The Holders Arizona Ranchers

Hear the Holders.

I'm looking out over Bear Canyon. It has been pretty overgrazed over the years, and there's a lot of rock showing through, but there's still quite a bit of trees, lot of rolling hills out beyond it.

There's about 20 elk out there now. You can see the whole herd.

We'd like wolves reintroduced into- onto the ranch. Wolves are part of the ecosystem, part of the biodiversity. The wolf plays a very important part of this whole scheme of things.

My grandfather, Cleeve, the one we named our son after, was credited as shooting the last gray wolf off the Mogollon Rim, so that was... We'd like to be the generation that reintroduces the wolves back to- back to Arizona.

Every time I see an elk, every time I see an antelope, every time I look out and see the coyotes at night or hear them howling, I think it's just magic that this still exists, and I think we have to fight really hard all the time to keep this way of life and to keep animals alive in the wild. It seems like these pockets of wildness are just getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And I think that we have to fight to keep them, or we won't- we won't ever hear a coyote howl or a wolf howl anywhere.

I've only heard a wolf once, and that wasn't a wild wolf. There's a guy who rents wolves out to movies. I'd really like to hear one. I'm afraid we won't hear one; I'm afraid- I'm afraid the whole project is just not going to work.

I'm really afraid of- of what's going to happen. To be very honest, we live amongst a lot people out here in Arizona that are so afraid of the wolf and a lot of are, you know, from stories, from everything from `Little Red Riding Hood' on down. But we're constantly being confronted by your other ranchers that tell us that wolves are going to eat our child. And they plan on and they talk about it very openly in public that they are going shoot them all on sight.