MOORE, FILM MAKER AND AUTHOR: There are millions of us that do not like what's going on.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Sometimes the loudest complainers about government . . .
ROSS PEROT, EX-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It deals with images, sound bites, dirty tricks.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): are the people in government.
FORMER PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN, UNITED STATES: Our government is too big and it spends too much.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Government has been the enemy of some . . .
FORMER GOVERNOR GEORGE WALLACE, ALABAMA: Supreme Court or no Supreme Court, we are going to maintain segregated schools in Dixie.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): and last resort for many.
JOSEPH MCCARTHY, FORMER UNITED STATES SENATOR: Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Sometimes power is wielded by demagogues in government.
JOSEPH MCCARTHY: One communist is one communist too many.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Sometimes government attacks its own citizens. And this is what happened when a man hated the government enough to kill.
PETER JENNINGS (CONTINUED, Off Camera): The role of government has always been an issue in the lives of free and independent people. In the beginning, there were those opposed to adopting the Constitution because they thought it made the Federal Government too powerful. So, they added a Bill Of Rights to protect individuals. And this balancing act is still going on. Our story tonight unfolds in the vast and beautiful countryside of the American West.
PETER JENNINGS (CONTINUED, Off Camera) This is a scene that men and women who settled the American West would never have imagined.
MALE FOUR, WOLF OBSERVER: There's three altogether there.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Just after sunrise in Yellowstone National Park, on a ridge overlooking the park's Lamar Valley, people from all over the United States and other countries, as well, have gathered to witness one of nature's most efficient killers at work.
FEMALE ONE, WOLF OBSERVER: Right. Wow, they're just all moving right through the scope. Do you want to see, Sara?
FEMALE TWO, WOLF OBSERVER: You know I want to see.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Those are gray wolves, Canis Lupus. They were once nearly extinct in the West. But the gray wolf was reintroduced to this vast landscape seven years ago by the Federal Government. And that has made many people who live here furious.
FEMALE THREE, WOLF OBSERVER: Oh and then what's running off to the . . .
MALE FIVE, WOLF OBSERVER: They're off to the races, they're chasing.
MALE SIX, WOLF OBSERVER: Coming our way, just what we like.
FEMALE FOUR: Would somebody want to look through this scope?
MALE FIVE: This is great.
MALE FIVE (CONTINUED): Oh, my golly. Take a look, Julie.
FEMALE FIVE: Oh, look at the elk run. Oh, my lord.
FEMALE SIX: I would if those guys were in there.
MALE SEVEN, WOLF OBSERVER: Now what are they, what's going to happen when they hit the river? What are they going to do when they hit the river?
MALE SEVEN (CONTINUED): Splashed.
FEMALE TWO: Well that was cool.
FEMALE TWO (CONTINUED): You guys.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Many of these people come to America's First National Park every year because for them, the wolf is a source of endless fascination.
HANK FISCHER, NATIONAL WILDLIFE FOUNDATION, AUTHOR OF WOLF WARS: Well think about it. Here you have this animal that weighs maybe 100 pounds. And it's attacking animals that are three or four times its weight. And all it has to get them to the ground are, you know, a couple canines a couple inches long. And having a chance to see how they survive and kill their prey is pretty exciting for people.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): But a few hundred miles away, just over the Continental Divide in Central Idaho, the wolves are a source of endless conflict. This is ranching country.
PETER JENNINGS (CONTINUED, Off Camera) Governor, why were you opposed to the reintroduction in the first place?
GOVERNOR DIRK KEMPTHORNE, REPUBLICAN, IDAHO: This has been a very heavily-financed program by the Federal Government to bring in the wolf. And because you said we're coming in and we really don't care what you say, if I did that to you, Mr. Jennings, you'd get your back up against a wall, too, and you wouldn't like it.
RON GILLETT, CENTRAL IDAHO ANTI-WOLF COALITION: Just because the wolves are here we have to live with them is baloney. The Canadian gray wolf in our area is a land piranha and a wildlife terrorist.
