During the last nine years I’ve lived in or next door to Yellowstone’s wolf country. I’ve watched lots of wolves, talked with lots of experts, heard lots of opinions. I’ve even written a best-selling book about wolves. The recovery of wolves matters to me.
About 6,800 gray wolves now survive in the lower 48, according to data I gathered from each state with a confirmed wolf population. Is that a lot? Has the population actually recovered? To answer those questions, I hunted down historical records of wolf numbers that I could compare to today’s.
A map in “Yellowstone Resources and Issues Handbook” shows that gray wolves once roamed all but seven of the lower 48 states. Today’s range is almost the opposite: gray wolves (Canis lupus) are in only nine states: Oregon, Washington, California, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. In all, wolves are back on about 10% of their historic range in the Lower 48. That doesn’t seem recovered to me.
If wolves haven’t recovered their range, have they recovered their numbers? In an article in the March 2011 “Yellowstone Science” historians Lee Whittlesey and Paul Schullery report the results of analyzing hundreds of historical records. They found that naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton once estimated about two million wolves roamed North America and northern Mexico before the arrival of Europeans. They uncovered a record of scientists that used DNA testing to estimate that 380,000 wolves lived in the western US and Mexico prior to their eradication in the early 1900s. Today only about 2,400 gray wolves survive in the American West. That doesn’t seem recovered to me.
The picture isn't much prettier in Yellowstone, a place famous for wolves. Whittlesey and Schullery looked at the historical wolf population in and around the park and determined that wolves were once "widespread and abundant." Today only about 100 wolves live in Yellowstone. That doesn’t seem recovered to me.
The two historians also found records showing that in the 1860s several hundred thousand wolves roamed the region that would become Montana. Today, about 800 wolves manage to avoid Montana’s abundant traps and guns. That doesn’t seem recovered to me.
Whittlesey and Schullery quote those DNA scientists as recommending an even more ambitious restoration effort in the West, an effort that “…would restore wolves to past population sizes and enable them to significantly influence the dynamics of the Rocky Mountain ecosystem.”
Scientists have shown that the presence of wolves—where they are allowed to recover—helps ecosystems. Given continued protection they could help improve even more ecosystems. I think that more recovery—more protection—sounds like a good goal. Much better than the inevitable slaughter of wolves that will surely follow as federal protection gives way to state management.
Better yet, how about a national wolf recovery plan instead of a national wolf delisting? Such a plan could enable wolves to establish viable populations in areas that now have just small, recovering populations, including California, Oregon, and Washington. The plan could also promote recovery in areas like the southern Rockies, Dakotas, and Adirondacks, which have suitable wolf habitat but no established wolf populations.
Wolves have not recovered and should not be delisted. The battle to get wolves back on the Endangered Species List now moves into the courts. Meanwhile, wolves will be managed— hunted and trapped and hounded—in places where they were once protected. And the small population of wolves in the Lower 48 will get even smaller.
Image Credits:
Yellowstone wolf by Jacob Frank, NPS
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Well, brother, you've convinced me! Now, for the rest of the world. . . . I'm on your side regardless!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Rus, for not only taking the time to read the posts, but also to comment. You rock!
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