Past generations got rid of the wolves for a reason. Although it's nice for wildlife to exist somewhere, it doesn't belong in close contact with humans.
The desire to bring wildlife to where people live reminds me of anti-vax in that it's giving up safety benefits we've gained out of a misguided desire to be more natural.
The reason was partly a blind desire for "safety" despite wolf attacks being exceedingly rare (2 fatal wolf attacks in the past century in north america). But mostly it was due to commercial interests. It was to prop up an already unsustainable model of agricultural/textile production
Wolves bring us biodiversity, keep diseases down, and even help rivers flow (by keeping graminivore populations down). We have way more to gain from them than to lose
I feel like the anti-wolf side is much more akin to "anti-vax" than the pro-wolf side is. Either way its probably a bad comparison
There are people living just about everywhere. Open up Google Maps, switch to satellite view, zoom out until the scale is 2 km / 1 mi and scroll until you no longer see farmers' fields. I had to go 500 km, and I only actually found the edge of human settlement because I live in Canada and went north until I hit ~55° latitude.
If wildlife is only allowed where there's no people, it's going to be confined to the most inhospitable places on Earth.
Near me, it's about 20 miles from the metro (25th largest in the US) to the nearest wilderness area. I'm sure there's a lot of folks who'd love to be able to buy up and live out there, it is very hospitable. But thankfully it is almost entirely national forest and protected from development.
Driving wolves to extinction wasn't a deliberate effort, it's just what happens when humans expand into a predator's territory, displace its normal prey, and then opportunistically kill it, while denying it access (via the aforementioned dogs) to those succulent sheep they replaced the deer with.
People forgot this all the time. Wolves and dogs are in --the same-- species. They can interbreed and have fertile pups, so is by definition, the same species.
This means that most extant alive wolves live inside --our-- homes. Think about it.
No other species achieved such closer connection with human societies. Not even apes. If an animal deserves a place close to human societies for mutual benefit is this.
Dogs are not gray wolves, not descended from them either. The fact that they can technically interbreed doesn't change the fact that a modern dog is completely domesticated and nothing like a wolf.
The desire to bring wildlife to where people live reminds me of anti-vax in that it's giving up safety benefits we've gained out of a misguided desire to be more natural.