But my finding on the facts is that many of the articles that are pointing to wolves as good are written with a biased opinion from a environmentalist. Ones that point towards wolves being bad are more from a conservative opinion. There isn't many unbiased articles written. But there is a lot of good reading material that points in all kinds of directions of elk mortality, eco system destruction, eco system benefits, and all that.
I have been in the debate pretty constantly, stating my opinion and facts.
There have been several ecological benefits since they have been returned to the park. While I think their population must be kept under control their are benefits to having them as part of the ecosystem. The first several years after re-introducing them is going to be hard for the prey species as they learn to adjust to a new predator, but eventually things will steady out. The problem that the other side fails to understand is that the only natural way of predator population control is when they kill enough of their prey species to no longer support their populations and they start starving to death because there aren't enough elk or deer. Hunting for population control is the most humane and will result in the most healthy ecosystem.
Your knuckles are all skinned up, aren't they? mtmuleyThe only good wolf is a dead wolf. Previous generations understood this, our current generation is just plain stupid.
I can only speak from personal observation.
When I was working/guiding in the Thoroughfare area in Wyoming, just South East of the Park, prior to the Canadian wolf introduction, we would see grizzlys regularly, along with an occasional wolf. Sheep, moose, deer and elk were also seen regularly. Perhaps the elk were overpopulated for the area, as it was not unusual to see 40 - 50, even 100 elk a day.
By the early 2000's the moose were gone, only the occasional deer, rarely a couple of sheep would be seen and we were seeing a few elk. One of my hunters asked me on day 5 of an 8 day hunt, if we were on a predator hunt or on an elk hunt as we had only seen 3 elk but we had seen 9 grizz and 15 wolves.
10 years after the introduction of the Canadian wolves we could go two entire 8 day hunts and not show our hunters a single elk, bull, cow or calf. So if that was the intent of introducing a new species of wolf to the lower 48, that is eliminating the native populations of Moose, Sheep, Wolves and almost eliminating the deer and elk populations, then success has been achieved.
I can only speak from personal observation.
When I was working/guiding in the Thoroughfare area in Wyoming, just South East of the Park, prior to the Canadian wolf introduction, we would see grizzlys regularly, along with an occasional wolf. Sheep, moose, deer and elk were also seen regularly. Perhaps the elk were overpopulated for the area, as it was not unusual to see 40 - 50, even 100 elk a day.
By the early 2000's the moose were gone, only the occasional deer, rarely a couple of sheep would be seen and we were seeing a few elk. One of my hunters asked me on day 5 of an 8 day hunt, if we were on a predator hunt or on an elk hunt as we had only seen 3 elk but we had seen 9 grizz and 15 wolves.
10 years after the introduction of the Canadian wolves we could go two entire 8 day hunts and not show our hunters a single elk, bull, cow or calf. So if that was the intent of introducing a new species of wolf to the lower 48, that is eliminating the native populations of Moose, Sheep, Wolves and almost eliminating the deer and elk populations, then success has been achieved.