AGGIE BRAILSFORD, RANCHER: Isn't it a wonderful concept to have this huge, national zoo? I don't know whether they have the concept that we do of a lamb or a calf with its back end ripped out and being eaten alive.
ED BANGS, US FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE: Wolf perdition is never going to put anybody out of business. I mean, you know, killing a calf or two a year is not going to drive anybody out of business.
PETER JENNINGS (Off Camera): A lot of ranchers don't believe that.
ED BANGS: That's certainly true.
MALE EIGHT, RANCHER: Well how many did you figure you lost, Gillis?
MALE NINE, RANCHER: This year?
MALE EIGHT: This year or combined all the years.
MALE NINE: 28 head this year. Calves.
RON GILLETT: There was once a thing that we all read about in American history called the Boston Tea Party. And sometimes it takes those kinds of actions to change the course of what's good for communities.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): We are flying through the Boulder, White Cloud Mountains in Central Idaho. We are with Ed Bangs, who is in charge of the Federal program to reintroduce the wolves.
ED BANGS: Okay Jack, we got a visual on him. We're surfing right over the top of him here. Look at them move.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Ed, has the wolf had the slightest problem adapting in here?
ED BANGS: No, no. This is great wolf habitat. In fact, the areas of Canada where we got the wolves from are very similar to this.
PETER JENNINGS (Off Camera): As far as your concerned, from the point of view of the Federal Government, has this been a successful program?
ED BANGS: Oh, absolutely. We're within budget, we're on schedule, we've got more wolves than we thought. So yeah, it's been a big success.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): But a lot of people in Idaho, especially ranchers, think the only good wolf is a dead wolf. They feel betrayed by the Federal Government. Their world is, after all, very much a creation of the Federal government.
DR. JOHN FREEMUTH, BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY: Without the Federal government, we wouldn't have the West as people understand it. The Federal Government took care of the Native American problem by relocating them. Built the water supply system for the West. All sorts of Federal subsidies and programs that helped the West develop. Without the Federal Government, the West would not have gotten to where it is. Yes, there were rugged individuals that did marvelous things, but the story's the story of government.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): And the government has been in conflict with the wolves since the first Europeans set foot here.
PETER JENNINGS (CONTINUED, Off Camera): How many wolves were there? How widespread were they in North America before the settlers got here?
ED BANGS: Before it was colonized by Europeans, wolves were common everywhere North of what is now Mexico City all the way to the Arctic Ocean. And so essentially everywhere, except the driest deserts, were occupied by wolves. So they were very common.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): And wolves were in the way of progress. American settlers were marching westward with visions of taming these wild lands and making them productive for the good of man.
MIKE PHILLIPS, TURNER ENDANGERED SPECIES FUND: The history of our relationship with the gray wolf is fascinating. In this country, we launched a war that started in, the 1600s, and was carried out with great determination until the mid 1900s, anyway. We took the most common large mammal, and drove it to the brink of extinction. It really was the conflict between wolves and livestock that drove the eradication campaign.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): The men and women who raised the cattle and sheep on the western frontier were feeding the other Americans intent on settling the West. As the livestock began to graze the same western range as the wolf, sheep and cattle became easy prey.
FORMER SENATOR JIM MCCLURE, REPUBLICAN, IDAHO: The story of the West was the story of the opening up and the use of the natural resources. And that included grazing of domestic animals on public lands. The interaction between sheep and cattle with predators was, naturally, not something that the early cattlemen or sheep men enjoyed.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): The early settlers wanted the wolf eradicated. This was a job for the Federal Government, the kind of job the founding fathers had envisioned for it. Wolves had no regard for borders. Individual states could not protect citizens. And so, getting rid of this predator required a national effort.
