After being removed from the endangered species list four months ago, a quarter of the gray wolf population in Idaho can now be hunted, according to an article on NPR.org.

While the decision to hunt the wolves may appear mundane, the belligerence surrounding it is disturbing.

You may have heard about Idaho governor-hopeful Rex Rammell’s controversial joke about purchasing a hunting tag for President Barack Obama. In addition to his hateful “joke,” Rammell’s view on wolves was also discussed in Timothy Egan’s blog for the New York Times.

Unsurprisingly, Obama isn’t the only target of Rammell’s offensive comments.

Morbid curiosity drove me to visit Rammell’s Web page, where I located his opinion on multiple-use lands. It is there that he states, “I believe wolves need to be eliminated.”

Eliminated? Yes. Not just in Idaho, but in all the lower 48 states. He explains that wolf predation on livestock and big-game herds is “unsustainable.”

What an odd understanding he has of sustainability! He must have never taken an introductory ecology course because, if he had, he would know that predators are vital members of ecosystems and without them, populations of their prey peak and then crash.

While Rammell may find a wolf’s natural instinct to prey on elk or cows annoying, I’m confident the eventual decimation of his precious “big game” would be far more vexing.

Moreover, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s 2009 Elk Hunting Forecast indicates elk populations in Idaho are stable. Weird.

Unfortunately, Rammell is not the only one who has made ridiculous remarks about wolves.

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter wanted to obtain the first hunting tag for a wolf once they were de-listed. In an Associated Press article from 2007, Otter declared he supported hunting the wolf population down to 100, which would put them at numbers barely squeaking by endangered status.

As the article phrased it, Otter argued the then federally protected wolf was, “rapidly killing elk and other animals essential to Idaho’s multi-million dollar hunting industry.”

Central to these examples is the underlying, but painfully evident, assumption that these men have a right to kill vast numbers of wild animals simply because they interfere with cattle raising or shooting “big game.”

In Rammell’s case, he thinks he has a right to extirpate an entire species for his own selfish desires.

Notice that the animals they wish to preserve are the same ones they want to turn around and slaughter, sometimes for meat, and sometimes for the thrill of mounting a wild animal’s head on their wall.

What pulls this whole tragic story together is the cost of the prized hunting tag to an Idaho citizen: $12. That’s what the life of the gray wolf is worth.

How disappointing is it to see that some people still regard the lives of fellow living, breathing, suffering organisms, utterly dispensable.

Their myopia astounds me and their lack of even minimal consideration for the natural world represents the kind of human-centered reasoning that hinders us from truly participating in the global ecosystem.

Reach Becky at rrubens1@asu.edu.