Next month will mark the 30th anniversary of a landmark wildlife experiment: the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park.
Next month will mark the 30th anniversary of a landmark wildlife experiment: the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park. The gray wolf had been nearly extirpated throughout the northern Rockies and had been federally listed as endangered since 1974.
Diane Boyd, a wildlife biologist who had started collaring and tracking wolves that entered northern Montana from Canada in 1979, supported the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s broader reintroduction effort in the West over the last 30 years. “The return of wolves has been wildly successful beyond all expectations,” she says today. “It’s amazing.”
Thanks to reintroduction efforts and protections of the federal Endangered Species Act, which forbids any killing of the animal, wolves are now abundant across the West. They number roughly 3,000 and are now living not just in the Northern Rockies, but in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and among the giant sequoia groves of California.
Read more at: Yale Environment 360
Photo Credit: ambquinn via Pixabay
