FAQ

Because it doesn't matter how individually superior the Wolfen are to humans, they are hugely outnumbered by an enemy whose technology and learning will inevitably eventually overwhelm them, much as Native Americans were almost wiped out by European immigrants in the 19th century.

That they sought sanctuary against the encroaching mass of humanity in the forgotten, abandoned areas of the inner cities and sought to keep their existence secret by only preying on human outcasts whose disappearance would never be noticed.

New York City was not "so much of a wasteland, in the early 89s/late 70s." The movie establishes clearly in its storyline that the Wolfen are living and hunting in the South Bronx of the '70s and '80s. That part of the Bronx was blighted by poverty and the inattention of the owners of the derelict buildings there; an overwhelming number of those buildings burned in insurance arsons or fires started by squatters. Empty, legally uninhabitable buildings stood in all degrees of degradation, many nothing but burned-out shells, still used by squatters, vagrants, and for criminal activity. It was those people the Wolfen hunted -- as Eddie explained it, the people who wouldn't be missed.

Wilson destroys the model of the building signifying to the Wolfen that the threat to their home from the redevelopment plans has ended. They retreat as police reinforcements arrive and open fire on them fleeing back to their refuge. The narration suggests that the Wolfen will continue to survive and prey on the outcasts of humanity but the authorities are now aware of their existence (we see them symbolically 'brought into the light' for the first time in the final scenes) with incontrovertible proof provided by the Wolfen corpses left at the scene of the battle, putting their continued existence under threat. The novel the film is based upon emphasises this more graphically, ending with the Wolfen howling defiantly at the encroaching menace of the overwhelming mass of mankind. .