I'm not a rabid environmentalist, but I believe the four natural laws are the highest laws:

1. Everything is going somewhere.
2. Everything is connected.
3. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
4. Mother nature knows best.

To protect cattle ranchers and due to mythic fears about the wolf as some hated evil symbol, it was hunted to near extinction in the lower 48 states, with the last ones in California exterminated in the 1920s.

We belong to the Defenders of Wildlife, which has spearheaded the so far successful but still precarious efforts to reintroduce the wolf to the wilderness. Hunters, wolf-vigilantes and the American Farm Bureau continue to battle the reintroduction programs in courts and through illegal shootings.

In 1998, 57 new wolf pups were born in Yellowstone, the first national park were gray wolves were reintroduced. The pups join a population that has grown to 115 since the reintroduction in Yellowstone started in 1995.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service introduced another 35 gray wolves from Canada into 15 million acres of federal land in Central Idaho in 1995 and 1996. That population has adapted so well, reaching 170 wolves, that the government has canceled plans to add more to the area.

Nationwide, the wolf population has reached 3,000 with reintroductions also in Montana, Arizona and North Carolina, according to the Defenders of Wildlife.

As part of the deal to reintroduce wolves, Defenders has paid $14,000 to compensate ranchers for 15 cattle, 64 sheep and four dogs killed by wolves between 1995 and 1998.

We had a chance to see some wolves up close and be among some pups in 1997 when we visited Soul of the Wolf Sanctuary when Deborah Warrick's rescue center was in Paso Robles. She has since moved to Anza in the desert east of San Diego.

There are numerous websites with more information about wolves. A great place to start is at The International Wolf Center.

The best book about them that I know of is "Of Wolves and Men" by Barry Holstun Lopez.