BRUCE BABBITT FORMER SECRETARY OF INTERIOR, 1993-2001: There's no question that the wildlife agencies at the turn of the century were in the hands of some pretty competent people. Were basically partners with my ancestors and Westerners in systematically poisoning, trapping, shooting, exterminating the mountain lions, bobcats, bears, badgers, ferrets, wolves. The Federal Government was very much implicit in the western ethic of the 19th century, which was resource exploitation, mining, logging, ranching, comes above all else, to which everything else must be subordinated.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): By the mid 1930s, the gray wolf was all but gone from the country. Here in Idaho, cattle and sheep grazed for generations with nothing to fear from the animal that was once North America's most widespread predator. And then, in the 1960s, in parts of America far from here, many people began to take a deeper interest in the environment and the nation's wildlife.
FORMER SENATOR JIM MCCLURE: I don't think there is any doubt that the change of attitude towards the wolf is a real symbol of the changing values of the public. Tremendous difference in attitude, from the 1860s to the 1960s.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): In the 1960s, what became the environmental movement was a growing force in American politics. It argued that man's dominion over the natural world was too destructive. That subduing and conquering nature, as had been the case in the West, was no longer acceptable. The defining moment for the movement was the passage of a Federal law called the Endangered Species Act.
BRUCE BABBITT FORMER SECRETARY OF INTERIOR: Endangered Species Act, at least (INAUDIBLE) is the most powerful environmental law that has ever been passed. And I think the reason is that it embodies a moral point of view, underlying it is simply the Noah idea, that we have a moral responsibility to protect God's creation. And that doesn't just mean, you know, a few species that look nice in a zoo or some plants that might provide a cancer cure. It means all of creation.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law.
FORMER PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON, UNITED STATES: The time has come for man to make his peace with nature. The quality of our life on this good land is a cause to unite all Americans.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): The gray wolf had found a friend in Richard Nixon. The notion, he said, that the only good predator is a dead one is no longer acceptable.
MIKE PHILLIPS: The gray wolf was one of the very first species listed under the Engaged Species Act. That spawned a national movement and a national constituency to affect a recovery program that would bring the gray wolf back from the brink of extinction.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): The program to reintroduce the wolf was opposed every step of the way by the livestock industry. It took nearly 20 years to work its way through the Federal Bureaucracy. The final plan called for the United States Fish And Wildlife Service to reintroduce wolves into Yellowstone National Park and the central Idaho wilderness, which meant that wolves would be free to roam on the very same Federal lands that Idaho ranchers used to graze their cattle and sheep. This was a case of the Federal Government telling those of you here in the state that it was going to do what it wanted to do and you didn't have an awful lot of say in it.
MALE TEN, RANCHER: None.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): With virtually every rancher we spoke to, it didn't take many words to express what they were feeling. The government was riding roughshod over them.
MALE TEN: I just thought it was a dumb thing to do to bring them back.
MALE ELEVEN, RANCHER: Introducing wolves we think is pretty stupid. We don't need wolves here.
MALE TWELVE, RANCHER: Well, I thought it was crazy, like most Idahoans.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Almost everywhere we went in Idaho, including the state capitol, this was seen as a case of them in Washington versus us.
JAY NIDER, RANCHER: I'm Jay Nider(PH), I have a ranch at Stanley, I'm definitely against this plan. I'm definitely against wolves in the state of Idaho.
FEMALE SEVEN, IDAHOAN: Idaho citizens have been trampled on by the Federal Government's wolf program.
MALE THIRTEEN, IDAHOAN: We could not believe that ration people wanted to turn wolves loose in Idaho.
FEMALE EIGHT, IDAHOAN: Wolves were removed from Idaho in the '30s and the problem was solved. The ecosystem did not perish. Why should we now provide a wolf experience in Idaho for the American public?
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Because the American public living far from Idaho was in favor of the Federal Government's plan to reintroduce the wolf.
