People and dogs cost MONEY, what the large ranchers want is to run thousands of heads of cattle or sheep and then hire people to round them up when it comes time to sell them to feed lots (or to shear them in case of sheep).
The problem is if you introduced Wolves you just can no longer just leave your cattle or sheep to roam, you have to have someone watch them, generally with some dogs (and the dogs must be TRAINED, but that can be done by the men or women watching the cattle or sheep).
I remember training in Fort Hood Texas, cattle all over the place as me trained. No one watching the Cattle, they were rounded up when it came time to sell them. This is what is done throughout the West and the Ranchers like it for it is cheap. The ranchers do NOT want to hire someone to watch their sheep or cattle, they want them to run free till it is time to sell them.
Coyotes kill cattle and sheep, and the Ranchers complain about Coyotes, but Coyotes being small can be ignored but complained about. With Wolves the ranchers may actually have to hire people to watch their cattle. Worse, the Cattle and sheep, wary of Wolves will avoid places where Wolves like to hunt, thus the land can carry less cattle and sheep for by avoiding areas around river beds.
Remember Wolves are PACK Animals, they hunt as a TEAM. African Lionesses will approach a herd together but then attack as individuals, when one ends up stopping a prey animal, the other lionesses gain up on it and tack it down. It sounds like team work, but in reality it is a group of individuals working with other individuals when it to all of they best interest.
Wolves hunt differently. Wolves will DRIVE a prey animal to another member of the pack. I once watch a video where it showed two wolves driving a pack of Caribou in Canada, after a few miles those two wolves were relieved by two fresh wolves that had waited to the herd to be driven by them. Finally as the herd was tired, it was driven by a firth wolf that drove into the herd and attacked one of the caribou, that wolf was shortly joined by the the second two wolves and then the first two wolves in taking down the Caribou.
This ability to work as a team is why man ended up adopting wolves and then adapting wolves to work with man. Present theory holds that Modern Man when he appeared 135,000 years ago would watch Wolves and anticipate where wolves would drive game and then Man would take the game. Man then gave some to the wolves, the the wolves found out that they can get food by driving it to man. Man and wolf then evolved together, with man killing any wolf that continue to see man as game, but sparing any wolf that did not. Thus over 10s of thousands of years. Dog evolved from wolf, based on the Dog increase ability to work with man. About 12,000 years ago, Dog had evolved enough from Wolves to be brought into the Human clan for dog had evolved to almost never see man as game.
While not seeing man as a meal is the main difference between Wolf and Dog, other difference exists. These include
1, dogs ability to follow arm directions left and right,
2. dogs will accept new things in their lives almost their entire lives, wolves will NOT after they are about 18 months old,
3. Dogs raised by humans will look to humans for leadership, wolves raised by Humans will NOT,
4. Wolves have a hard time to learn commands almost to the level of NOT even learning to SIT when "Trained" to do so,
5. Wolves also seems to be willing to leave their "Pack" when it is to their advantage, unlike dogs who tend to stay with their human "Pack", with the major exception of 9 month to 18 month old females dogs, who tend to runaway at the age).
http://yamnuskawolfdogsanctuary.com/resources/wolf-to-woof/differences-between-wolves-and-dogs/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130117152012.htm
http://io9.com/a-fascinating-difference-between-pet-dogs-and-tame-wolv-1367218389
The evidence is DNA studies of Dogs and Wolves, such studies indicate a split between the two occurred about 135,000 years ago, about the time modern man appeared:
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99jul/9907dogs2.htm
As I said present theory has man seeing wolves and adjusting their own hunting techniques to work with wolves in the same area. The wolves that then started to work with man in such hunts ended up being rewarded and then slowly evolved from being a wolf to being a dog. The dog itself only shows up inside human groups about only about 12,000 years ago.
I bring this up, for what makes the wolf effective hunters, means you need to watch cattle and sheep on a daily basis, not once every month or so. The ranchers do NOT want to pay for such supervision of their animals, and thus do NOT want wolves. The best defence against Wolves is a man and a dog, but they have to be somewhere NEAR the herd to protect the herd.
What the ranchers want is the ability to put their sheep and cattle onto their land (including Federal Land they rent) without anyone watching the herd. It is a cheap way to raise cattle. Right now the only problems are Mountain Lions and Coyotes. Coyotes are a little small to take out a sheep let alone a Cow, Mountain Lions tend to see Cattle as to big for them (Puma's prefer deer) and Cougars do not like going after animals in herds (Thus rarely take sheep). Thus Ranchers complain about both Coyotes and Mountain Lions and the US government has programs to kill Coyotes and to remove Mountain Lions that take domestic animals. These programs are NOT enough for the ranchers, for the Coyotes and Puma's do take the rancher's animals, but the ranchers see even more loss of animals if Wolves are left back in (and the Ranchers fear the Federal Government may ever CLOSE off some of the Federal Land being used by the Ranchers to the Ranchers so that game the Wolves need can get the grass presently being eaten by the Rancher's Cattle and Sheep).
I have read what these Ranchers, and all they see in the negatives from letting wolves back into the ecosystem. They dismiss the positives for they see such positives as NOT helping them. Ranchers are the type of people who complain about losing a cow to a Wolf, but dismiss the fact that in previous years they lost 10 cows to coyotes and are now losing none do to the wolves. They see the negative not the positives and as such will always oppose introducing any predator into the area they are in, no matter how much it will help them in the long run.
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