They Know

photo by Sam Parks U.S. Park Service

by David Stalling

There is a certain kind of person out here who always knows. They know everything about grizzly bears. They know everything about wolves. They may have never spent any real time around either one, may have never watched a wolf pack move through fresh snow at dawn, may have never stood fifty yards from a grizzly sow and understood exactly how calm and intelligent she really is. But they know.

They know because they heard it from the local rancher. Or the drunk barstool biologist holding court at the local watering hole. They heard it from the bartender, or the mechanic, or the guy stocking shelves at the grocery store.

They know because Bubba and Clyde told them so. They know because every now and then they ride their ATV up a logging road or read a hunting magazine article written to feed their outrage. They know because once in a while they head into the mountains and kill animals.

And if you disagree with them, then you don’t know shit. You must be from somewhere else. New York City. California. Somewhere soft. Somewhere weak. Somewhere that immediately disqualifies you from speaking about wildlife in the Rocky Mountain West. And they’ll tell you that you have no business, no right, to talk about what occurs on American public lands – such as U.S. Forest Service lands (our National Forests) – that belong to all Americans . . .

Because they know.

And you don’t.

Tell them you’ve spent forty years roaming wild country. Tell them you’ve spent countless hours around grizzlies. Tell them you studied them, researched them, observed them closely enough to lose the mythology and finally see the actual animal underneath all the fear and folklore. Tell them grizzlies are not the bloodthirsty monsters people imagine them to be.

Tell them what scientist have learned.
Tell them what you have learned.
Tell them facts.
Tell them the truth.

And you’re the one full of shit.

Because they know.

Tell them you’ve spent years learning about wolves. That you’ve observed wolves in the field, read the science, spoken with biologists who have devoted their entire lives to studying them. Tell them wolves do not kill for fun. Tell them they are not some diabolical Canadian super-wolf genetically engineered to destroy the West. Tell them elk still exist in abundance. Tell them wolves are not wiping out every ungulate in the Rocky Mountains.

Then suddenly you’re a “tree-hugging bunny-hugging environmental wacko.”

Because they know.

They know because they are fourth-or fifth-generation Montanans, as though longevity of residence somehow grants mystical access to objective truth. As though being born somewhere automatically makes a man an ecologist. As though family history outweighs biology, field research, data, observation, and reality itself.

Many years ago, I gave a presentation about wolves to a hostile room full of ranchers, hunters, and trappers who hated wolves before I ever opened my mouth. Right on cue, a couple of them stood up proudly announcing they were fourth- and fifth-generation Montanans. Therefore, they knew. Then they challenged me.

“What generation are you?”

So I called on some friends of mine who are Pikuni, members of the Blackfeet Nation. They calmly explained that their people were not fourth-or fifth-generation Montanans. They were thirty-sixth generation Montanans, at the very least. Their people had lived with wolves for thousands of years. They understood wolves not as political symbols or scapegoats, but as fellow beings woven into the same landscape and deserving of reciprocity and respect.

It didn’t matter.

Because they know,

The ranchers know.
The hunters know.
The trappers know.

Everybody else is wrong.

It would almost be funny if it were not so serious. But it is serious, because those voices—those loud, stubborn, aggressively uninformed voices—hold enormous influence over wildlife policy and wildlife management across the West.

These are the people pushing to delist wolves and slaughter them by the hundreds. These are the people demanding more grizzlies be killed because coexistence offends them. These are the people who claim they believe in “science-based wildlife management” right up until the science contradicts what they already decided to believe thirty years ago over coffee at the feed store.

Then suddenly science becomes propaganda. Biologists become radicals. Facts become opinion.

Because they know.

And they will never allow truth, evidence, or lived reality to interfere with the comfort of what they think they know.

That is the real problem. Not wolves. Not grizzlies.

Arrogance.

A deep, cultural arrogance so entrenched that ignorance becomes identity and mythology becomes policy. A worldview where killing animals is considered expertise, where anecdote outweighs decades of peer-reviewed science, and where anyone who speaks with nuance or compassion is immediately dismissed as an outsider.

The tragedy is not simply that these people are wrong. The tragedy is that they are wrong while holding power.

Because they think they know. And their minds are shut like the traps they kill wolves with.