Varley had grown up in Yellowstone, the son of the park’s chief of scientific research, and his opinion carried weight. Still, some of his fellow advocates, mourning the death of a beloved wolf, were taken aback by his effort to put a dollar figure on 754’s life. But not Doug McLaughlin. For years, he’d been trying to convince activists that the only way to get a seat at the table with state game regulators was to speak their language. Elk were a valuable resource, but so were wolves.
