Has The Reintroduction Of Wolves Really Saved Yellowstone?

APEX PREDATOR

A gray wolf watches biologists in Yellowstone National Park, shortly after they fitted it with a tracking collar. The photo dates to 2003, 9 years after wolves were first re-introduced to the U.S. Northern Rockies.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

The story goes something like this: Once upon a time, we exterminated the wolves from the Rocky Mountain West, including the part that would become Yellowstone National Park. We thought this was a good idea because wolves frightened us, and also because they ate the domestic livestock we liked a lot more.

But then interest in environmental conservation took hold. Scientists discovered that without wolves present in Yellowstone to hunt and kill prey, the elk population grew so large it ate up all the young willow trees until there were none. This affected the habitat of many other animals and plants in harmful ways and the ecosystem became unbalanced. Or, as science puts it, we caused a harmful “top-down trophic cascade” by removing an apex predator, the wolf, from the food web.

It followed that returning the apex predator might right that balance; and field biologists began to find some evidence for this idea, even as popular support increased for bringing wolves back. So with conservation ethics and ecological science in pretty good alignment, we re-introduced the wolves to Yellowstone, where today they scare away the hungry elk herds from the tasty young willows. Thanks to the wolf, balance has been restored.

Or not? Earlier in the week, field biologist Arthur Middleton got a big reaction from readers when he asked, “Is the wolf a real American hero?” in the opinion pages of The New York Times. “This story — that wolves fixed a broken Yellowstone by killing and frightening elk — is one of ecology’s most famous,” he wrote. “But there is a problem with the story: It’s not true.”

Read More at:
https://www.popsci.com/article/science/have-wolves-really-saved-yellowstone

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