FORMER SENATOR JIM MCCLURE: We in Idaho would like to think, well, we live here. It affects us more. We're more intimately involved in it. We care about it more. We see the trade-offs more clearly. And we ought to have more to say about it than the Federal Government. But certainly that's not the case today.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): What you're going to see now is democracy in action. In 1995, with the majority of Americans supporting wolf reintroduction, the gray wolf was getting a second chance in the lower 48 states. The Federal Government, which once hunted the wolf to near extinction, was now off to neighboring Canada to dart and tranquilize wolves from the air, wolves that would be reintroduced to Yellowstone and Idaho under the protection of the Endangered Species Act. Where once the Federal Government had paid hunters for killing a wolf, now it would be a Federal crime.
PETER JENNINGS (CONTINUED, Off Camera): What's the penalty for killing a wolf?
ED BANGS: It can be a year in jail. Up to a $100,000 fine. You can lose your hunting and trapping rights, you can have, you lose your grazing lease. The fines can be very severe.
PETER JENNINGS (Off Camera): Is this the Federal Government's way of saying how serious it is about reintroduction?
ED BANGS: I think it's the Federal Government's way and Congress' way of indicating that the Endangered Species Act is very important to Americans and we take enforcement of those laws very seriously.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Over a 2-year period, Federal agents captured 66 wolves in the Canadian West. The wolves were examined, given a name and a number, and a radio collar placed around their necks so they could be tracked and monitored in the wild.
CARTER NIEMEYER, US FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE: I was the second biologist from the American team that went to Canada to be the person on the ground working with the Canadian trappers up there. And they were really amused. They asked me, do the Americans know what they're getting into by putting wolves down there in their country? And, I said, I don't think any of us really know. And they said, well, these wolves are a highly productive animal. Be warned, these wolves are going to do fine down there. You, you've got all those deer and elk and especially places like Yellowstone. You're going to have lots of wolves. And then they, of course, told me, you know, that they occasionally kill livestock and it's going to make for some interesting situations down there. And everything those Canadian trappers told me has come true.
PETER JENNINGS: During 1995 and 1996, 35 of the wolves were released in Central Idaho. It made many people very unhappy.
TED HOFFMAN, PRESIDENT ELECT, IDAHO CATTLE ASSOCIATION: We were just stunned that the Federal Government turned these animals loose, knowing with certainty that they would eat our lambs and our calves and they would threaten the livelihood of ranchers.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Within days after the first release, a local paper reported a wolf had killed a calf and been shot while feeding on the carcass. A sign of things to come. It is very rare to see wolf pups in the wild. In Idaho, the wolves have made a remarkable recovery. From the original 35, there are now as many as 300.
ED BANGS: In central Idaho, it's, you know, like the Garden Of Eden for wolves. There's tons of deer and elk and wild things to eat. There's big, wild country, 13 million acres of Federal, Forest Service public land that wolves can live in. The wolves we got from Canada lived in areas very much like this. They fed on deer and elk and moose. And so when we grabbed those wolves in Canada and put them down here, it was just like going to Heaven.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): But just as the Canadian trappers predicted, the wolves have found cattle and sheep to their liking.
ED BANGS: Just like livestock producers lose cattle to snow storms and bad weather and poison weeds and coyotes and mountain lions, there can be occasional losses by wolves. It isn't that big of a problem if it's somebody else's livestock. But if it's yours, it's a pretty serious thing.
AGGIE BRAILSFORD: Last year, we lost about 26 head that we could identify. Plus, a guard dog.
BILL BRAILSFORD, RANCHER: We've had wolf problems in Fourth Of July Creek, this is Fourth of July Creek. We've had it in Champion creek which is here. This is Milky Creek. We've had problems there.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): The number of dead livestock is difficult to confirm. Many times the remains of the kill are never found. But as the wolf population grows, so do the livestock losses and so does the ranchers' frustration. They are not allowed to hunt the wolf.
FEMALE NINE: 4-legged animals, wolves, mountain lions, have more rights than people. And that's exactly the power that we've given those animals.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): As a Federal employee, Ed Bangs gets the brunt of the criticism.
PETER JENNINGS (CONTINUED, Off Camera): The wolf has become a real symbol in the West of the Federal Government versus the State Government.
