p. 39

the computer’s bottom line under the USF&WS plan is that fifteen years after the wolves are released, human hunters’ deer kills might be reduced by between 6 and 17 percent; there might be a reduction in the human elk harvest of between 5 and 13 percent. I’m a hunter, and these numbers don’t bother me- wouldn’t bother me if they occurred in my valley. No hunter considers himself or herself in the bottom 5 percent, or even the bottom 17 percent, in either skill or luck- we’d always figure it would be the other guy who didn’t get a deer that year because of the wolves. We’d just hunt 5 percent harder, or 17 percent harder, and the intangible trade-offs- the "compensatory intangible benefits" as the feds might say- would be enormous.

p. 65

The Holders seem young for this business (ranching)- they’re in their late thirties. Their operation- producing what they call "predator-friendly beef"- is so revolutionary that it seems moderate, like so many successful revolutions: it seems now like the only logical, ordered response to a situation. The Holders don’t trap or kill the predators that visit their ranch searching for calves or ailing older cattle. They use herding dogs to keep their cattle moving from pasture to pasture, but that’s as far as protection goes; beyond this, they absorb the losses- on some ranches, these losses can run as high as 10 percent- and then make up for it in the marketplace by as much as 100 percent.

pp 68-69

[The Holders] are viewed as odd birds by their neighbors. There was a bit of a rift last year when one of the neighboring ranchers saw a lion going across their pasture and shot it. He thought the Holders would be all pleased that he’d done this- never dreamed they’d be upset- and the contrariness of the Holders’ response seems to have bothered some of the more traditional ranchers more than the presence of the lion itself. ‘They couldn’t understand it much less accept it, until we explained to them that it was worth more money to our operation to not kill the lions,’ Will Holder says. ‘And once we started talking economics, they could get it. But otherwise, they just wouldn’t listen. It was like they had this mental block, and the only way they could understand it was through money. It was sad.