There's nothing wrong with eating meat

I'm having trouble with the prejudice against wolves. If I were a rancher I might be more sympathetic. After all, something that might eat your livestock and is a potential threat to your livelihood is something to worry about. However, last Thursday in the paper I read quotes like, "The government did a smart thing when they got rid of predators," or "Wolves take down an animal and only eat the heart and liver and leave the rest of the animal to rot." What? I saw a wolf kill completely stripped of all flesh in the space of a morning! It's one thing to be concerned about wolf reintroduction in connection with your livelihood, but quite another to make sweeping judgments on limited information or ignorance. In reference to the former statement, that person must have forgotten about the headaches that grazing presented to ranchers and wildlife managers not long ago.
It's odd that wolves have generated more controversy than grizzly bears since there has never been a case of a wolf eating a human, but there have been several of grizzlies doing exactly that (for instance, Tim Treadwell. Most sane people won't get that close to a grizzly, though). I guess it's a good thing for grizzlies that they are not only omnivorous, but the meat that they find doesn't necessarily have to be red (I guess meat from a grub would be classified as white). Black bears have been a problem in some areas of Idaho this year? Why? Because the Rocky Mountain area is in a drought again this year and the berry crop in the mountains lasted about 2 days before drying up, so the bears were forced into more urban areas. As with almost every type of predator, bears aren't particularly dangerous to humans unless they are surprised.
Let's not stop there--we have lots of predators around. We love our raptors, but they are predators. I know somebody who was stalked by a mountain lion. Wolverines are absolutely fearsome and very dangerous to humans. Fishers are a little smaller than wolverines, but still dangerous. Down the size scale, we have martens and weasels. Even wood rats and voles will eat meat if that's the only thing available.
Grizlies and wolves and wolverines aren't the only dangerous animals, though. I don't imagine it would be very salubrious to be run down by a bison or an elk. A couple of months ago a friend of mine was counting salmon along the West Fork of the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River and stepped out of the river right in between a pair of rutting bull moose. The moose chased her onto a rock and treed her there for the next hour and a half. She was all right, but had things taken a different turn she might not have been.
So what, specifically, is wrong with wolves? Nothing. They just had the misfortune to be thrown into the spotlight by reintroduction. In the bigger picture, what's wrong with predators? Nothing. For centuries they provided a balance in the herbivore populations. It is only since humans have ventured onto the scene and started to try to 'control' things that they have become a problem. We are afraid of them, and for good reason. We humans evolved with relatively few defenses, so if a bear or a wolf decides we look tasty, there's not much we can do to stop them from coming after us. Fortunately for us, most predators are shy of humans, and for good reason. We have guns, and we live in packs. If they enter our territory, they are vulnerable. Unfortunately for them, our territory keeps expanding, so they are sometimes forced into situations where they need to come into towns for food or starve.
I think we are afraid of predators because they show us that no matter how hard we try, short of wiping nature out altogeter we can't control it. And we don't like not being in control.