Do you know the state reimbursement rate for livestock killed by wolves in Wyoming? It's 7 times the market rate. Lion & bear depredation brings 3.5 times the market rate.
Seems to me if a rancher is working on a shoestring, having wolves take a bunch of your cattle might be not so terrible, if you were planning on selling them anyway. The ranchers in Wyoming are not suffering financially because of the loss of livestock to wolves. Quite the contrary, the state is compensating them more than fairly.
The myths surrounding wolves in the West aren't likely to ever go away, but removing an apex predator and a keystone species is never a good idea, and reintroducing them into Yellowstone and properly managing them there and in the surrounding states will always be a good thing.
Why would they pay them 7 times market rate? I'm not disagreeing but that sounds silly.
I can only see this if it is a case of the mother cow being killed, thus losing a number of year's worth of calves from her. If the wolves are only getting the calves, that would only change if it was a heifer calf that would have been kept for breeding.