ED BANGS: Oh, yeah. And, and I think wolves have always been real powerful symbols. But out here, I think the wolf did take on the persona of the often quoted phrase, it's a bunch of New Yorkers shoving their values down our throat using the wolf to do it.
FEMALE NINE: You know, so it's another case where no one listens. So you say, you know, you have a voice, you say that we can say things but nobody cares what we say.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Ed Bangs says that in a democracy, there is more to it than that.
ED BANGS: Well, I, I think, you know, you have to look at the balance side of that, in terms of, a republic like we have. There was a lot of people that wanted wolves here.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): What we heard in Chalis, Idaho, we heard everywhere in the West.
FEMALE TEN, IDAHOAN: The people in the cities want this. And there's more of them there. So it becomes an issue of a lot of people here want this and you're just a few and you're expendable.
MALE FOURTEEN, IDAHOAN: Essentially what you had was a group of people living in an area that were going to be severely effected, economically, socially and culturally, and they didn't want that to happen and that didn't matter.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): This resentment of the Federal Government has been evident in American life ever since the country's founding. It is the idea that people far away are making decisions, without understanding the local consequences.
FEMALE TEN: They're in an area that's high density. They don't get to see wildlife. The picturesque view of seeing a wolf howling, you know, is just, that warm and fuzzy feeling for them. If their children had to go out and get on the bus, I don't think they'd find it as warm and fuzzy.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Many people here are frightened that the fortunes of the West are changing.
MALE FIFTEEN, IDAHOAN: In my opinion, it's not even the wolf that frightens people. It's the Endangered Species Act that . . .
FEMALE TEN: Yes. It's like, it's like so many people have said, it's not the 4- legged wolf you're worried about. It's the 2-legged one.
MALE FIFTEEN: Yeah, and I mean it, it, I mean the Endangered Species Act is like a sledgehammer poised over your head.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): In Salmon, Idaho, Dave McFarland says it's about the next generation.
DAVE MCFARLAND, RANCHER: Think of the frustration, you know, of Johnny's kids, little John who has come back. That's the only thing he knows is ranching. He's got wolves eating at the doorstep, three little kids. All of the profit that the ranch is generating, the wolves are getting. That's a horrible situation. I don't think even, the proponents of the wolves want to see that.
FEMALE ELEVEN, IDAHOAN: I don't think they care. I don't think they care.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): The founding fathers would probably not be surprised by this demonstration. They argued intensely about how much power the Federal Government should have.
RON GILLETT: There is a war on the West. A war on the West. And a lot of my friends feel the same way.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): You said the manner in which the wolves were brought here will cause anger and resentment that will last a generation or more. Do you really believe that?
TED HOFFMAN: Oh, I certainly do. I certainly do. You know, the people that have been damaged by wolves and by other actions similar to this are not theoretical people to me. I know them. They're my friends. And I won't forget what was done to them, and most of us won't. That's, that will stay with us a long time.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Thomas Jefferson never saw the magnificent Sawtooth Mountains of Central Idaho. But Thomas Jefferson was a farmer and he believed that man was meant to exercise his dominion over the land and make it productive. When he was President, Jefferson sent the explorers Lewis and Clark to investigate this vast, uncharted territory. Jefferson's beliefs are very much alive in the minds of many people here today.
PETER JENNINGS (CONTINUED, Off Camera): Do you believe, as the early settlers did, that it is part of man's manifest destiny to have dominion over the land?
TED HOFFMAN: It is my responsibility to make the land as productive as I can and to care for it. To keep and nurture the natural processes that will make that land productive for me and for wildlife. We have a world population that needs to be fed, that didn't exist when Lewis and Clark first came through Idaho.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Lewis and Clark were the first representatives of the Federal Government to set foot in what is now Idaho. But as we have seen, they were hardly the last. In many ways, the Federal Government could fairly be called Idaho's landlord.
