Long time Idaho conservationist Mike Medberry says the environmental community is wrong to oppose wolf hunting.

Medberry was one of the people in the 1980s and 1990s who were bucking the trend in advocating for more wilderness, better wildlife protection and strong water quality laws. His message wasn’t popular in the offices of Idaho’s Congressional delegation nor in the halls of the Capitol.

But Medberry over time built a reputation for integrity and affability that overcame the ideological differences with Idaho leaders. Idaho Gov. Phil Batt, who stood up to the federal government whern they brought wolves into the state, was among his fans.

When reintroduction began Medberry was in a small minority of environmentalists who wanted the federal government instead to provide better protection to the wolves they knew existed in Idaho already. Now Medberry lives in McCall and he writes in High Country News Writers on the Range News Service, that “wolf recovery in the West has been the most successful program ever accomplished under the Endangered Species Act.”

He calls environmentalists who supported the reintroduction in 1995 and now oppose delisting as “disingenuous.” He knows what they were telling ranchers and other skeptics 15 years ago when they were trying to convince westerners to accept wolves.

“What Defenders of Wildlife and other groups have done in filing a lawsuit fails to serve the wolves, the integrity of the law and the people of Idaho and the West,” Medberry writes.

He hasn’t softened his environmental concerns. He thinks Idaho and Montana should have clear paths to relisting if wolf numbers drop dramatically. And he doesn’t think the $11.75 wolf tag price honors the millions of dollars American taxpayers paid to restore the majestic predators to the West. He'd charge $150.

But it is time, he said, for conservationists to accept that the loss of a few wolves is the cost of their survival in the West.