The Wolf Effect

While public debate over wolves continues to rage, this most maligned of animals is quietly having a beneficial impact on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Story by Ted Brewer
Photos by Molly Wald

In the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, a series of paw tracks run along the packed snow of a cross-country ski trail. Each individual track measures about five inches long and four inches wide - about half the size of the large boot tracks imprinted next to them. This being Yellowstone, the site of the most conspicuous wolf population in the world, there's no doubt which animal recently walked here.

The tracks lead us to the banks of Blacktail Creek, where park biologist Doug Smith points out something you might never think has anything to do with the animal whose tracks we've been following: a stand of willows well over six feet tall.

"When I first got here in 1994," Smith says, "the stature of these willows was half of what it is now. In the late 1990s, they released - grew taller. Until then, they had been suppressed for 80 years. This release has started a huge scientific inquiry, and I think the question is not 'Are wolves involved or aren't they?' The question is 'To what degree are they involved?'"

Willow suppression began in the 1920s, around the time the last wolves were eradicated in the park. The eradication spawned a boom in the elk population, which was followed by a spike in how much willow the animals browsed, and thereby suppressed. Not until wolves were restored to the park did the willows begin to grow tall again.

To re-introduce wolves to the area, 31 gray wolves were brought from Canada and released in Yellowstone in 1995 and 1996. Now, more than 1,500 roam in and around the park, their territories ranging from northwest Montana to central Idaho to western Wyoming. Not even Smith, who has been in charge of re-introducing the wolves to Yellowstone, expected them to ensconce themselves as swiftly as they did in the northern Rockies. Smith believed it was going to take at least 10 years to establish the population. It took six.

As head of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, Smith has had the satisfaction of seeing not just the utter success of the project, but also the myriad effects the wolves have had on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, effects that he and many other scientists believe are restoring balance and diversity long lacking because of the wolves' 75-year absence. Since the wolves were re-introduced, scientists have flocked to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to examine and argue about those effects, staking their careers on their theories. Many have come to loggerheads over just how the ecosystem has changed, and why.

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