{"id":362493,"date":"2026-08-01T21:35:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T21:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/yellowstone-is-among-the-worlds-best-places-to-see-wild-wolves-heres-the-story-of-the-animal-called-both-public-enemy-and-cultural-icon\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T21:35:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T21:35:29","slug":"yellowstone-is-among-the-worlds-best-places-to-see-wild-wolves-heres-the-story-of-the-animal-called-both-public-enemy-and-cultural-icon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=362493","title":{"rendered":"Yellowstone Is Among the World’s Best Places to See Wild Wolves. Here’s the Story of the Animal Called Both ‘Public Enemy’ and Cultural Icon"},"content":{"rendered":"


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A century ago, resident wolves were eliminated from the park. In 1995, biologists brought them back, marking a historic reintroduction of a top carnivore<\/h2>\n
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Kayla Randall<\/a><\/p>\n

| Digital Editor, Museums<\/span><\/p>\n

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The dominant female wolf of Yellowstone’s Canyon pack on February 26, 2015
\n Jim Peaco \/ NPS<\/span>
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Gray wolves<\/a> know that the best way to survive in this world is together. They live in pack families<\/a>, relying on each other to hunt hoofed mammals many times their size. A single wolf doesn\u2019t want to be alone for long.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo much of how the wolf appears rhetorically in America is in this \u2018lone wolf,\u2019\u201d says writer Erica Berry<\/a>, author of the 2023 book Wolfish: Wolf, Self and the Stories We Tell About Fear<\/em><\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s like the wolf howling alone at the top of the mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what humans share with wolves \u201cis not this idea of our independence and solitude, but actually the ways that we collaborate,\u201d she says. \u201cEven a lone wolf comes from a pack and is looking for another pack.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A wolf in Hayden Valley on January 24, 2022<\/p>\n

Ashton Hooker \/ NPS<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The wolf was once the world\u2019s most widely distributed land mammal<\/a>, and it roamed North America in abundance<\/a>. Environmentalist James Holt<\/a>, a member of the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho, said his Indigenous community<\/a> has long had a deep understanding of wolves: \u201cWe\u2019ve seen and experienced wolves from before the last ice age,\u201d Holt said<\/a> to Boise State Public Radio<\/a>\u2019s Heath Druzin last year. Holt added that the oral histories about prehistoric wolves and other animals \u201chad a huge impact on us.\u201d<\/p>\n

But like many sizable predators, wolves have been consistently persecuted by people throughout their history in the United States, and the first documented bounty was placed on them in 1630<\/a> in Massachusetts. Once settlers arrived and spread widely across the continent, they began to clash with the canids.<\/p>\n

Wolves are generally good at avoiding people. In colonial America, \u201cwolves had a ghostly presence<\/a>,\u201d writes historian Jon T. Coleman<\/a> in his 2004 book Vicious: Wolves and Men in America<\/em><\/a>. \u201cSettlers heard howls<\/a>, but they rarely spotted their serenaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A wolf howls on boulders at Little America Flats on February 2, 2004.<\/p>\n

Jim Peaco, NPS \/ Yellowstone National Park<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However, by the 19th century, when settlers moved west, their expansion decreased the numbers of the wolf\u2019s ungulate prey, and ranchers\u2019 livestock became a target for the carnivores<\/a>. Humans then ramped up attempts to eliminate them\u2014through trapping, shooting and poisoning. Those efforts, some backed by the federal government, led to the near-eradication of the animal from the lower 48 states. Historical images<\/a> frequently show people proudly standing alongside wolf pelts from the animals they\u2019d killed.<\/p>\n

And yet, the story of the wolf in America did not end there. If humans had the power to essentially wipe out wolves, then they also had the ability to help bring them back.<\/p>\n

Perhaps no location is more central to the wolf\u2019s decimation and return than Yellowstone National Park<\/a>. Gray wolves lived in Yellowstone when it was established in 1872, and fossils<\/a> show they inhabited the Mountain West region for thousands of years.<\/p>\n

But just as wolves had been systematically removed outside of the park, people also deemed them a problem within it. In 1915, Yellowstone\u2019s superintendent wrote<\/a> that growing wolf populations had become \u201ca decided menace\u201d to their prey animals, and park managers made efforts to kill them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWolves were public enemy number one,\u201d Doug Smith<\/a>, who worked as a biologist at Yellowstone for almost 30 years, said in a 2022<\/a> video.<\/p>\n

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Three wolf pups in a cage at Mammoth Hot Springs, around 1922<\/p>\n