DR. JOHN FREEMUTH: 61 percent of Idaho is, is Federal land. That's a lot. For a long time, the use of the Federal lands was primarily for the production of goods and services for society. Timber, mining, ranching, that was what those lands were viewed as, sort of a basket of resources to be produced. And the people that did that were good people doing good things for their country.
AGGIE BRAILSFORD: One of the first things I remember about Bill's dad was his pride in the fact that he was raising food to feed America. That was his job.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): The Federal Government and the men and women who settled the West were partners in taming these wild lands and turning them into a national resource.
DR. JOHN FREEMUTH: The Federal Government sort of supported the very values of many Westerners. You know, Forest Service was about timber harvesting. And that was righteous. That wasn't just, you know, let's get the cut out to make a bunch of money. That was a, the righteous thing to do in the Federal lands.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): For much of American history, what was good for the West was good for the whole country. For more than 65 years, Idaho ranchers have been permitted to lease millions of acres of Federal land, on which they may graze their cattle and sheep. And the right to lease these lands has been passed down from one generation to the next.
BILL BRAILSFORD: You know, all of this land is, is not owned by us. It's owned by the Federal Government. But we think of it as ours, you know, because we live on it and we take care of it and we know every inch of it.
AGGIE BRAILSFORD: You know, you don't work on it and ride across it and move livestock on it and not learn to love it.
DAVE MCFARLAND: Some of us have range on that side, there's about 10,000 acres in that allotment. There's about 10,000 acres in the next allotment. We also have an adjacent Forest allotment that's about 20,000 acres.
BRUCE MCFARLAND, RANCHER: We cover a lot of ground in the summertime.
DAVE MCFARLAND: And it's all beautiful. I tell you, this is God's country.
PETER JENNINGS (Off Camera): Using your background and your upbringing in ranching, tell us the importance of public land to a rancher.
SENATOR LARRY CRAIG, REPUBLICAN, IDAHO: Well it's, it's nearly everything if you're going to graze cattle or sheep in the state of Idaho. I say that because most of our ranches have grazing allotments. And they are of substantial value. There is simply not enough private land in our state to sustain our livestock numbers. So, if you're going to have a livestock industry, a grazing, range livestock industry of cattle and sheep, you have to have access to the public land.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): But now, the same Americans who wanted the wolf reintroduced to the West, are having second thoughts about the ranchers using public lands.
BRUCE BABBITT FORMER SECRETARY OF INTERIOR: Ranchers, including my family, have had a great run in terms of use of these lands for the last century-plus. But now, we are evolving a different view of the importance of these lands as a place to protect and preserve creation.
BRUCE BABBITT FORMER SECRETARY OF INTERIOR (CONTINUED): There's a tendency among western ranchers, I, I see it in my own family, to think that the uses that were e stablished in the 19th century to the use of public land, back when ranchers, there were no Feds of any kind around, ranchers just kind of ran the place. But that becomes an entitlement that you have an absolute right to pass down from generation to generation to generation. That's not the case. These are public lands, owned by the people of the United States.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Bruce Babbitt was the Secretary Of The Interior from 1993 to 2001. He signed off on the wolves returning to the West. To the ranchers, Mr. Babbitt represents the heavy hand of the Federal Government.
PETER JENNINGS (CONTINUED, Off Camera): Mr. Babbitt seems, on occasion to be public enemy number one in your state. Do you believe he misused the Endangered Species Act in any way?
SENATOR LARRY CRAIG: Yes, I do.
PETER JENNINGS (Off Camera): Can you explain how.
SENATOR LARRY CRAIG: Well, to go into an area where a species has already been eliminated, and for good reason by a substantial number of people's point of view, and say, we're going to change that. And in changing it, we're going to produce a lot of conflict and have not much resolution to it, in my opinion, is a misuse of the Act.
