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Territorial conflict was the most common cause of death for the park’s wolves, most of whom didn’t live beyond four or five years. Life for wolves was an adventure, but it was usually not a long one.
At three and a half, O-Six had already reached middle age. Unless she found a mate soon, her prospects for survival were not good. Had she been a male, it might have been different;
O-Six simply didn’t fit the mold of the beta female, content to wait her turn for a chance to lead and to have pups of her own. She didn’t have the temperament for it.
a pair of pups discovered near Soda Butte Creek, about fifteen miles east of where Rick was now standing—were shot in 1926. They were killed not by poachers, but by park rangers.
why the elk could run just as fast as the wolf but no faster. Wolves were the driving force behind the evolution of a wide variety of prey species in North America after the last ice age, literally molding the natural world around them. The massive size of the moose, the nimbleness of the white-tailed deer, the uncanny balance of the bighorn sheep—the architect of these and countless other marvels was the wolf.
1930s, Yellowstone officials had no choice but to do what they had done with the wolves. They started quietly culling the park’s enormous elk herds, shooting thousands of animals in an average year (usually in the winter, when few visitors were around to see the carnage).
The truth was, nobody really knew what would happen. No one had ever tried this before.
nascent pack,
The long-term goal of the reintroduction project was that dispersing wolves would gradually recolonize the wilderness surrounding the park, a twenty-million-acre expanse known as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
he was not just a wildlife biologist but a mountain man as well—someone who could design a study and turn out a well-written paper, yet
was equally in his element hunting elk or hanging out the side of a helicopter buzzing just over the treetops with a tranquilizer gun in his hands.
overreaching bureaucrats in Washington had rammed wolves down their throats, and people weren’t going to just stand by and do nothing.
the park had gone nearly seventy years without wolves, Rick knew that Yellowstone’s naturalist division didn’t have any interpretive rangers with relevant experience.
divided about the wisdom of reintroduction.
the wisdom on both sides of reintroduction, environmental policy having valid sides on all topics, seeing the humanities vs science and the integration of the two in indigenous communities. how does this compare to environmental issues in wv and the reintroduction of predators in places which have been the victim of acid mine drainage?
Rick rarely drove into the mountains just east of the park, for example, even though he knew Yellowstone wolves often ranged as far as Crandall. He knew Crandall was elk-hunting and cattle-ranching country, and wolves weren’t popular there.
how does lack of information provide weight to a side over another? how could there be compromise/education?
He flattened the snow in front of his cabin with his SUV on a daily basis, lest so much accumulate that he couldn’t get out at all.
is geothermal energy more dangerous near the Yellowstone caldera
Each day’s report began with a summary of the weather, followed
by brief descriptions of behavior observed throughout the day, each labeled with the time of day and the exact duration. He considered his research to be in the tradition of the great naturalist Adolph Murie, the first biologist to undertake a steady observation of wolf behavior in the wild.
Every wolf in the pack was like an old friend, just as their parents had once been, and their parents’ parents. Watching from the roadside in the Lamar Valley, he’d seen generation after generation of Druid pups leave the den, follow adults on the hunt, find their place in the pack, learn how to be wolves.
he watched as the Rose Creek alpha male defeated 38 in single combat,
As it happened, the choreography of the encounter gradually took on the trappings of play. The male bowed, his forelegs spread wide and his head near the ground, and the sisters leaped forward.
(It was possible that the alpha had killed her rivals’ litters, though project biologists couldn’t be sure.)
He had been issued a green clip-on tie, though he never wore it. The Park Service gave rangers a yearly allotment to spend on uniforms, but Rick tended to wear his until they were threadbare—and sometimes beyond. He had repaired the crotch of a particularly comfortable pair of green government-issue jeans with dental floss.
The celebrated primate researcher Jane Goodall didn’t even have a college degree when she was assigned to watch chimpanzees in Tanzania,
It was all about showing up.
President Bill Clinton came to see the wolves,
How was Clinton involved in the national park service during his term and how did this reflect in his personal life ?
the Turner Endangered Species Fund
21 found himself caring for pups who were not his own when he stepped into 38’s place as the leader of the Druids. It was very unusual in the animal world, except among canines (and humans). Wolves had an evolutionary imperative to become attuned to the emotions of others because they lived in packs, where cooperation—for hunting, for protection from rivals—was paramount. Sociability enhanced the chances for survival.
