Serving the Platte Valley since 1888
Serving the Platte Valley since 1888
Thirty years ago this month, gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. Today, the people who made it happen remember the mayhem and magic of one of the 20th century’s most controversial acts of ecosystem management.
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a 3 part series
By the 1930s, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s wolves had been systematically hunted and trapped out of existence. In their absence, it didn’t take long for humankind to rethink the wisdom of eradicating the ecosystem’s apex canine predator.
Aldo Leopold, a visionary conservationist, thought of reversing course as early as 1944. “Why, in the necessary process of extirpating wolves from livestock ranges of Wyoming and Montana, were not some of the uninjured animals used to restock Yellowstone?” the icon of the environmental movement wrote i...
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