Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Emily Kwong here with producer Burleigh McCoy. Hi, Burleigh. Hey, Emily. Okay, what do you got for us today?
So I've brought you a complicated story about wolves in Yellowstone National Park. I've never been to Yellowstone. I've always wanted to go. Are the wolves a big deal there? Yeah. So I live in Montana, and most anyone in the Mountain West will tell you people have big feelings about wolves here.
Some years ago, I remember driving by this huge billboard with a picture of a majestic-looking wolf with a message like, protect the wolves. And someone had shot an arrow through its forehead. Oh, that sends a message. Why? Well, wolves are predators, and some people view them as a menace.
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Chapter 2: What led to the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone?
Humans. So wait, people can hunt in Yellowstone? No, not in Yellowstone. Hunting is prohibited in the park. But the winter of 96, 97 was really harsh. And that pushed a lot of elk outside the park in search of food. Which exposed them to hunters. Exactly. That year, hunters killed more than 3,000 elk.
And hunters are often killing prime-aged females, whereas wolves usually kill the very old or the very young. So many scientists say hunters had a bigger impact on the elk population than wolves.
And on top of that, Laney, the scientist from earlier who saw the patchy aspen recovery, said they looked at where elk were spending their time and... We didn't really see much different in elk browsing activity to
depending on wolf risks.
Meaning elk might avoid eating aspen in some areas at certain times because wolves are there, but they're not avoiding the area altogether.
Oh, that's a real plot twist. So it's not true that the elk are just avoiding areas where wolves are. There are some places perhaps where wolves and elk are coexisting?
Yeah, and this finding has shifted the narrative. Wolves may be eating elk, but they aren't scaring them away entirely. And Emily, at the same time wolves disappeared, humans were also killing two other predators of elk, so cougars and bears. And their decline likely also contributed to the elk boom.
All right, so we got cougars and bears and wolves. It's not just the wolves eating the elk, and that's the end of the story.
And then there are the beavers. How many animals are involved in this? I know, I know. I'm just going to bring the one more in. Okay, so there's a lot. Here's the situation. Beavers need these river shrubs called willows for food and building their dams. And during the elk boom, elk ate those willows. So the beavers moved out.
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Chapter 3: How did the absence of wolves affect the elk population?
And they're often using Yellowstone to justify it. But if people expect wolves to have these sweeping environmental changes, especially in short timeframes, it's setting up that community for failure.
That's a fascinating takeaway. Yeah. Because also, in addition to... It being a mistake to overemphasize the ecological power of wolf reintroduction. I'm guessing not every place is like Yellowstone, which has these wide open swaths of land. You know, every region is different.
Exactly. And that brings up a huge hurdle in wolf reintroduction. Clashes with people. I talked to Sisto Hernandez, a rancher in the White Mountains in Arizona.
On both sides of the border, my family's been in ranching for time immemorial.
So wolves were reintroduced around there in the late 90s. And he's part of his tribe's council on creating a coexistence plan to compensate ranchers for livestock losses. And he doesn't like that the wolves are there.
There isn't much to generate revenue on the reservation. And ranching is one of those things that we can do. And it limits us on that.
And this is something that scientists told me over and over again, that if we get the Yellowstone narrative wrong, people could use it to justify wolf reintroduction in places very different from Yellowstone, where more people live, so more potential conflicts. They also said focusing on wolves ignores a lot. Here's Avery again, the wildlife biologist from the beginning of the episode.
When you get this kind of tunnel vision on single species conservation, it can really ignore other bigger threats to wolves and other species that also matter.
She says it's easy to focus on these grand narratives and people who see wolves as either menace or savior.
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