BRUCE BABBITT FORMER SECRETARY OF INTERIOR: The problem is, that I think an awful lot of traditional Westerners, led by the ranching community, are stuck in an image, of the past. The national consensus in the 19th century wasn't about wildlife. It was about getting on the land subduing it, incorporating and conquering it, making it a secure part of our national life. Federal agencies were partners in that. That's changed. That's history. We are now about recognizing our heritage and restoring a landscape to a condition that was there when the first pioneers came.
MIKE PHILLIPS: The public is less desirous of timber being harvested from public land, less desirous of mining activities on public land, less desirous of grazing on public land. The American citizenry is beginning to recognize that their public lands might be able to do other things, that they, at this time, find more valuable. The provisioning of clean water, the provisioning of habitat for rare and otherwise imperiled species, the provisioning of recreational opportunities.
BRUCE BABBITT FORMER SECRETARY OF INTERIOR: The public lands, after all, are owned, not by ranchers but by you and me and all the people of the United States. The wolf re- introduction not only has been a spectacular success, but I think has made a tremendous statement to the American people that we can restore the land. Here is nature as God created.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Here's the question: in Idaho today, is it the wolf or the rancher who's an endangered species? The rancher's most radical critic in the entire state is John Marvel.
JOHN MARVEL, ENEMY OF RANCHERS: Without the livestock there, we would've had no conflicts between wolves and human beings. Wolves belong here. They were extirpated because of an idea of dominion over nature. And that idea is what's destroying the earth. And if we don't get it under control and understand our relationship in nature better, then we're going the way of the wolves, too.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): John Marvel is proud to be an enemy of ranchers. He wants to end livestock grazing on public lands.
JOHN MARVEL: The amount of lamb and beef that's produced on public lands in the Western United States, if it ended tomorrow, would not increase the price of hamburger one cent. That's how unimportant it is, economically, even to the massive, beef-eating culture that America is today. When I talk to ranchers or politicians who support ranchers I say, your day is over.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Dick and Betty Baker have been raising cattle on the East Fork of the Salmon River for more than 50 years.
BETTY BAKER, RANCHER: John Marvel has publicly stated that he's going to break the Bakers and run them off the East Fork. And I feel they're using the wolf as a tool against us.
JOHN MARVEL: I say to the Bakers, hey, go ahead get your guns out and kill the wolves. If you can see them, but they're coming at night. So, it'll be tough. So what are you going to do? Are you making any money? Maybe not. How about your kids? Are they living there or have they already moved to town? How much of a lifestyle is it if it can't continue economically?
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): John Marvel knows ranchers are hurting. And so does Carter Niemeyer from the US Fish And Wildlife Service.
CARTER NIEMEYER: We did impose the wolf on these rural people. They, pretty much, were on record from the start that they didn't want them and they didn't need them here and there was nothing in it for them. And there really wasn't. But to me, we do have an obligation to those folks to, to not force them out of their vocation because we brought wolves back. So, we got to manage them.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Manage a wolf population that biologists in the Federal Government never expected to increase so rapidly. When the first wolves were reintroduced, the Federal Government offered the job of managing their recovery to the state. Idaho refused to cooperate in any way. And so the job was given to a Native American tribe. Curt Mack works for the Nez Perce as a biologist.
CURT MACK, BIOLOGIST: Recovering wolves doesn't have anything to do with wolves. I mean it's, from a biological standpoint, it's not much of a biological challenge at all. It's more of a social challenge. Really, our charge and the biggest challenge we have on the wolf recovery program, is to try to reduce conflict by effectively addressing the concerns that people have about living with wolves now.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Wolves showed up on the East Fork of the Salmon River in 1999. They have been killing the Bakers' cattle ever since.
DICK BAKER, RANCHER: We lost a calf right down here by the tin shed. And we lost two down at Wayne's.
PETER JENNINGS (Off Camera): We have spent some time with Dick and Betty Baker.
ED BANGS: Yes.
PETER JENNINGS (Off Camera): And the question for them is, can their operation ever be free from the threat of wolves?
