Well, humans have always hunted wolves. It's the only way to get the teeth and pelts for certain ceremonies. In Europe, wolves had the reputation of carrying off children and that's where the whole Little Red Riding Hood tale came from. It was probably some kind of oral myth before it was collected into a storybook.
There's two ways human interfere with the natural world. One is to blow away everything that moves and cut down or strip mine everything that doesn't. The other way is to overprotect everything and reintroduce species and then overprotect them as well. Unless a bear gets a wild hair about it, the wolf doesn't have any predators capable of taking him out other than man. Man gets this idea that he's somehow removed from the natural world and we no longer play a role as a predator. This isn't so. We still have a role as a predator. It's just that we can afford not to be anymore. But can other species? When deer overpopulate, they starve. So, some people might feel special tenderness at those deer not being hunted, but those deer will die anyway. They'll starve or end up under a tractor trailer on a regular basis.
Now, those wolves have a pretty good gig going for them. If the government protects them, they've got carte blanche to do pretty much anything. There are no parameters on their behaviour. That's fine for a while, but if they get into someone's herds of cattle, this isn't permissible. Humans have always protected our herds as far back as when we first began pastoralism which is at least as old as agriculture. Perhaps older. The composite bow was invented to protect herds from predators and then afterwards, people like the Scythians and Mongols realized it was also a highly effective weapon of combat. If humans protect their herds, they're doing what comes natural to them. That is, protecting their food supply. Animals fight over food and we are no different in that respect. It makes more sense than fighting over vague political concepts no one really cares about in the long run.
Where the deviation from the natural order occurs is when we engage in a "Final Solution", so to speak, concerning predators. If you catch the wolf in the herd, then you defend your herd. But you can't go and wipe them out on suspicions. Well, you could, but is it skilful? Skilful means is setting up an ambush and catching the wolves doing it. Sooner or later, they'll discover that these animals may not be eaten, so stick to the ones who can be. And if children are attacked, of course, one has to get up a hunting party to stop this. Humans have always done that, too.
There need to be places where wild animals can be reasonably assured they have habitat where they can do their own thing. Humans can't mandate things be a certain way on every square inch of this planet. We have to be able to say, "Ok, so we're growing crops here and we raise cattle and sheep here. And because we eat these things, we can't allow animals to come in and eat up our food. We've never done that. So we have to defend these lands we have allocated to that." But this doesn't mean Mr. Fabulously Rich gets to come into the wilderness and build a billion dollar home with a solar hot water collector and then whine when a wolf or a coyote carries off his $5000 poodle for supper. He needs to see the poodle becoming a meatloaf as the cost of doing business, so to speak. And if someone goes into the wilderness with his dog off a leash when the sign says dogs must be leashed, and a cougar eats that dog (as happened here), well, he has no right to demand a hunting party go punish that cougar. Punish it for what? Being a cougar on its own turf? It isn't about human food supply at that point.
Back to our role as predator, the hunters among us are few and fewer still hunt wolves. It's a "what's in it for me" proposition. Am I going to get steaks out of this deal? No. I'll get a pelt and a skull and that'll look cool on the wall, but unless it's used for ceremony, that's all it'll do. But there needs to be a predator in the link to keep the wolves in check. It's the same with us. If some major world power rises and no one is there to keep them in check, they do whatever they feel like doing. But if some other power exists, they can't operate outside of their own sphere of interest or they get their hands slapped. That's how the predator-checks-predator relationship works. It's different from the predator-prey relationship.
