Opinions and emotions about predators vary widely in Wyoming, and that was equally true Friday during a predator management symposium in Casper.

A closing panel discussion focused on grizzly bears, mountain lions and wolves and explored the environmental and social impacts of large predators in Wyoming. Opinions ranged from bringing back banned poison baits to eradicate predators, to welcoming large predators as key players in healthy and truly wild ecosystems.

Livestock producers Bonnie Smith of Johnson County, and Mary Thoman of Fontenelle, gave grim testimony of what bears, lions and wolves can do to flocks of sheep.

Smith noted that as mountain lion numbers have increased, sheep numbers have dropped in Johnson County. Many wool growers have abandoned the mountains because of expensive predation costs, moving grazing operations out onto the plains, she said.

"You can have a healthy herbivore population or a healthy predator population," Smith declared, "but you can't have both."

She expressed the hope that the banned "1080" poison could be brought back into use and used extensively.

Thoman said her family's 3,500 sheep operation near Pinedale has been hammered by predators and forced to undergo major changes in operations. "Our social life revolves around endless meetings and we've all taken second jobs so we can continue ranching," she said. "We've become more efficient than ever before" with aggressive management.

That involves cutting losses but increasing costs, such as more frequent visits to the high country and hiring more Peruvians to guard her flocks. Armed with nothing more than bear spray, her shepherds have driven off marauding bears.

Grant Frost, a wildlife biologist and representative of Wyoming Wildlife Federation, said large predators are integral parts of the wild environment.

"Predator species made prey species what they are today," he said, "We can't view predators solely as problems."

He said WWF welcomes the delisting of wolves and grizzlies under the Endangered Species Act. The bears should be kept within their recovery zones and the numbers of wolves should be kept to certain limits to avoid severe impacts on livestock, he said.

John Gookin, a National Outdoor Leadership School executive, gave a backpacker's perspective on large predators. NOLS has about 2 million wilderness nights under its collective belt - half of them in Wyoming, Gookin said. The first bear attack on a NOLS student was last month in Utah.

NOLS students and leaders take common-sense precautions in bear country - hanging food in trees and traveling in groups of four. Running wilderness expeditions in country that lacked large predators, Gookin said, would be like driver's education with no driving in big-city traffic.

"I've been scared of lions and bears," Gookin confessed, but that's part of the risk and reward of wilderness expeditions. "Our students like to see bears. That's part of the attraction."

John Emmerich, an assistant chief of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, explained that keeping grizzlies and wolves around is like Aldo Leopold's quote about "intelligent tinkering."

"If you're going to engage in intelligent tinkering, you want to keep the pieces intact," Emmerich said. The presence of bears, lions and wolves in Wyoming, Emmerich said, means that "we have an intact ecosystem that exists nowhere else in the lower 48 states."

As for fears for human safety, Emmerich said fears of wolves are unfounded, while grizzlies will avoid people if given a respectful amount of space.

Wyoming is actively looking for long-term funding from the outside, to cover the intensive management costs large predators require.

Dave Gaillard of the Predator Conservation Alliance cited the benefits of having large predators in Wyoming. He emphasized the money tourists bring on visits to Yellowstone, hoping for a glimpse of wolves or bears. Wolves have improved the Yellowstone ecosystem, he said.

Wolves also knocked down coyote populations, which allowed small prey species to flourish, triggering the regrowth of small predator species. With elk kept on the move by wolves, willows have grown back, he said.

Gaillard chided the Wyoming wolf plan, which exposes wolves to being killed arbitrarily as predators on 80 percent of their range. That level of exposure and risk is unacceptable, Gaillard said, urging Wyoming to adopt a wolf plan similar to either Idaho's or Montana's. In those states, wolves are treated like any other trophy animal, with plenty of flexibility to kill animals that go after livestock, he said.

In a following question-and-answer period, Gaillard said he hoped that Wyoming would tolerate 20 breeding pairs of wolves. He would like to see wolves living in the Big Horns and on the plains.

Emmerich estimated that it would take $1.5 million a year to adequately monitor large predators in Wyoming.