ED BANGS: I don't think so. Not totally. But one of the deals that was struck with people that live locally, that have to live with wolves, is that we wouldn't let wolves threaten people's livelihoods and we wouldn't let them chronically prey on livestock.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): The Federal government is now trying to stop the wolves from feeding on the Bakers' calves. Dick at 80 is being taught how to use some of the government's technology for tracking wolves.
MALE SIXTEEN, USING TECHNOLOGY TO TRACK WOLVES: You hear right there.
MALE SEVENTEEN, USING TECHNOLOGY TO TRACK WOLVES: Okay, so go down and check B-119.
DICK BAKER: B-119?
DICK BAKER (CONTINUED): I'm up every morning, going to my little radio and seeing where they're at. And I just can't believe it. Up here on these ranches, where we never even had a telephone that would work.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Fence posts have been rigged with radio activated devices which are triggered by the collars on the wolves when they get close. But none of it has worked. This spring, once again, wolves were killing the Bakers' calves. The government decided the pack had become habituated to eating livestock and all ten wolves had to be killed.
CARTER NIEMEYER: None of us wanted to end up shooting these wolves. None of us did. But we all concluded that it was time to terminate this pack, and stop the perdition, and take our lumps and solve this problem.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): From around the country, people in favor of the wolf condemned the Federal Government in no uncertain language. Today, most ranchers have resigned themselves that the wolf is here to stay. They see only one solution to their problem. Give control of wolf management to the state. Ironically, now, it is in the state's interest to have a healthy wolf population because that would lead to the wolves being removed from the endangered species list.
PETER JENNINGS (CONTINUED, Off Camera): I don't quite understand, I have to tell you, the, the de- listing. Why is it so important to get the wolf off the endangered list?
GOVERNOR DIRK KEMPTHORNE: By de-listing, that allows us to have state management of this species. Again, the managers closest to the issue, rather than, it is a protected species by the Federal bureaucracy. So, we've achieved the goal. It's time for the Federal Government to do its part of it and that's the de-listing.
PETER JENNINGS (Off Camera): And butt out?
GOVERNOR DIRK KEMPTHORNE: Mm hmm.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): The state wants to manage the wolf itself because that would give local people an opportunity to write the rules.
PETER JENNINGS (CONTINUED, Off Camera): Can you live with the wolves in Idaho, provided you have authority over them?
TED HOFFMAN: I think we could live with the wolves if we can manage the wolves. In almost every case, state management is so much more effective than Federal management because local input is included. Because people have a knowledge, an intimate knowledge, of the resource. I think we need relief from Federal bureaucrats and their regulations or we're going to lose everything in Idaho that, that we treasure. They are the problem, not so much the wolves.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): It is not the wolves. Remember those people in Yellowstone watching the wolf?
PETER JENNINGS (CONTINUED, Voice Over): They represent the voices of people staking a claim to the public lands of the West, every bit as strong as the settlers claim was more than 100 years ago.
FEMALE TWELVE, TOURIST: We come from Tennessee to see some wildlife.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): And it is these voices that the Federal Government appears to be hearing.
PETER JENNINGS (CONTINUED, Off Camera): How do you think the founding fathers would regard this fight between the state and the Federal authorities today?
SENATOR LARRY CRAIG: I think they would have stepped back in awe that we had, that we would have allowed the Federal Government to become as powerful as it is.
PETER JENNINGS (Voice Over): Today, the gray wolf is once again roaming Yellowstone and Central Idaho because of the Federal Government's power. It is proof that those founders who believed in a strong central government have prevailed. The Federal Government is, once again, determining the fate of the American West.
PETER JENNINGS (Off Camera): The nation's founders fought bitterly among themselves about issues such as the one we've looked at in Idaho tonight. To be an American, then, as now, was to speak your mind. Tomorrow, we're going to go to a high school in Colorado, to be with some young people who have been wrestling with the 1960s, in an interesting way, learning about rebellion and how important their voice is today. I hope you'll join us. I'm Peter Jennings. Goodnight.
Copyright 2002 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.
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