History of wolves in Yellowstone
After that, sporadic reports of wolves still occurred, but scientists confirmed in the mid-1900s that sustainable gray wolf populations had been extirpated and were absent from Yellowstone as well as 48 states.
In the early years of the park, administrators, hunters, and tourists were essentially free to kill any game or predator they came across.
The gray wolf was especially vulnerable to this wanton killing because it was generally considered an undesirable predator and was already being deliberately exterminated throughout its North American range, usually in the interest of protecting livestock.
[5] In 1885, Congress created the Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy with the express purpose of conducting scientific research for the protection of wildlife.
[11] However, it was the overly large elk populations that caused the most profound changes to the ecosystem of Yellowstone with the absence of wolves.
[12] The campaign to restore the gray wolf in Yellowstone had its roots in a number of seminal studies related to the predator-prey ecology of the park.
[13] In 1944, noted wildlife biologist Aldo Leopold, once an avid predator control advocate, made the following comments in his review of The Wolves of North America, Young and Goldman, 1944: There still remains, even in the United States, some areas of considerable size in which we feel that both red and gray [wolves] may be allowed to continue their existence with little molestation.
... Why, in the necessary process of extirpating wolves from livestock ranges of Wyoming and Montana, were not some of the uninjured animals used to restock Yellowstone?By the 1960s, cultural and scientific understanding of ecosystems was changing attitudes toward the wolf and other large predators.
In the early 1960s, Douglas Pimlott, a noted Canadian wildlife biologist was calling for the restorations of wolves in the northern rockies.
[15] In 1978, when wildlife biologist John Weaver published his seminal study Wolves of Yellowstone, he concluded the report with the following recommendation: Therefore I recommend restoring this native predator by introducing wolves to YellowstoneThe gray wolf was one of the first species to be listed as endangered (1967) under the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966.
Fish and Wildlife Service to develop an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the express purpose of reintroducing wolves into Yellowstone National Park and regions of Central Idaho.
The final statement was published on April 14, 1994, and seriously examined five potential alternatives for reestablishing wolves in Yellowstone and central Idaho.
The Sierra Club and National Audubon Society opposed the re-introduction plan on the grounds that Experimental populations were not protected enough once the wolves were outside the park.
[19] In January 1995, U.S. and Canadian wildlife officials captured 14 wolves from multiple packs east of Jasper National Park, near Hinton, Alberta, Canada.
[20] Seventeen additional wolves captured in Canada arrived in Yellowstone in January 1996 and were released into the park in April 1996 from the Chief Joseph, Lone Star, Druid Peak and Nez Perce pens.
The reintroductions were planned on taking 3-5 years but these were the last wolves released into the park as officials believed that the natural reproduction and survival were sufficient.
[20][21][22] Wolf population declines, when they occur, result from "intraspecific strife," food stress, mange, canine distemper, legal hunting of wolves in areas outside the park (for sport or for livestock protection) and in one case in 2009, lethal removal by park officials of a human-habituated wolf.
[41] This decline in elk has resulted in changes in flora, most specifically willows, cottonwoods and aspens along the fringes of heavily timbered areas.
The constant presence of wolves have pushed elk into less favorable habitats, raised their stress level, lowered their nutrition and their overall birth rate.
Until the wolves returned, Yellowstone National Park had one of the densest and most stable coyote populations in America due to a lack of human impacts.
These changes affect how often certain roots, buds, seeds and insects get eaten, which alters the balance of local plant communities, and so on down the food chain all the way to fungi and microbes.
The presence of wolves seems to have encouraged elk to browse more widely, diminishing their pressure on stands of willow, a plant that beavers need to survive the winter.
"[47] Beaver dams also counter erosion and create "new pond and marsh habitats for moose, otters, mink, wading birds, waterfowl, fish, amphibians and more.
[45] Meanwhile, wolf packs often claim kills made by cougars, which has driven that species back out of valley hunting grounds to their more traditional mountainside territory.
During these hunts, Montana hunters legally killed a number of wolves in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness known to frequent the northeast corner of the park.
Fish and Wildlife Service representatives stated that the taxonomy of gray wolves had been revised numerous times, and that C. l. irremotus was not a distinct subspecies, but a geographical variant.
Three publications were made on the appropriateness of using a founding population of Canadian wolves: Brewster and Fritz supported the motion, while Nowak determined that the original Yellowstone wolves were more similar to C. l. nubilus, a subspecies already present in Minnesota, and that the Canadian animals proposed by Brewster and Fritz were of the subspecies C. l. occidentalis, a significantly larger animal.
