Return of the Yellowstone Wolves

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

With the dawn of ecological consciousness in the 1960s, however, things started to look up for the wolf. Books, articles, films and crusading pop stars have fueled an effective PR campaign that has changed the wolfs big bad image. Where wolves still linger, plans have been drawn to wolf-proof local grazing economies to forestall predation, as here in Montana. Despite opposition from lobbying groups in states near the park, surveys now show that most Americans support the Yellowstone wolf recovery project. Sometime this year, it's likely that Congress will take the first steps to restore this major missing piece of the world's largest intact Temperate Zone ecosystem.

THE NEXT MORNING, I drove over to Yellowstone to see ranger Norm Bishop, the park's research interpreter. At headquarters in Mammoth Hot Springs, he handed me his bark-imprinted business card with a wolf on one side and this quote on the other: Of all the native biological constituents of a northern wilderness scene, I should say that the wolves present the greatest test of human wisdom and good intentions. Paul Errington, Of Predation and Life. Right away, I got that rare feeling of being glad fm a taxpayer. Bishop offered to give me the prorecovery viewpoint and an idea of where and how the wolves will live if and when they return. We took off for prime wolf country, the park's northeast quadrant.

After an hour's drive through the severe, desertic beauty of Yellowstone in fall, we stopped to watch a herd of bison graze in the remote Lamar River valley. Slough Creek, a blue-ribbon trout stream, sparkled in the sunlight. The plentiful prey, water and sandy soil amen able to digging dens (wolves can live both in caves and underground make this place a paradise from a wolfs point of view. "If I were playing God, I'd put the wolves here," said Bishop, benignly eyeing the buffalo. "Their ecological role is to be the top predator of large hoofed animals, and in that work, no other animal comes close."

Even those known out West as "banjo-eyed environmentalists" no longer attempt to put the wolf in sheep's clothing. In 1986, University of Minnesota biologist David Mech and photographer Jim Brandenburg actually lived with a wild pack on Ellesmere Island, 500 miles south of the North Pole. Their studies proved that the wolf may not be the horror film werewolf-type monster who kills effortlessly and at whim, but it isn't the mouse-eating pussycat made famous in Never Cry Wolf, either.

Mech and Brandenburg found that in real life, to get the five to 12 pounds of meat per day it requires, the wolf leads a harsh existence of grueling day-and-night hunts year-round. Neither as fast nor as strong as the big ungulates it stalks, the wolf suffers many injuries while hunting and makes numerous unsuccessful attempts for each kill. Only by cleverly working the herd can a wolf bring down, say, a 400-pound elk. It seems that the species' predatory prowess, like man's, depends far more on brains than brawn. And on cooperation.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print