Over years of watching wolves, Rick had become convinced that empathy was the single most important trait that an alpha could have, and 21’s capacity for it continued to amaze him.
Limpy had been found—almost three hundred miles from the Lamar Valley.
How does having strong personalities push you away from your family and into the literal wild?
He spent the next few years roaming southwestern Wyoming, until researchers eventually lost track of him.
Even wolves need to lose everyone before they find themselves. I’ve found myself the same way. not calling home often, crying because of those who are no longer near, and crying, in a way which has been a mystery until now, knowing i am no longer homesick.
It was still a world hostile to wolves—over the years the project had lost so many to poachers, to traffic, to ranchers protecting livestock—but Limpy seemed blessed.
Her death, if not peaceful, had at least been a natural one, and for that Rick was grateful.
what does a heart attack serve
the weeks that followed, he watched as 21 roamed the valley, howling for his missing mate. He had become an old wolf, his black coat gone almost completely silver with age.
It was the first time Rick had ever actually touched 21’s fur or seen him at such close range.
Little America was good habitat, but most of it belonged to the Druids, and the Druids did not tolerate trespassers.
The two males inspected her mark, then added their own on top. They were hers, too.
One snowy February afternoon, a few lucky visitors watched as O-Six came thundering down off a ridgeline on the north side of the Lamar Valley in hot pursuit of a bull elk, her two companions sprinting along behind her. The elk bounded across the road near Buffalo Ranch, heading for the Lamar River beyond. O-Six never slowed, but 754 and 755 pulled up when they reached the blacktop, unwilling to cross. O-Six eventually took the bull down herself in the river valley below. Still the two males held back, even after she returned to the road to check on their progress. Only later, under cover of
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To her, a car was like anything else on the landscape that was neither predator nor prey—like a rock or a tree or even a bison. It wouldn’t harm her, and she couldn’t eat it; it was a nonentity.
In fighting dogs, the tendency to rise to a challenge is known as gameness, and it has been a highly coveted attribute cultivated through generations of selective breeding. In wolves, the provenance—and the desirability—of the trait is less clear.
The same fearlessness that might serve an animal well in Yellowstone, where cars moved very slowly and humans were harmless, might be fatal in the world beyond the park’s borders.
By late winter O-Six was moving boldly through Druid territory and encountering little resistance.
O-Six lunged again and again, as White Line, weakened by months of poor feeding, struggled to fend her off. She was losing badly but refused to retreat. Suddenly she buckled under her attacker, exposing her flank, and O-Six sank her inch-long canines deep into her opponent’s leg. Moments later White Line, bleeding profusely, simply stopped fighting. As if by some unspoken agreement, O-Six sensed the contest was over, too, and stood and watched as her defeated opponent limped off into the woods alone, looking for a suitable place to die.
how does dominance in nature demonstrate classism
Then the bull reappeared. He turned unexpectedly downhill, ran clear of the pines, and barreled straight toward the startled watchers at the roadside. Five feet tall at the shoulder, with an enormous spread of antlers, he was in full flight, panicked and heedless of his surroundings. O-Six was on him again, by herself now, closing the gap in the snow. He veered away from the pavement at the last moment and began running parallel to the road.
how lucky am i to live in convergence with god and literacy
the males hadn’t been able to keep up with the action—or perhaps quailed when the chase veered toward the road—and
the fear preventing their ability to access a primal need such as food and the ability to overcome such a fear becoming just as necessary as environmental fragmentation occurs
Every contour of the land seen with the naked eye from the roadside was really several such folds, each with a dale in between, sometimes visible and sometimes hidden. And each of those dales held countless features of its own—boulder gardens, narrow creek-filled drainages, meadows bound by copses of aspen or fir or lodgepole pine—where a wildlife drama might unfold.
the truth was that he had spent a considerable portion of the last thirty years of his life watching wolves sleep.
And then there were the great herds of elk, pronghorn, and buffalo—the animals that inspired Congress to make Yellowstone the world’s first national park. The Lamar Valley boasted the highest prey density of anyplace on earth outside the African Serengeti.
The professionals recorded their subjects’ ages and weights, their ranges and diets, their fertility and longevity. But the watchers knew their stories.
Over the next five hours, the pilot buzzed the panicked pack as Niemeyer methodically shot every remaining member. It was among the worst days of his life, but if this was the price of having wolves running free in the Northern Rockies again, he was willing to pay it.
