No one ever claimed the hit cowboy soap opera was aiming for realism. But for Montana locals, the show’s many day-to-day inaccuracies are hard to swallow.

Thirty years ago this month, gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. Today, the people who made it happen remember the mayhem and magic of one of the 20th century’s most controversial acts of ecosystem management.

In two new books, a Montana historian tracks how Native and White cultures blend and break away.