Beneath Greater Yellowstone, powerful thermal energies relentlessly shift tectonic plates. The subsurface motion creates rifts and faults, occasionally volcanoes and earthquakes. The fundamental tensions are always there.

The tectonic plates of culture and political economy are also shifting and generating profound tensions in the new American West. In Oregon and Idaho, hi-tech industries now provide more jobs than wood products industries. In Washington, 4,900 lost timber jobs were replaced by three times as many software jobs. As standing trees become more valuable than logs, it is apparent that values are evolving. Different cultures, polities, and economies collide, occasionally with catastrophic results. The Yellowstone wolf reintroduction illustrates these changes.

The wolf is mediagenic, an icon of the changing West. But icons have varying interpretations. Those insulated from rural traditions see the wolves as displaced natives who must be returned to the ecosystem. The wolf icon combines their romantic vision of an untamed past with a feel-good mission to set things right. Conversely, many native Westerners view wolf reintroduction as the imposition of an alien culture that threatens ranching and the traditional economy.

These traditional interests prompted the National Park Service to exterminate the wolf from Yellowstone in the 1920s. Now, another federal agency, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, is charged with undoing that misguided "progress". However, the imported wolves don't easily coexist with local ranchers and hunters.

Montanan Chad McKittrick, an unemployed carpenter, just received a six-month sentence in the slammer for killing "Alpha One", a reintroduced wolf. The U.S. Magistrate called the shooting, "an intentional, thrill-seeking act in direct violation of the law." McKittrick boasted a T-shirt saying "Northern Rockies Wolf Reduction Project". In the battle over the wolf icon, some locals in Montana made McKittrick a hero.

When Park Rangers exterminated wolves Yellowstone lost a key component of its ecosystem. Since then our ecological knowledge and sensitivity have increased while ranchers' economic and social influence have waned. New people and interests are colonizing the West. Nike, Microsoft, and Hewlett Packard are moving in.

Loggers, farmers, fishermen, and miners feel their industries wither. 8,000 logging jobs are expected to disappear from the region in the next two years. Despite this, the Pacific Northwest has led the nation in new job creation based on a diversifying economy and high quality of life. In many National Forests, standing trees have greater value than decked logs. Progressive-era bureaucracies like the Forest Service and Park Service, however, are caught on the fault line between amenity and commodity interests. Federal agencies cannot manage to the mounting tensions.

In Oregon, environmentalists chain themselves to trees to stop logging. But loggers, whose wages have fallen 22% since 1978, miss that income. In Nevada, a state comprised of 87% federal lands, counties are suing feds for control. In Idaho, militia concoct conspiracy theories linking federal agencies like the US Fish and Wildlife Service with the U.N. and a New World Order.

Representative Helen Chenoweth of Idaho describes the friction between the traditional West and "a government-sponsored religion" based upon "New Age mysticism, Native American folklore, and primitive Earth worship." She sees an invaded West, where "Easterners dream of preserving it, but in the process they're driving our people off the land." The Yellowstone wolf symbolizes this conflict.

Elsewhere, wolves are quietly and naturally recolonizing their former ranges in the Glacier National Park region of Montana. The Glacier wolf has rapidly proliferated. Why don't Glacier's wolves attract the same attention, debate, and tension as Yellowstone's?

The difference between Yellowstone and Glacier is one of means. The wolves naturally recolonized Glacier, following their food source. Cut-over forests with booming deer populations are excellent wolf habitat. These wolves have learned to survive near man. The wolves that kill livestock are shot. Vigilant ranchers with rifles provide an evolutionary filter which selects out wolves that won't adapt to man, the supreme predator.

In contrast, the Yellowstone wolves were caught in the wild, caged, drugged, and then airlifted into the Park. Federal "caretakers" short circuited the adaptive process. The transplanted wolves lacked the "training" to coexist with ranchers. They're not passed through the filters of accommodation with people. Predictably, Yellowstone wolves are more troublesome than those in Glacier. The Yellowstone reintroduction may still succeed, but it will be costly in terms of dead wolves, dead livestock, taxpayer money, and cultural conflict between new and old interests.

The cultural tectonic plates have shifted from 70 years ago when Westerners demanded wolf extermination and the government complied. Old, native values are undergoing a process geologists call "subduction". As one tectonic plate submerges below another, it quietly heats up and eventually returns to the surface through volcanic eruption. If we are not careful, the "subducted" traditional political economy might one day erupt as it did with Chad McKittrick. The consequences preclude a harmonious West.

Long ago, Progressives believed that federal government would foster community harmony. Instead, it has fueled passions and amplified conflicts near Yellowstone. And if we're not careful, rare bumper-stickers like "Wolves: Gut Shoot 'Em At The Border!" and "Hungry And Out Of Work? Eat An Environmentalist" will become as common as gun racks.