This fascinating book is about the Yellowstone Wolf Project that reintroduced the gray wolf in 1995. The wolf, which had once roamed from the Arctic to Mexico City, had been eliminated from the western US in 1926*. The rangers at Yellowstone had shot the wolves in the park because of their anxiety about the safety of the elk and other herbivores. They had not understood that predator and prey had sustained the ecosystem for millennia, and without wolves, the park was soon a mess. There were so many elk that they denuded the forests, causing increased run-off that disrupted the streams and rivers. The 1995 project was opposed by local ranchers and hunters, yet has been seen as a significant success. There are now approximately 1700 wolves in the greater Yellowstone area and the ecosystem has been reestablished. One of the intriguing aspects of wolves is their social interaction, group management and bonding skills; amongst predators, wolves are the most cooperative. Although each pack has but one alpha male and female, packs can grow to astounding sizes. The 'Druids' in the early oughts had almost three dozen wolves.
Much of the book is focused on an alpha female, O-Six, who gained national fame about a decade ago because she lived in Yellowstone, was not fearful of humans, and was spotted almost daily hunting, raising her cubs and patrolling her territory. Her efforts were observed by the park's legendary ranger, Rick McIntyre, who went fifteen years in a row without missing a day, who compiled notes on the wolves of over 5 million words, and who holds the record of 891 straight days with a sighting. O-Six succeeded in helping her first four cubs reach yearling status, and everyone was happy when she became pregnant a second time, delivering five pups in 2011. The following winter, her pack faced an existential threat when 19 'Mollies' left their challenging environment in the north of the park and entered the Lamar Valley. O-Six's pack was outnumbered, she had denned and was nursing a new group of pups. She launched herself over a line of Mollies and appeared to have disappeared over a cliff; her daughter, Middle Gray, charged off in a different direction. The effort succeeded and the confused Mollies dispersed. The following winter, Wyoming allowed unlimited wolf hunting after a long contentious battle, and O-Six was one of the first wolves shot in the state in almost a century. The death of "the most famous wolf in the world" made international headlines and was on national network news.
The wolves changed the local economies. There has been some livestock depredation, but the most important impact was the dramatic reduction of the elk herd. There once had been close to twenty-thousand elk in the area, and they were used to an easy life without predators. They were easy to hunt, supported a burgeoning hunting and guiding community, and filled many a local freezer. Reduced by two-thirds and now once again wary as prey should be, the elk went further and higher into the mountains. Idaho, Montana and Wyoming all sought to cull the wolves, and there has been considerable ongoing litigation. De-listing the wolves from the Endangered Species Act has been the objective of almost all of the locals. The conflict plays right into the century-old struggle between local authorities and the federal government over the management of government lands. It even played into control of the US Senate, as Democrat Jon Tester had to adopt an anti-wolf position in 2012 to hold off a Republican challenger. The impact on the park is called a 'trophic cascade' as the normalized ecosystem has led to more beaver, rodents, birds of prey, foxes, weasels, bears and pronghorns at the expense of coyotes and elk that had grown disproportionately because the wolves were not there.
The death of O-Six changed the dynamics of what was now a national debate. Six months later, Fish and Wildlife proposed de-listing the species in the lower 48. After over a million comments, they withdrew the proposal. An attempt to sneak anti-wolf language into a budget proposal failed. The story closes with the Park Service honoring Rick McIntyre on his twentieth-year of contributions to the Wolf Project and with his lecture about O-Six and her grand-parents, 21 and 42, and their long years together. Having made the wolves of Yellowstone world famous and a national concern, perhaps Rick didn't need all his notes for a book after all. This is a beautifully told, wonderful narrative and in my opinion (concededly urban and as one who has never fired a rifle hunting), well worth a read.
*Wolves have apparently always been active in northern Minnesota and the UP of Michigan.
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