NPS \/ Yellowstone National Park<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From 1914 to 1926, by the National Park Service\u2019s count, at least 136 Yellowstone wolves were killed. They became wrapped up in a \u201ctargeted predator eradication program that happened on all public lands across the country,\u201d says Dan Stahler<\/a>, a Yellowstone senior wildlife biologist, adding that other animals, such as cougars and coyotes, were included.<\/p>\n

Park management used poison to kill the carnivores, often strychnine<\/a>, an alkaloid<\/a> that causes convulsions<\/a>, respiratory failure and extreme pain. They laced carcasses of livestock, elk and bison with the toxin so that wolves would ingest it while scavenging. \u201cWe\u2019re talking crates and crates of this poisoning,\u201d Stahler says. Because wolves are intelligent, they could learn to evade hunters and become trap savvy. But they couldn\u2019t avoid the poison.<\/p>\n

The park\u2019s last resident wolves were killed in 1926. Despite \u201cremnant sightings and observations of wolves in the couple of years following that,\u201d says Stahler, in Yellowstone, \u201cessentially there\u2019s no longer a functional wolf population after 1926.\u201d<\/p>\n

One hundred years later, thanks to a high-profile reintroduction project that began in the 1990s, Yellowstone is now the best place in the country to see wild wolves. Today, the park spans more than 2.2 million acres and three states: Wyoming, where about 96 percent<\/a> of the park is located, as well as Montana and Idaho. Visitors can see lakes, rivers, hot springs, active geysers, a supervolcano<\/a> and a massive ecosystem<\/a> bursting with wildlife, including bears, bald eagles and otters. And gray wolves are now one of Yellowstone\u2019s biggest<\/a> draws<\/a>, with people embarking on hours-long tours just to get a glimpse of them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is illegal<\/a> for hunters to kill wolves on Yellowstone grounds. The park offers a protected environment for the carnivores, Stahler says, making it a \u201cwolf fortress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

One of the big motivations for recovering wolves was to bring back a top carnivore to the landscape. In the early 20th century<\/a>, with the absence of apex predators, the park\u2019s ungulate population faced no natural top-down force. Elk numbers grew to high levels, putting pressure on the park\u2019s vegetation, and staff aggressively managed the herds\u2019 size.<\/p>\n

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A group of elk in Lamar Valley<\/p>\n

Neal Herbert \/ NPS<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tens of thousands of elk<\/a> were either culled by hunters and Yellowstone officials or moved to other parts of the country to support elk conservation. In the late 1960s<\/a>, park leadership backed off this approach and decided to \u201clet nature take its course,\u201d as Stahler puts it. Once again, the elk population grew rapidly.<\/p>\n

Gray wolves were listed under the Endangered Species Act of the 1970s, which set the stage for their recovery and return to the park and the Northern Rockies region. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a recovery plan<\/a> for wolves in 1987. After years of attaining public feedback and support and working out the logistics of the proposal, in 1994<\/a>, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbit approved gray wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone and the central Idaho wilderness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In January 1995<\/a>, 14 gray wolves flown in from western Canada were set to change the park\u2019s landscape for good. Yellowstone management held them in pens for about ten weeks to acclimate them before releasing them into the park<\/a>. After staff members cut the metal fencing keeping them in, they found freedom, pressing their paws into what would become their hallowed ground.<\/p>\n

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Female wolf pup #17 of the Rose Creek pack in the Rose Creek pen in 1995<\/p>\n

Barry O’Neill, NPS \/ Yellowstone National Park<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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A wolf runs in the Rose Creek pen\u00a0on January 27, 1996.<\/p>\n

Jim Peaco, NPS \/ Yellowstone National Park<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The following year, 17 more Canadian wolves<\/a> were brought in and released.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time wolves were coming back onto the landscape, they were experiencing one of the most abundant elk populations ever recorded,\u201d Stahler says, with likely more than 25,000 of the herbivores in the northern herd<\/a>, which is the largest and most studied of the elk herds that occupy Yellowstone seasonally. During the first decade after reintroduction, the wolves saw rapid population growth as they hunted the immense herds.<\/p>\n

The animals typically \u201cbreed at high rates, and they disperse well across the landscape,\u201d says Arthur Middleton<\/a>, an ecologist and wildlife management scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. They formed packs and procreated, just as wildlife managers had hoped. Wolves are \u201cone of the most resilient species of large carnivore that we have in the world,\u201d he says, \u201cwhich is partly why they\u2019re here today.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The wolves of Yellowstone | 60 Minutes Archive<\/p>\n

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